Raquel Rodrigo Takes Cross-Stitching to the Streets

Raquel Rodrigo creates street art using the unlikely process of cross-stitching. The Spanish artist’s works occupy walls and structures in Madrid and Valencia. Whether towering over passers-by or adorning eye-level dividers, Rodrigo and her team craft flowery pieces in the same intricate, painstaking process. All appear as pixelated wonders when closely inspected.

The pieces are often first created in the team’s workshop, typically using a wire mesh frame and then relocating it to their public homes. These projects move between personal work and branded, public content created by Rodrigo. The “large-scale jewelry pieces offer a different way to present the artist’s work.

Rodrigo has worked as a set designer for various television shows, films, and stage productions. The website Treehugger sees this as part of an overall trend involving women and street art, saying, “Increasing numbers of women are making a name for themselves in the street art scene in recent years. Instead of using smelly spray paint, they are distinguishing themselves by adapting techniques that are traditionally seen as ‘women’s work’ into the urban fabric of public streets and buildings.”