The Good, The Bad, and The Rest of Us by Eileen Woods
- Kent
The School of Art Collection and Galleries are pleased to present "The Good, The Bad, and The Rest of Us" by Eileen Woods, Sept. 1 – Oct. 31 in the KSU Downtown Gallery, located at 141 East Main Street, Kent, Ohio. There will be a reception on Sept. 4 from 5-7 p.m..
The Good, The Bad, and The Rest Of Us challenges our instinct to read morality or character in faces. Through hand embroidery integrated into sheer silk, or cosmic or floral fabrics, I render portraits of individuals whose lives defy visual expectation—killers who might pass for librarians, spies with gentle eyes, saints with hardened features, victims whose demeanor seems fearless.
From the artist:
The deliberate slowness of my process—threading needle through fabric for hours, days, weeks—mirrors the complexity of human biography. Each stitch becomes a meditation on the person beneath: the childhood of a convicted murderer, the compromises of an intelligence operative turned traitor, the private doubts of the canonized, the unexpected killing gunshot from a loved one. The decorative patterns —exploding nebulae, sprawling roses—serve as ironic halos and damning backdrops, beautiful containers for difficult truths. The transparent silk, backed with a mirror, reflects fully the embroidery process and represents the struggles of the subjects themselves.
I’m drawn to the gap between appearance and essence, the impossible task of knowing someone from their face alone. We hunger for physiognomy to guide us, for evil to announce itself and goodness to glow. But faces are just faces. The embroidery itself embodies this paradox: an art form associated with domesticity and decoration employed to examine violence, sacrifice, and moral ambiguity. What emerges is neither accusation nor absolution, but sustained attention—the only honest response to another person’s irreducible mystery.
