2024 Small Works Exhibit at Sawmill River Arts

This piece, titled Effervescence, is in the Small Works exhibit February 4–26 at Sawmill River Arts in Montague, Massachusetts. There’s an opening reception Sunday, February 4, 1–4 pm. Stop by if you’re in the area! I plan to be there, probably towards the beginning of the afternoon. The gallery is located next to the Montague Bookmill, at 440 Greenfield Road.

For this daily embroidery piece that I made last year, I aimed to create a joyful, playful image by using a “chance and choice” approach. I began by selecting six colors of pearl cotton. I chose one color at random each day to stitch with. That was the “chance” element of the piece.

The “choice” elements were what stitch to use each day and how dense. The constant: the shapes were circles only.

I entered Effervescence into this show because I thought we can all use a bit of joy in dreary February. The show continues through February 26 at Sawmill River Arts, 440 Greenfield Road, Montague, Massachusetts. Gallery hours are Thursday–Monday, 11 am to 5 pm.

Show Announcement: "Revelry" at Northampton Center for the Arts

Bonnie Sennott, A Leaf-Sized Space, 2017, pearl cotton and linen, 10 inches by 10 inches

“Revelry” at the Northampton Center for the Arts opens Friday, April 14, with a reception from 5 to 8 pm during the monthly Arts Night Out. My embroidery shown here, A Leaf-Sized Space, is among the artworks by more than 35 local artists in the show. The exhibit is a fundraiser, with half of all sales going to support the center, located at 33 Hawley in Northampton, Massachusetts.

A Leaf-Sized Space is part of a series of negative space embroideries called “Presence/Absence.” For the project, I used found objects—in this case, an oak leaf picked up during a walk—as a starting point for freeform embroidery exploring the beauty of ordinary, lost, or overlooked objects. I surrounded the leaf with a rich mix of embroidery stitches and spots of fall color as a way of celebrating its brief but beautiful appearance in this world. The stitches hold the leaf aloft and give it—or rather, its absence—a second life.

Easthampton City Arts Gallery Show Continues through September 30

This Saturday, September 17, I’ll be at Easthampton City Arts Gallery from 10 am to noon, working on a new piece. I’ll be happy to answer questions about my process and work, so please stop by to chat! I’ll also be bringing a “community hoop,” prethreaded needles, and an embroidery stitch handout, so you can try your hand at stitching if you’d like.

My solo show of abstract embroidery and watercolors continues through September 30 at Easthampton City Arts Gallery, 43 Main Street, Easthampton, Massachusetts. Gallery hours are Wednesdays and Fridays, noon–2 pm, and Saturday, September 17, 10 am–noon. More information

Shown here is Daily Embroidery (56 Days), a negative space embroidery that I completed in August.

Exhibition Announcement: Bonnie Sennott at Easthampton City Arts Gallery

Show announcement: In September, I'll exhibit my abstract embroidery and watercolors at the Easthampton City Arts Gallery, located at 43 Main Street in Easthampton. The opening reception, on Friday, September 2, 5-8 pm, coincides with Easthampton's monthly Art Walk. The show continues through September 30.

ECA Gallery has limited weekday hours (see below), but I will be gallery sitting on Saturday, September 17, 10 am–noon. I'll be working on a new piece while I'm there on the 17th and will be glad to answer questions about my process.

More details below. I hope you can make it!

Bonnie

---

Bonnie Sennott: Abstract Embroidery and Watercolors

An exhibition of recent abstract embroidery work and watercolors by Amherst artist Bonnie Sennott will be held September 2–30 at Easthampton City Arts Gallery, 43 Main Street, Easthampton, Massachusetts, with an opening reception on Friday, September 2, 5–8 pm. Hours: Wednesdays and Fridays, noon–2 pm, and Saturday, September 17, 10 am–noon.

Among the works shown will be A Year in Thread and Daily Thread, Sennott's two yearlong stitch journals, for which she embroidered every day using colors observed in nature. This show will be the first time these two projects have been exhibited together. Also on view: recent negative space embroideries exploring absence, loss, and the passing of time and recent abstract watercolors on the theme of "stones and water." 

Sennott has shown her work locally in solo and group exhibitions at Northampton’s Center for the Arts, the Hosmer Gallery at Northampton's Forbes Library (2019, 2022), the Burnett Gallery/Jones Library in Amherst, Gallery A3, and #LOCAL Gallery. Her work has also been exhibited in shows at the Wistariahurst Museum, the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, and the Fitchburg Art Museum. A former member of Kingston Gallery in Boston, she holds an MFA from the University of Chicago.

Her Light Escape (43 Days)

On this last day of summer, I thought I’d share a piece I worked on between May and August. Her Light Escape (43 Days) is one of my negative space embroideries.

For this piece, I used a circle template and stitched around randomly placed circles of varying sizes, using Valdani pearl cottons mostly in colors of the flowers I grow in my deck container garden. As always, the garden—which I dub the “Hummingbird Cafe”—exists to feed the local hummingbirds, which arrive in May and leave in September. I’m so blessed to be able to watch (and hear) these tiny visitors all summer.

