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Monkey Boy and the Magic Beans
Artist
China Marks
(United States, born 1942)
Date2007
MediumMachine embroidery and appliqué on various fabrics, lace, thread, fusible adhesive, and Beva
DimensionsH X W: 43 1/2 x 42 1/2 in. (110.5 x 108 cm)
Object TypeTextiles
Credit LineKSU, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, 2007 Friends of the Beach Museum of Art annual acquisition
Object number2007.50
On View
Not on view- To make her self-described “sewn drawings,” Marks combines scraps of cloth from many sources, including fabric stores, thrift shops, and friends. She uses an industrial sewing machine, outlining and shading cloth pieces like a paintbrush.
- The artist describes: “I stitch into the scraps and the ground … using free-motion embroidery to draw lines and lay in areas of solid or scumbled color. By this means alone, I create transitions, unify disparate elements, carve out space, model form, and otherwise meld the variously patterned parts into a compelling whole.”
- Curator Bill North has written about the combination of strange images in Marks’s sewn drawings (this example alluding to the fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk): “Marks, with playful seriousness, subverts found narrative, turning it on itself to raise troubling questions about its original intent.”
