The Embodieries of Michelle Kingdom Capture the murky tangle of our interior world
Embroidery as an art form is often overlooked as a craft, but that is part of its appeal to Burbank, California-based artist Michelle Kingdom, who uses embroidery to express her innermost thoughts and escape to her imaginary world. Michelle Kingdom’s unexpected approach to embroidery is like a painter’s, and some have dubbed her work as “stitched paintings.” She prefers to call them “narrative embroideries”—woven drawings that are hand stitched and fashioned carefully with tightly embroidered threads.
Michelle Kingdom’s embroideries feature simple vignettes that stand alone as one, but are part of a greater whole. Always figurative and usually from a female perspective, her work recalls the human experience: how we live our lives, the stories we tell ourselves, the history we choose to pass on, and what we leave behind. Measuring just a few inches tall, her mini-protagonists are surrounded by natural elements like trees, roots, and water, and convey feelings of love, longing, and melancholy. Her narrative is personal, and her family, culture, and background have all helped to define it.
She spent her formative years immersed in Los Angeles pop culture, and by contrast, her home life was traditional. Kingdom is descended from Russian Jews, and four generations of her relatives lived within miles of each other. “This dichotomy informed my perspective. I was one of the last to know my immigrant relatives, and the family progressively shrunk. We grew more distant, geographically and socially, and essentially assimilated into the modern, lonely nuclear family model. There is a sense of loss in my work, a direct result of this reality,” she shares.
Kingdom describes them as a “sewing family” and working with needle and thread was both familiar and natural. She was attracted to art but also the world of textiles, which she experimented with on her own. “I cannot recall a time when I was not making some type of art or craft, and we were always up to something in our house. My grandfather was an advertising artist and my mom also studied fine art at UCLA. My dad had a hardware store in Hollywood and could make anything with his hands. My retired parents still spend their days crafting together.”
Her interest in textiles grew in the 1990s when she was in college at UCLA, where she was studying fine art. “All the cool kids were making very clever, conceptual work that was ironic, cold, masculine, and oversized—it all felt like the construction of artifice and elitism. I wanted to touch genuinely tactile work and to be moved on a visceral level, not only cerebrally,” she recalls. She began drawing with thread and taught herself how to make embroidery.
“Art was always my main interest, but as I never believed it was a viable career option. I didn’t show my embroideries to anyone and frankly didn’t think anyone would even be interested. I stitched with no intention of having an audience and was making work that reflected the inner dialogue running in my head. Over the years, I worked sporadically, frequently sidetracked by adult life.” Armed with personal history and emotional baggage, embroidery became her own private refuge. In 2010, she began to share her work publically for the first time online, where she has been gaining a steady following.
I stitched with no intention of having an audience and was making work that reflected the inner dialogue running in my head.”
Kingdom’s earliest pieces were tiny at two to four inches, with all of the stitching and story compacted into a fixed frame. Her work has since evolved in size, technique, and concept, but it still lies within the same realm. Now, slightly larger and looser, her compositions move more freely and organically, and her themes have a broader reach and range of elements. Her portrayal of simplified or even faceless characters varies, and in some cases, her work is incredibly small, with pieces meant to represent anonymity or a collective.
Her distinct style is primarily focused on using thread as a drawing tool, retaining a fluid, expressive hand, while retaining the eloquence of the skill. “Technically, what I do is embroidery even if it doesn’t conform to traditional standards. But the way that I approach each piece is akin to drawing. Most all of my work is filled and dense but it is still composed of zillions of skinny lines. I think, plan, and execute as a draftsman and drawing was my medium of choice in art school. Now, I do it in incredibly slow motion because of the nature of stitch,” she adds.
Working from home, Kingdom appreciates embroidery as a medium that can be portable and does not require much space. She keeps sketches and notes which are integral to starting a new piece. Once a final drawing is complete, it is transferred with graphite paper to a linen ground, which she then executes, often without a clear image in her head. Kingdom enjoys experimentation, and her stitching approach is instinctive. “More and more, I find myself moving away from proper stitches, and have ripped out sections of work that feel too beautiful or too stiff—I try to approach each embroidery as if it were my first piece,” she says.
