Talking Heads, Remain in Light

Embroidered patches mounted over embroidery stitched directly through a vinyl record sleeve. Red felt appliqued. 

12x12x2 inches, framed in acrylic.

     David Byrne’s Talking Heads were one of my favorite bands growing up. Their music wasn’t written for kids, or teenagers for that matter. The Talking Heads were definitely a grown-up band, but after seeing the film, "Stop Making Sense" in the mid 80’s, I became a fan. The band blended amazing music with performance art like no other band ever had. Their album covers were very artsy as well, always featuring different visual identities. Remain in the Light is an amazing example of how the Talking Heads were so far ahead of their time. It is a portrait of the four members of the band with bold typography and their faces covered in digital face masks. The images remind me of ski masks, meant to mask their identities. I started on the album by stitching all of the backgrounds in photorealistic abstract stitches. I then created the masks with laser cut felt appliqué and then embroidered all of the digital artifacts on top of the fabric. The typography was added as patches mounted at the final step.