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I come from a tightly-knit family that includes pioneers, ranchers, business owners and creatives. In this blog I aim to highlight their creative endeavors and the influence they have had on me as an artist and lover of life on this earth. I begin this journey with the wondrous works of my Great Aunt Helen. |
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Our family ranch house is adorned with samples of Aunt Helen's cross stitch. One illustrates a poem my mother wrote as a child about her favorite tree. Another was well known to my generation of children as it hung in our bathroom, reminding us to bathe well, but not to bogart... She made two dolls for my mother and my uncle , and stitched their little faces. I am strongly drawn to stitching as a creative outlet and lately I've used images from my paintings a subjects for embroidery and needlepoint.        
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Aunt Helen always insisted that if one were to do anything, they should do it correctly. This concept she especially applied to creative work. As you can see by the meticulous stitching in her state flower embroidery, the stitching is perfection. She and I seem to be the only ones in our entire extended family that pursued the art of stitching imagery.     
 This Valentine Aunt Helen made in bright, shiny foil.; the note scratched into the foil in the middle of a delicate doily heart, with a tiny scroll to be pulled by that green twine containing another sweet message. I just love it! 
 My grandmother’s sister, our Aunt Helen, was a woman who spent much of her time in creative pursuits. She lived in a small house in Salinas, CA where she gardened, sewed, and made all sorts of things. She made cross-stitched tapestries, shadowboxes and collections of shells, stones and earth from all over the globe. Every year beginning in October, she made numerous elegant Christmas ornaments that she distributed among the family each December. Among my favorite of Aunt Helen’s creations were her scrapbooks. She made these with books my mother bought in Chinatown; plain bound books with lightweight paper that she filled with images meticulously cut from magazines. She would make covers for them out of wallpaper and fabric. These scrapbooks were many, often themed, and full of delightful illustrations. As children, we would be mesmerized by the images of animals, flowers, and paintings of every day human interactions. I reference these book in my artist’s statement because, all of these decades later, I find that they often influence the content of my paintings.
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AuthorRaquel Baldocchi Archives
September 2018
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