Description
ARTIST STATEMENT
My current series functions as a meditation on my year in quarantine, interpreted through the seven terraces of purgatory described in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. I use two processes in each print: etching and hand embroidery. The etching portrays the real, and the medium itself is meant to hearken to the biblical intaglios of the past, particularly Gustave Doré’s Purgatorio etchings. The embroidery illustrates the “sacred” elements of the text. In my work, I use embroidery as a way of turning the mundane into something precious.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Riley Brady is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist and graphic designer with practices in publication design, illustration, printmaking, and traditional craft. Her work centers on loneliness, memory, and mental illness. Riley works at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and is a 2021 printmaking fellow at Spudnik Press.