NOVA AND STAR CLUSTER EMBROIDERIES
I’ve always found that space is the ultimate metaphor for the unknown, but the idea for this work actually started with a very quiet, human moment. I was looking through my telescope one night, and once my eyes finally adjusted to the deep darkness, I realised the cosmos wasn't just black and white at all it was absolutely vibrating with colour. My work is really about trying to hold onto that realisation, taking the cold, distant data of the stars and softening it through the rhythmic, human pace of embroidery. It’s a bit of a hybrid process, half digital precision and half slow craft ,taking something as unreachable as a star and turning it into something you can actually touch.
STAR CLUSTER EMBROIDERIES
This series is built directly from that data. Each hoop is embroidered by hand on custom-printed velvet, which I’ve printed from my own images of the night sky. To get the colours right, I use an AI algorithm to analyse the photography, matching every single thread to the specific colours found in each point of light on the fabric.
It’s a slow, manual way of re-materialising a digital file into a physical composition, but it’s also a nod to the history of astronomy. I’m particularly inspired by women in the history of astronomy. These women, largely ignored by history, made discoveries that changed our understanding of the universe. By bringing these colours into a gallery, I’m trying to create a more tactile connection between us and the stars, bridging the gap between the analogue and the digital.
NOVA SERIES
The Nova series takes that same curiosity and scales it up. These pieces are inspired by supernovas—the massive, terminal explosions that happen when a star has exhausted its fuel and collapses under its own gravity. It’s a violent, brilliant moment where the star’s core implodes, triggering a shockwave that scatters heavy elements across the galaxy. It is essentially the universe’s way of hitting the reset button; the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones were originally forged in these explosions.
Because a supernova is all about this radical recycling of energy, I wanted the materials I use to reflect that transformation. These are much larger-scale works, stitched onto custom fabrics using recycled or second-hand yarns and threads. I love the thought that these materials had a past life, just like the stellar dust, before being repurposed into the atoms that would eventually create us.
