Stitching Stories

Jane Waggoner Deschner began collecting and working digitally with vernacular photographs in 2001, but she has been working as a fine artist for over 25 years. Having worked with fiber arts earlier in her career, it wasn’t until 2007 that she began embroidering into them. As Deschner described it: “I fell in love with the process and discovered that adding maxims uttered by famous people also allowed me to point out things my aging, maternal (increasingly sanctimonious) self wanted expressed.”
Deschner uses the computer and Photoshop to create embroidery patterns, yet much of her stitching on photographs is done by hand. She calls the process “laborious and time-consuming that provides her a satisfying, meditative intimacy with these captured fragments of other people’s lives.”

All images © Jane Waggoner Deschner

resilience (Homer, harm done)
2011
found photo, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton
and Sulky metallic threads
17.25 x 11.5 inches

Once harm has been done,
even a fool understands it.
—Homer

resilience (Horne.I’m me)
2011
found photos, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton
Gutermann rayon and Sulky metallic threads
17.25 x 23 inches

resilience (Eliot, be)
2011
found photo, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton
and Sulky metallic threads
17.25 x 11.5 inches

It’s never to late to be what you might have been.
—George Eliot

resilience (Hugo, bird)
2011
found photo, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton
and Sulky metallic threads
17.25 x 11.5 inches

Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her,
still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo

from the resilience series (Booth, Rule One)
2011
found photograph, cotton and rayon threads
17.225 x 11.5 inches

Rule One of all rules:
No one ever knows how much another hurts.
—Philip Booth

back detail of from the resilience series (Booth, Rule One)

from the maxim series (Duchamp, no problem)
2010
found photograph, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton thread
10 x 7.875 inches

There is no solution for there is no problem.
—Marcel Duchamp

from the maxim series (row boat, Betty’s boys)
2009
studio photos, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton thread
20.25 x 22.375 inches

destroyed

from the symbol series (8th graders, skulls)
2011
found photographs, rayon thread
9.75 x 7 inches

from the maxim series (Vonnegut, no why)
2010
found photograph, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton thread
9.875 x 8 inches

We are all trapped in the amber of the moment.
There is no why.
—Kurt Vonnegut

from the maxim series (Sting, no matter))
in collaboration with Robert E. Jackson
2011
found photo, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton thread
9.375 x 7.25 inches

Be yourself, no matter what they say.
—Sting

from the maxim series (Proust, eyes)
2011
studio portraits, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton thread
12 x 17.25 inches

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes
but in having new eyes.
—Marcel Proust

from the maxim series (Thoreau, Stewart & Granger)
2011
found movie photos, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton thread
10.125 x 14 inches

Could a greater miracle take place than for us
to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?
—Henry David Thoreau

from the maxim series (Twain, Carradine)
2011
found movie photo, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton & Sulky metallic threads
10 x 8 inches

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
—Mark Twain

from the maxim series (Thales, self)
2009
found photo, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton thread
6.875 x 5 inches

from the garment series (family suit)
2009
vintage snapshots, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton thread
46 x 52.5 x 3 inches

from the garment series (t-shirt, t-shirt)
2009
snapshots, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton thread
27.5 x 31.25 x 2 inches

destroyed

from the garment series (mothers&sons)
2009
snapshots, DMC Mouliné 100% cotton thread 19.875 x 25.75 x 2 inches

from the garment series (little boy, dragon)
snapshots of James “Jimmy” Schelfhout
2011
found photographs, cotton, rayon and metallic threads
22.625 x 18.75 x 1.75 inches