As with my other abstract embroideries, the composition was not planned in advance but developed bit by bit as I worked. I used mostly seed stitches, layered over and around patches of white running stitch, with a few spots of satin stitch here and there. None of the circles is stitched completely around. Ephemerality—everything arriving and leaving, here only momentarily—is the theme.

These details let you see the stitches more closely, as well as the sides of the piece. I love exploring how much can be done with a limited number of stitches. Seed stitch and running stitch are so simple, yet yield much variety just through varying the size of the stitches and how densely they’re placed.

The title comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson about summer’s end and the passing of time:

As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy—
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon—

The Dusk drew earlier in—
The Morning foreign shone—
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone—
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.

On this last day of summer, I think of all that’s come and gone over the past few months. I think of the hummingbirds, those quick little bits of magic. What a delight they are! I feel sad that summer is ending, but I’m so grateful to have once again witnessed the daily, amazing parade of beauty.

Progress Report: A New Negative Space Embroidery

A few weeks ago, I began a new piece using a limited palette of Valdani threads and linen dyed with walnuts from the tree out back. I’m continuing my explorations of negative space embroidery, using a circle template.

So far, I’m employing just two stitches—the “irregular” running stitch that I absolutely love, and here and there small amounts of satin stitch. As usual, I’m improvising the composition as I go.

Now that I’ve spent some time with it, I am thinking I will leave the center of this piece mostly empty. The stitching will cluster around the edges. A theme of keeping safe, staying close to the sides like a new swimmer, of holding on to things known and dear is emerging. Maybe I’m influenced by the uncertainty of life during this pandemic? I don’t know. I think we all have times when “keeping to the sides” is just what we most need. There’s a time for adventuring and a time for staying still.

Anyway, here are a few photos of the piece in progress. The purple that you see is from a disappearing ink pen. It disappears with time and also easily washes out.

I’ll post again soon about the negative space embroidery that I finished last month. I just need to stretch it and take photos. Until then, I hope you’re well and enjoying the transition between seasons.

If you’d like to see progress photos more frequently, please join me on Instagram.

Daily Thread: Piece 18 (Cardinals)

For the eighteenth and final piece in my Daily Thread project, I chose the theme of “cardinals.” When I considered the flora and fauna I’d observed over the course of the year, I realized how much the cardinals meant to me. For one thing, they’re here all year long, bringing flashes of color to even the darkest days. For another, the male cardinal’s song in early spring is one of the loveliest sounds I know of. It never fails to lift my heart and remind me that longer, brighter days are coming. What better way to round out the year and the project than by honoring the bird whose constant, colorful presence brings joy to every season?

I worked on this piece from November 26 to December 26, 2019, Days 330–360 of the Daily Thread project. I chose white linen because the palette of reds, oranges, and neutrals would stand out much better against white than against a natural linen. I wanted the piece to be as bright and uplifting as the cardinal’s song.

As wth the other pieces in this yearlong project, I worked with one color of thread and one type of stitch each day. For this piece, I limited myself to short running stitches, arranged in horizontal and vertical groupings.

I set myself a few “rules” for the process: 1) use one color per day; 2) keep the straight stitches in each day’s work parallel; but 3) vary the length of the stitches and the space between each; 4) establish a pattern but sometimes leave it partly incomplete; and 5) don’t fill every space.

I had planned to show Daily Thread during 2020 in two shows that ended up being cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Since exhibition of the project had to be postponed, I decided to “exhibit” it online via a series of blog posts. I hope you’ve found these glimpses into the project and my working process interesting; you can read all the blog posts here and see the project in its entirety here.

Exhibition news: My April 2020 show at the Hosmer Gallery, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has been rescheduled to June 2022. The gallery is located in the Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts.

My September 2020 show at Easthampton City Arts—also cancelled due to the pandemic—is in the process of being rescheduled. I’m very excited about this venue because it will give me space to show all of the Daily Thread pieces along with the daily “stitch log” i made for each one, plus other examples of my abstract embroidery work. I’ll post the dates as soon as I know them.

In the meantime, you can view two of my 2020 negative space embroideries in the online exhibit POST PAUSE. The show presents works created during the time of the coronavirus pandemic by artists in western Massachusetts. Each artist's work is accompanied by a statement about how their creative practice has been impacted by COVID-19.

LINKS
About the Daily Thread Project
@bonniesennottart on Instagram

Daily Thread: Piece No. 15 (Sky II)

For the 15th piece in Daily Thread, my 2019 stitch journal, I returned to the theme of “sky.” The first sky piece was stitched during May and June; this second one was stitched from Day 268 through Day 284 of the project, during September and October.

Stitched with just two colors—a variegated blue-green thread and a white thread—it’s one of the simplest pieces of the project. I wanted it to convey the quietness of an early morning sky. The simplicity of the colors and stitching were meant to convey the feeling of a new day just begun, the early hour when the day still holds the possibility of peace and serenity.

