Tamara Delmonte Gold

Stitched memories

I have been working on this piece ‘Stitched memories’, delving into my families history and focussing on my mother and the loss of her mother when she was a child. We have hand spun wool together, a skill my mother lost, regained and now passed down to me, the next generation. Using this spun wool we have practised ‘slow stitch’, inspired by artist Claire Wellesley-Smith to reconstruct the cut up pieces of my mother’s wedding dress. This was an act symbolising taking apart the pieces of the past, and mending them together in a different formation for a different purpose. This was inspired by the Japanese art form ‘Kintsugi’, where the mended object becomes more valuable than before it was broken. This was a journey for both my mother and I, revisiting our family’s memories and actively mending and repairing them through slow stitch. This project was influenced by my desire to work within Arts for health and further my studies with a postgraduate degree in Art therapy.