Join exhibiting artist Liz Harvey and NUMU Curator and embroidery educator Allison Railo for an embroidery class and conversation on the incredible power and precariousness of rare native California plants. Allison will guide students through getting set up, threading a needle, and three basic embroidery stitches. Students will have the option to choose from one of three plant designs featured in the exhibition. As students stitch their designs, we will facilitate a conversation exploring our relationship to plants in California within a broader context of climate change and our changing environment, mirroring the conversations around the lost ones performance project.
Take home your embroidered image of an endangered native California plant that the artist discovered through the CalScape website created by the California Native Plant Society.
The class kit includes embroidery floss, needles, pre-traced fabric, and stitch diagrams. Scissors and hoops will be provided for the duration of the class.
General admission is $80. NUMU Members pay a reduced fee of $65. Members receive FREE admission to the galleries and select programs, discounts, and invitations to exclusive member events and activities. Memberships start at $35. Become a member today!
About the lost ones: iterations and murmurs
the lost ones: iterations and murmurs is an exhibition centered on the artworks, artifacts, and ephemera behind creating the lost ones, a multi-year performance project by Bay Area artist Liz Harvey. For the lost ones performance project, Harvey worked with a range of collaborators, including choreographers Mary Armentrout, Cherie Hill, and Megan Nicely, as well as, science editor Lauren Muscatine. The project featured myriad performers rotating through an embroidered performance garment on which participants were invited to stitch images of endangered plants in order to highlight overlooked species, untold feminist histories, and little-acknowledged art practices.
About Liz Harvey
Liz Harvey is a queer artist who makes textiles, collages, watercolor paintings, and performances in order to disorient viewers and envision speculative liberatory futures. She uses craft processes to shed light on historical erasures of queer history and plant stories. Recent work highlights embroidery, audience participation, and time travel as vehicles for exploring the impact of climate change with a focus on the exponential increase in the rate of plant extinctions. Harvey also generates imagery from discarded materials and textile surplus to create collages, banners, headdresses, and capes, including textiles “from the future.” In Harvey’s performance projects, she collaborates with choreographers and scientists, frequently bringing dancers engaging with objects to public gardens and urban spaces. Recently, her work has been shown at the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco, Round Weather Gallery in Oakland, Terrain Biennial in Alameda, and Plan-d Gallery in Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in Feral Fabric Journal, 48hills, and the San Francisco Examiner. She has been an artist-in-residence at Montalvo Arts Center, the Bay Area Discovery Museum, the de Young Museum, the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, and Salesforce Park in San Francisco. Harvey’s work is in the permanent collection of the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles and her studio is in Oakland.
About Allison Railo
Allison Railo has been a part of the San Francisco School of Needlework and Design since 2019 when she first embarked on the Comprehensive Studies Program in Surface Embroidery Levels 1 & 2. She is currently working on her CSP Goldwork Level 1 and her CSP Needlepointing Level 1, with the goal of developing her own art practice and design skills. Prior to discovering SFSNAD Allison was self–taught in needlework, inspired by family traditions and a love for slow craft and handmade textiles. Allison is also an Art Historian and Curator who lives in the Bay Area with her husband, two sons, and two dogs.
