Facial Recognition
Many threads, stitched into a single presence.
How do we see ourselves, and what happens when someone else takes our image and makes it their own? Eight artists from the Hana Kark Collective—S. Portico Bowman, Carlyn Clark, Johnny Fox, Margaret Lazzari, Luke Reichle, Chris Russell, Caryl St. Ama, and Nancy Kay Turner—each created a self-portrait and shared it with the group. Working independently in our own studios, we each printed all eight portraits, deconstructing and reconstructing them by layering our own distinct aesthetics and media over the original images. The collective result is eight series of eight 12 x 12 inch mixed-media works.
My eight pieces are created using encaustic on fabric with hand stitching. After printing each artist's self-portrait onto cloth, I painted into the surface with encaustic wax before stitching across the composition. Every portrait called for a different mark: crossing lines, radiating suns, a knotted net, small stitched glyphs, ripples of running stitch, and seams joining bands of color. The final piece is my own self-portrait—the one face in the series defined not by recognizable features, but by texture and thread.
This collaborative textile series reflects the core principles of my studio practice: community, memory, upcycled materials, and zero-waste art. Every piece was created under a strict rule I first adopted in my studio: using no new materials. What began as a quiet experiment in zero-waste creative practice became a permanent commitment to sustainable art-making.
Portrait of/by/with Chris Russell. Encaustic on cloth with stitching, 12 x 12 in. The black lines are Chris's own drawing. I love his sketches of people on the subway and streets of New York, and I imagined him riding through all that bustle. Here, perhaps, he’s in a quiet moment in bed, with the chaos of the city stitched around the edges and kept at bay.
Portrait of/by/with Caryl St. Ama. Encaustic on cloth with stitching, 12 x 12 in. She has stars in her eyes, stitched in blue thread. Around her, a vibrant turquoise field of dark-ringed lilac ovals, each outlined with a dashed white line of stitches.
Portrait of/by/with Johnny Fox. Encaustic on cloth with stitching, 12 x 12 in. I printed Johnny’s portrait on cloth, set it in a streaked rust-orange field of encaustic wax, and sent concentric rings of hand-stitched running stitch rippling out from the figure.
Portrait of/by/with Luke Reichle. Encaustic on cloth with stitching, 12 x 12 in. I printed Luke's painted portrait on cloth and set it against a red field of encaustic scattered with small yellow squares, each stitched in dark red thread with its own mark, inspired by runes and hidden languages.
Portrait of/by/with Margaret Lazzari. Encaustic on cloth with stitching, 12 x 12 in. Margaret’s original self-portrait was a black-and-white photograph; I printed it on cloth and brought it into vivid color using encaustic wax, hand embroidery, and radiating stitched sunburst motifs.
Portrait of/by/with Nancy Kay Turner. Encaustic on cloth with stitching, 12 x 12 in. Nancy is a collagist, and everything here—except the rich red background—comes directly from her original collage printed on cloth. My knotted yellow embroidery forms a delicate netting across the surface, suggesting capture or containment, though of what, I can’t say.
Portrait of/by/with S. Portico Bowman. Encaustic on cloth with stitching, 12 x 12 in. Printed on cloth and set against vertical bands of saturated color, I stitched black chevron seams between each stripe and layered translucent scraps carrying the handwritten phrase, “I come to feel heal contribute,” drifting across the surface.
Self-Portrait. Encaustic on cloth with stitching, 12 x 12 in. There is no facial recognition here, only what lies within: a single geometric pattern filling my silhouette, surrounded by a vibrant yellow encaustic field. Zigzags of navy, crimson, and teal thread run alongside vertical teal knots, forming a private visual code across the surface.