Erin Daniels' Garden of the Soul
The Art Shop at Moore
1916 Race St.
Philadelphia
Dec. 16, 2024
Distressed clothing is cool — but have you ever seen a closet full of tired-out, torn-up, blood-embroidered baby gowns?
Erin Daniels puts ripped jeans to shame in her collections “Garden of the Soul” and “Healing Sutra,” currently showing inside the alumni gallery of Moore College of Art and Design. Daniels’ designs aren’t made to wear, but are rather made of already-worn fabric. The result is a series of tiny garments, bruised and stained with age, and made textile artworks by the hands of their inheritor.
Hanging not in a closet but on the walls of Moore’s art shop, the fabrics riff — however incidentally — on the idea of donning “distress.” In an era of fast fashion, it’s become popular to treat our clothes as if they’re older than they really are. To manufacture holes or establish fray in our outfits is stylish. Is this, perhaps, a way of trying to come across as tougher than the external tissues we show to the world?
Daniels’ work is the antithesis of that perspective. She gathers old fabrics whose quality speak for themselves, but that have simultaneously been wrecked by the bodies of time they’ve observed. With skill that can only develop with age, real age, she embroiders the boundaries of dark spots and tears to stitch old remnants into the eyes of a new audience with pinpointed precision. Though the fabric has been weakened with time, it’s also freshly empowered by a person knowledgeable enough to appreciate its enduring strength.
Daniels' stitching mirrors water lines, arterial shapes and even birth. Her collection of clothes offers a uniquely layered perspective on the theme of "body."
Browned patches are decorated with red threading that resembles blood, suggesting a violent rebirthing through the intensive procedure of embroidery. Other stains are surrounded by delicate line work that look like topographic mapping. Though we’re not told the stories of these clothes — who they belonged to, by whom they were originally sewn, or how long they’ve lasted — a deep sense of curiosity is peaked through their presentation.
There’s a lineage of labor implicit in the project. Though the majority of the clothes Daniels compiles are child-sized, the materials boast a brand of durability that resonate anew, given that most of us are dressed in cheap, slave-made garbage. Daniels, who graduated from Moore in ‘93 with a bachelor's in textile design, is the great granddaughter of a seamstress for the Mummers. The collages of skirts, dresses, shirts and quilts call back to the feminine pattern making once practiced by collectives of women embroidering by fireside at night. Layered together, the extensive scenes of birds on branches, floral garlands, and lacy line work prove a shared sense of beauty informed and inspired by our natural environments. It’s a nostalgic vision, one that is easy to romanticize but hard to relate to. The focus is not on fast fashion and quick consumption, but on reproducing tactile elegance for a younger generation.
Taste can feel like the instinct that defines us as people — but it’s as fragile and ever changing as the world beneath our feet. Daniels’ textiles seem to say that practice, practice, practice is what sets humans apart; at the end of the day, our longevity is a matter of our ability to adapt. The art of embroidery is the ability to sew the new into the old.
Daniels' work remains on display at Moore through Jan. 18.
