Jen Broemel:  Artist Bio

I work mainly with cloth for its tactility, responsiveness, and abundance.  I was originally drawn in by the process, the way in which the materials layer.  The way they feel as they are worked. The way the thread and cloth work together, transforming and guiding the work, adding texture, contrast, and comfort with every stitch.

I love the history and tradition of women sewing together and am in love with the community that surrounds and supports those who sew together.

I am especially interested in taking cast off or everyday fabrics and working them into something unexpected, repurposing something ordinary and turning it into something special, something to cherish, and behold.  I work intuitively letting my sense of the fabrics color, texture, and shape guide their placement and the stitches placed upon them.

I love exploring, experimenting with the different ways to manipulate the cloth with the thread, putting together and cutting apart, constructing and reconstructing, a cycle that for me symbolizes the happenstance of life.

My intention is to inspire others to look at the world around them more carefully, more mindfully, to see the extraordinary in the discarded, to notice the beauty in the mundane.   And if they can’t see it, to show them it is possible to look at things in a new and different way.  How we see the world shapes our lives, our relationships, our actions.  Let us notice the miracles of every day, every stitch. . .EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.