Blue Tabby Cantering

Part of Muybridge Studies In Stop-Motion Embroidery, 2022

From 1878 through 1886, Eadweard Muybridge took hundreds of thousands of photographs of animals in motion. Stringing these images together sequentially, Muybridge developed a new way for us to see the world around us, breaking down motion into a series of figures able to be studied by the human eye. His work would prove influential for filmmaking and animation. In “Muybridge Studies for Stop-Motion Embroidery,” I aim to bring viewers back to this primordial moment of seeing using the unconventional media of fabric and floss. In a world of constant visual exposure to both still and moving images, taking the time to recenter the eye on individual frames of movement culled from some of the earliest moments of documented motion brings newfound appreciation for our capabilities of documentation as well as a new way to think about embroidery as a practice.