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.

Upcoming Show: Bonnie Sennott at Hosmer Gallery

Greetings! I'm so excited to share that, after a delay of two years due to the pandemic, my show at the Forbes Library's Hosmer Gallery is finally happening. The reception will be Saturday, June 4, 2 - 4 pm, and the show continues through June 29. Details below. I hope you can make it!  

Bonnie

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Bonnie Sennott: Abstract Embroidery and Watercolors

An exhibition of recent abstract embroidery work and watercolors by Amherst artist Bonnie Sennott will be held June 2–29 at the Hosmer Gallery in Northampton, Massachusetts, with an opening reception on Saturday, June 4, 2 - 4 pm. 

Among the works shown is Daily Thread, a yearlong project for which she embroidered every day using colors observed in nature, and several of her negative space embroideries exploring absence, loss, and the passing of time. She will also show abstract watercolors on the theme of "stones and water," which she is creating in 2022 as part of the "100 days of creative acts" project organized by author Suleika Jaouad and the Isolation Journals.

Sennott has shown her work locally in solo and group exhibitions at Northampton’s Center for the Arts, 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.

Also on view during June: landscape paintings by Stephanie Vignone.

The Hosmer Gallery is located on the second floor of the Forbes Library at 20 West Street in downtown Northampton. Hours are Monday - Thursday, 10 am - 8 pm; Friday and Saturday, 10 am - 6 pm.  

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.

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.