Her inspiration comes from a myriad of sources; childhood memories and old family photographs, medieval manuscripts and miniatures, ancient art, symbolism, and outsider art. Artistically, she cites visionaries such as Edouard Vuillard, Stanley Spencer, Gwen John, Henry Darger, Van Gogh, and Alice Neel as major influences. Perhaps her most intriguing source of inspiration comes from what she can only define as inner voices—“that endlessly jabbering, nagging, sometimes incoherent and sometimes brilliant barrage of thoughts we can never shut the hell up.”
More and more, I find myself moving away from proper stitches, and have ripped out sections of work that feel too beautiful or too stiff…”
“I am trying to capture the murky tangle of our interior world in a way that is both beautiful and haunting. My hope is that if the work rings true personally, it will resonate with others too. I am interested in exploring identity through the lens of self-perception and relationships, and how it shapes our reality. I’m a firm believer that pretty much everything in life amounts to more than just one thing, one explanation, one viewpoint. The continual tension of opposing dynamics such as aspiration and limitation, expectation and loss, belonging and alienation, truth and illusion—they fascinate me.”
Kingdom’s use of color is distinct, and plays an important role in getting her work’s message across. For the most part, her palette is made up of subdued tones, used in her character’s flesh and hair. She combines this with a single bright spot of color, such as primary red or blue. “I try to give a lot of thought to color, palette, and use or disregard of tones. I am trying to focus where the viewer’s eye goes to keep the message at its most potent. Often I will choose colors, as well as many elements in my pieces, for its symbolic value,” she says.
An avid reader and fan of literature, much of Kingdom’s content is borrowed from her favorite books. A recent work, entitled “A Spell So Exquisite,” is so named after an Emily Dickinson quote: “Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.” The embroidery depicts a couple in the middle of an intense, unknown exchange. A series of barren trees cut through them and break up the space, while blue birds flock overhead. “My narrative is about love as a spell rather than life in general, but I was taken by the portion omitted from the title—the implication that whether it is life or love, everything ultimately conspires to break it,” she explains.
It is a unique scene in that the majority of Kingdom’s images depict female characters. There are women of every age and occupation: children playing tug of war, maids working in the kitchen, clusters of women bound together by gossamer, or shedding their own skins. “My exploration of women via embroidery comes as both the creator and the subject. It is not about the delicacy of women but rather about a uniquely feminine voice, viewpoint and reality,” she says.
I have long rejected the notion that ‘women’s work’ or craft or outsider art is less important than traditional fine art.”
Embroidery was not always confined to the needlework of women, but it is considered as a delicate and traditionally feminine craft. In eighteenth-century England and its colonies, samples employing fine silks were produced by the daughters of wealthy families. This was considered a skill marking a girl’s path into womanhood as well as conveying rank and social standing. Kingdom’s work keeps the art form’s legacy in mind, while stemming from her own identity as a woman. Her decision to portray women in her embroideries is notably feminist:
“I am a feminist, but above all, a humanist who believes we are all equal. More specifically, I do not believe that equality means women should necessarily be more like men, but that there is a nonhierarchical value we all possess. I have long rejected the notion that “women’s work” or craft or outsider art is less important than traditional fine art—give me Darger’s Vivian Girls over Rubens’ Baroque babes any day.”
Kingdom recognizes her place in this special lineage, and her appreciation for embroidery lies beyond its tactile beauty. While honoring the richness of tradition, she also tries to refresh it, and in doing so has found that the evocative nature of figures in stitch better convey her ideas than other mediums can: “It’s just something that speaks to me on a visceral level, seems the most authentic way express my thoughts, and is still surprising to me after all of these years.”
“Without doubt, embroidery is beautiful and there is an inherent luster and lineage in the medium. But there is also something primitive, strange, and even awkward that strikes me as compelling, raw, and honest. It also has an intrinsic tactile quality that reaches not only the seamstress in me, but connects me to the collective memory of all the women with stories buried in thread that came before me.”*
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