I landed on my current medium while in art school after becoming frustrated with the lack of physicality, as in the tactile, 'it's okay to touch it' kind of physicality in painting. I started exploring bookmaking & altered books and rediscovered sewing, which I had always had an affinity for. As I began to explore, [I began] incorporating traditional craft media into my fine art, thinking about the role of physicality & touch in the context of contemporary culture & technology. The pixelated works are a product of that investigation. The process I use, more or less, is taking digital photos of people (friends, etc.) and then putting the photos through the mosaic filter in photoshop. Then [I] loosely translate those images into sewn pieces. For me, much of the content of my work lies in this process - taking something physical (the person/subject of the photo), turning it into something digital, manipulating that thing digitally, then spitting it back out as something distinctly physical. It's like a strange metamorphosis. For me, that process is a kind of catharsis. It gives me something to hang on to when everything else seems so ethereal & fleeting.
Be sure to check out Ehren's website where this is much more of her work on display.
