Madonna, Madonna

Embroidery stitched directly through a vinyl record sleeve.

12x12x2 inches, framed in acrylic.

Released in 1983, Madonna's debut album changed everything. With singles like “Borderline, Lucky Star, Holiday and Everybody” the album was immediately a success and eventually sold over 10,000,000 copies. When this album was released I think it changed the way people listened to music. MTV had just started and videos became just as important as the music itself and Madonna was an early innovator of this relatively new medium. Madonna changed the way we processed music, with her it became a lifestyle. I remember being a young teenager when this was released and seeing girls in my school emulate Madonna, with hairstyles, jewelry and attitude. The album cover features a photograph of Madonna with her signature 80’s hairstyle wearing a lot of silver, leather, and rubber jewelry. I knew this was going to be a tricky album to create since it is not only in black and white but the tone is very light. Embroidering light tones is tricky since light colors blend together much easier than darker colors. I started by stitching the background in two shades of metallic thread stitched in long sweeping lines. I stitched Madonna using a mixture of super flat polyester thread, rayon thread and metallic thread. Instead of stitching light to dark as I usually do I started by stitching dark to light and then dark again. There is a lot of very dense, small stitching on the face which was essential to creating this portrait.