The vertical white lines were added last of all. Because they’re close in tone to the white linen, they are hardly visible if you’re too far from the piece. They’re a sort of visual “reward” for viewers who take the time to come close and really take a look. I’ve been a gallery sitter many times in my life and it always breaks my heart a little when people circle quickly around a show and only view the work from a distance, never taking the time or trouble to come closer and actually engage with the art the way the artist did. For this reason, I also carry stitching around to the sides of my embroideries—another little detail that will only be seen by those who make the effort to approach the work.

Coming up: My next Daily Thread post will be about the 16th piece, which had the theme of “leaves.”

Exhibition news: I’m happy to share that my April 2020 show at the Hosmer Gallery, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has been rescheduled to June 2022. The gallery is located in the Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts.

My September 2020 show at Easthampton City Arts—also cancelled due to the pandemic—hasn’t yet been rescheduled; the gallery remains closed. In the meantime, you can view two of my negative space embroideries in the online exhibit POST PAUSE. The show presents works created during this time of pandemic by artists in western Massachusetts. Each artist's work is accompanied by a statement about how their creative practice has been impacted by COVID-19.

LINKS
About the Daily Thread Project
@bonniesennottart on Instagram

Negative Space Embroideries

During 2020, I completed several new negative space embroideries. Like my wrinkle embroideries, the negative space pieces are abstract and improvisational — I develop the compositions as I go, rather than planning them in sketches beforehand.

Daily Embroidery (19 Days), by Bonnie Sennott, 2020, perle cotton on linen, 8 x 8 inches, private collection

Negative space is an embroidery technique in which you stitch around a shape rather than the shape itself. For these pieces I used templates of circles and ovals to trace shapes with disappearing ink pen. Sometimes I stitched completely around a shape, other times just partially around.

Daily Embroidery (24 Days), by Bonnie Sennott, 2020, perle cotton on linen dyed with oak galls, 8 x 8 inches

These pieces have been a way for me to create something positive out of the loss and fragmentation of 2020, during which so much of “normal” life was disrupted. I limited the palette in each piece and kept the types of stitches employed to a minimum, hoping to find a balance between the empty spaces and the positive areas of color.

Scattered (39 Days), by Bonnie Sennott, 2020, perle cotton on linen dyed with oak galls, 10 x 10 inches

The three pieces shown above were stitched with Valdani threads. I love this particular brand of perle cotton because the colors are rich but not quite as saturated and bright as other brands. For a piece I’ve just begun (below), I’m using DMC perle cottons. I want this new piece to have a warm, sunny color composition, and the DMC yellows I already have on hand are perfect for it.

If you’re interested in purchasing a piece, please visit the Artwork section of my Etsy shop. Or, click on the email icon on any page of my website to contact me.

To view work in progress, follow me on Instagram — I’m @bonniesennottart there.

Two of these negative space embroideries are part of POST PAUSE, the inaugural exhibition of the Easthampton City Arts online gallery. Curated by Maggie Nowinski, POST PAUSE presents works created during this time of pandemic by artists in western Massachusetts. Each artist's work is accompanied by a statement about how their creative practice has been impacted by COVID-19; here’s a direct link to my work.

Daily Thread: Piece No. 14 (Waning)

For the 14th piece in Daily Thread, my 2019 stitch journal, I chose the theme of “waning.” To start the piece, I stitched the colors of the year’s last nasturtium blooms in “V” or boomerang shapes something like the simple way children draw birds in flight.

As the piece progressed, I added intersecting, randomly curling lines in backstitch. This tangle of lines was inspired by the beautiful jumble of the nasturtium’s fading leaves and stems. In the end, I re-oriented the piece so that the “V” shapes pointed downward, to accentuate the feeling of summer ending, the time when flowers and plants begin drooping down toward the earth.

I worked on this piece from September 3, 2019 (Day 246 of this yearlong daily embroidery project) to September 24 (Day 267).

Coming up: My next Daily Thread post will be about the 15th piece, which had the theme of “sky.”

New work: While I’m furloughed from my day job due to COVID-19, I’m creating a series of furlough daily embroideries. To learn more, follow me on Instagram or follow the hashtag #furloughdailyembroidery.

Exhibition news: Two of my furlough daily embroideries are in POST PAUSE, the inaugural exhibition of the new Easthampton City Arts online gallery. Curated by Maggie Nowinski, POST PAUSE presents works created during this time of pandemic by artists in western Massachusetts. Each artist's work is accompanied by a statement about how their creative practice has been impacted by COVID-19.

If life is back to normal next spring, I will be showing the entire Daily Thread project in April 2021 at the Hosmer Gallery in Northampton’s Forbes Library. Later in the year (dates to be determined), it will also be shown at Easthampton City Arts.

LINKS

About the Daily Thread Project
@bonniesennottart on Instagram