Samplers were also a symbol of class status; many of the more elaborate samplers were made by upper class women, who had the time, resources, and education to produce them. Those ones are highly valued today (I have seen a few priced on Antiques Roadshow), and there are plenty of art exhibits displaying elaborate samplers. The fact that he was able to tear one apart means that it was probably one that was done by a lower/ working class woman. So not only is it women’s history that is being erased/ covered but it is lower class women’s history. I find it extremely offensive, but like McAuliflower said above, the artist was looking for an emotionally charged response.

Situationalists used this method to produce, saying value should not be determined by age and that no one piece of art is worth more than another. But still, that method ignores the fact that the work of women, non-whites, minority religions, etc. have been consistently devalued already.

I would hate to ignore something like this because men who make “high art” out of “craft” has been such a trend in the art world, where value is arbitrary assigned to their work. Sollins is saying that as THE ARTIST (remember the modern/ historical debate over “the artist’s hand”), his work is important, but the sampler by some unknown woman is generic.

I think we can change our perception to take value away from the artist’s work; what would his work be like if not for the woman who made the original sampler? Whose work is better? Who made the original sampler and why? What a review of the work completely ignored his little squares and only focused on the original sampler?

On the other hand, they are nicely arranged blocks of color, I guess.

BTW, the statement about our society that I read in this work: We have destroyed personal art with technology and with blind faith that what experts call fine art is indeed fine and art; that the efforts of ‘trained’ artists is more important than the creation for the joy of creation by natural artists.

I think Sollins’ work is indirectly related to gender, in that embroidery is culturally considered to be “women’s work.” If we want to read Sollins’ pieces as sexist, it should be because he chose samplers to begin with, not because he took those samplers apart.

His work is good precisely because of the debate and thought that we and others are putting into his exhibiton. We may not like what he has done, but that is a calculated response that Solins was hoping for. Look at what it has accomplished- a charged emotional response, a posting about his exhibiton even though it was over a year ago! This is the penultimate response to an art piece an artist could ever dream of… you are keeping his art alive and valuable.

He knew what he was doing, as a tradition of eraser art has been established… his use of textiles was intentional and probably chosen precisely becasue of the gender and time associations tied in with it. In response to the world wide criticism he has received from embroidery workers he stated the origin of these pieces being the equivalent of paint-by-number works… in that statement he is challenging us, his viewers to ask if that devalues the original un-stiched work.

Can you imagine this work re-interpreted in a paint-by-number theme? Would there be such an outburst?

As for the commentary on the gallery’s site, it seems unfair to focus on one particular sentence, as provoking as it may be. Did the artist even write this himself, or was this written by the gallery? Furthermore, what about the part that explains that Mr. Sollins counted “the stitches by color and then” proceeded “to re-embroider squares in a geometric grid with each colored square consisting of the same number of stitches per color as the original.” That doesn’t sound like someone just ripping out threads without any regard for some aspect of the original work. I’m actually curious to know more about this process, like whether the artist hand-embroidered or machine-embroidered the squares on the piece.

As to whether Sollin was able to fully understand what he was doing: counted cross stitch is not a speedy process. It took him awhile to work his magic–to rip out what was there and to embroider his color blocks. I think he had plenty of time to consider the implications.