Spirit Lines
Dusti Diener
Since the Industrial Revolution, culture, languages and subsequently design, have become increasingly homogenized. In a fast-paced and demanding capitalist society, we strive for ease and efficiency; time is money and perfection is the goal. The misshapen fruit, the slow worker, the broken toaster are brushed to the side by society. Consequently, when we as individuals feel we are damaged or insufficient we work to hide these perceived flaws from the world.
The purpose of this thesis is to change societal norms around physical or emotional scars and our perception of our own trauma. In this thesis, I invite the reader to consider feminist strategies, and to reclaim “women’s work” as a slow, methodical simulation of the healing process. I explore textile methods such as mending, embroidery and altering found articles of used clothing as a design methodology to shift the negative perception of the imperfect and to celebrate our unique personal textures and histories.
This is a photograph of my mother at age 31 after a surgical procedure to remove her cancer. It is also the original inspiration for this body of work. I think my mother’s scars are beautiful, because they are part of her story. I decorated them with embroidered roses and stems as a way of showcasing their beauty and the incredible resilience they signify.
The word grimey conveys the idea of something negative, something undesirable. In this piece I wanted to amend the idea that our flaws somehow make us less valuable, when in fact it is our flaws, our imperfections, our differences that make us unique. They are our personal texture. The addition of the words “& OK” I embroidered into this piece is an attempted embrace, a public acceptance, a visual proclamation that I am flawed, I am grimey, and I am ok.
This piece is inspired by my mother’s post-cancer experience. At age 30, she was diagnosed with an aggressive desmoid cancer and at 31 underwent radiation and surgery. The surgery required the removal of all muscles on the left side of her back, and all but a dime-sized piece of scapula which was bone grafted to her rib cage in order to hold her arm in place. As a result, she was no longer able to be physically active. Were she to fall and break the graft, there would be nothing left of the scapula to regraft. She was forced to be a spectator for the rest of her life. But she never complained. She didn’t complain during our family vacation when she had to sit in the ski lodge and read. She didn’t complain after any of the plethora of soccer games and tennis matches she watched me play that these were things she no longer could. This altered t-shirt, with the word pro replacing anti, is meant to represent the positivity she has carried with her throughout this experience. She has embraced her life as a member of the PRO SOFA GLAM CLUB.
This piece is in recognition of women who have endured sexual violence. The shirt print reads: POSTED PRIVATE PROPERTY COPYING FOR ANY PURPOSE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.This severe language is representative of the desire to reclaim our bodies as our own and perhaps the desire to keep others at a distance after such an encounter. I added embroidered flowers within the sparkly letting atop this language in an attempt to embrace a piece of this shirt that I didn’t like very much. These flowers highlighted what, to my eyes, was ugly, so that I could begin to view this piece of the shirt in a new and useful way. The flowers themselves symbolize the resiliency of women and the ability to heal and bloom and thrive again after experiencing trauma. Though the trauma, like the original severe language, can’t be erased, the strength it takes to process and grow and reclaim narrative is one worthy of uplifting.
This piece was inspired by my sister’s experience with cancer. The purple embroidery thread is used as a representation of the Hodgkin’s lymphoma ribbon color and is used to highlight the area where the removal of her chemotherapy port left a scar on her body.
The piece is see-through, showcasing the figure of the individual wearing it. After treatment, my sister struggled to love and accept her body. The steroids she was put on caused a weight gain of 30 pounds, significantly altering her body, making it feel alien. The struggle with body image is one that unfortunately most women face, but to exist in a body that does not feel like your own must be the most excruciating form of imposter syndrome. The new body she inhabited served as a constant reminder of her illness and the lack of control she’d experienced for over a year.
While sick, you often don’t have the emotional or mental capability of processing your experience. Once her body had healed, her mind was left to deal with the psychological side effects of cancer. When treatment ceases, the world assumes that’s the end of it. For my sister, I think this was the most difficult part. While the world returned to normal, hers had irrevocably shifted. The difficulty of being a positive person, of refusing to burden others with your trauma, is that you are left to carry it alone.
The word “mighty” is spread throughout the pattern of this shirt, and has been outlined to showcase the strength I witnessed my sister embody throughout this experience.
The feminine lips that make up the pattern of this shirt embodied for me the antiquated expectation of women: to be seen and not heard. To be feminine. To be beautiful. While progress has been made, women are too often still judged more on their appearance than anything else. This piece was created to articulate that more important than what is on a woman’s lips are the words that come out of them. To this end I embroidered a zipper opening across a set of these lips with the words “be heard” beneath as a reminder that we can’t be silenced.
This piece was given to me by a classmate after I sent out a request for clothing items with typographical messages. I was curious about what might result from altering pieces I hadn’t selected myself, what stories might be born from these shirts? This shirt was the first, and one of the only, I received from that request and had the word Paris printed across the chest. For a long time I didn’t know what to do with this piece, but as it was donated to me for the purposes of this project, I wanted to make sure I did use it. The story that resulted from this shirt was possibly the most important for me to tell because it required that I attempt to embody the self love and vulnerability I had been researching and promoting as essential.
My body type is what is known as a “pear shape”. I am short, with a long torso, and wide hips and thighs. Growing up it was difficult to find pants that fit all parts of me. The waist was too big, the thighs too tight, or the hem too long, because clothing wasn’t designed to fit pear shapes. Boys in school would remark on my body, primarily my butt, and as someone who was a painfully shy introvert, I hated that this was a part of my body I couldn’t hide.
It took a long time to embrace the pear-ness of my body. Recognizing it as strong and healthy and decorating it with not what is in style but what suits it. So this piece was inspired by my own difficulties with body image. From the initial typography of Paris I added an “e” carroted between the “p” and “a”, and an “h” was added to the end. Finally I embroidered a tiny pear beneath the word. and My hope is that through declaring the acceptance of my shape, perhaps the other pears, the apples, the triangles, the hour-glasses, and the squares can find the beauty in their own.
These images come from a Healing Workshop a classmate and I conducted. As a part of the workshop I asked people to do the below:
Take a moment and think about a physical or emotional scar that you struggle with. Picture it in your mind, what does it look like?
Now, sketch this scar onto the piece of fabric within the embroidery hoop, if it isn't perfect, don't worry, we aren't aiming for perfection here.
Take your embroidery floss and cut off a piece about twice the length of your forearm and then thread one end through the eye of the needle. Tie a knot at the opposite end of your thread.
Insert the needle through the back of your piece of fabric, poke it through at the edge of your "scar".
Start healing your scar! The practice of embroidery is one that women have been forced into for centuries, let's reclaim it as a feminist practice! Putting your scars or flaws down and reflecting on them through the slow methodical process of mending might help you to view these differently. Decorate your flaw, can you see it as a piece of your unique beauty?
Spirit Lines is an accumulation of my thesis research, capstone, and other supporting projects.
Don’t Eat Your Vegetable is a playful satire that is meant to challenge our preconceived perspectives.