Impact

DIVINE SPIRITUAL EMBELLISHMENTS

Embellishments deepen the spiritual experience of marriage, coming of age, and other rites of passage for many ancient and traditional cultures. Today, we are featuring some exquisite examples of both contemporary and ancient arts.

MELISSA ZEXTER

Melissa Zexter shoots beautiful photos. Some are digital. Some, she develops and prints. What comes next is the awesome part.

Zexter embellishes the prints with embroidery. She engages a slow and meditative process of hand-sewing, layering an ancient craft on a more contemporary artform. Zexter’s pieces explore female identity and representations of femininity.

The embroidery transforms the portraits, creating new aspects to the personality of the subject. The threads seem both full of symbolism and of emotional expression.

Melissa Zexter holds a BFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in Photography from New York University/International Center of Photography.

She has exhibited throughout the United States. Her work has been published and reviewed in numerous publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Village Voice.

Zexter has taught photography in New York at Cooper Union, Alfred University, The New School, and Long Island University. She currently teaches at The Dalton School in NYC.

Zexter thinks of the photograph as something from the past and the thread as a reaction to the past and present. The thread makes the photograph more personal to her and allows her to meditate on the image.

While others have used embroidery in paintings in the past, Zexter’s seems to have created a new artform.

MANA MORIMOTO

Mana Morimoto is another artist that creates works by hand-stitching photographs. Threads become supernatural beams that come out of people’s eyes!

Morimoto’s photos are not her own. She obtains them through Google image searches, or borrows them from a friend’s Facebook profile. And she reinterprets them and repurposes them, giving them a whole new spirit.

The process is therapeutic for Morimoto.

Check out more on Morimoto's Tumblr.

TEMARI BALLS

Embroidery has traditional spiritual application as well. Deep friendship and loyalty are symbolized by Temari Balls, intricately embroidered balls, originally brought to Japan from China in the 7th century.

Over the centuries the art of making them grew increasingly intricate as Japanese aristocratic women competed to make the most beautiful designs.

When you give a Temari Ball to someone, you give them a wish for a happy life.

More recently, parents have engaged in a new tradtion of giving Temari balls to children to mark the New Year. A paper printed with a wish is tightly wrapped inside the layers of the ball. The child is never told what that wish is. But the parent will know if the wish comes true.

These Temari balls in particular were created by the grandmother of flickr user NanaAkua, who has posted an album of her grandmothers work from the past 30 years. Each and every ball is something beautiful to behold.

Check out this massive 468-picture gallery on Flickr for more!

KOSOVO BRIDES

Weddings are a reason to get fancy for many cultures. In Kosovo, they get seriously into embellishment. Girls begin preparing for their “big days” when they are teenagers, when they learn to embroider, sew and crochet garments and accessories that they will wear as brides.

Before the ceremony, the bride will present her handiwork for all of the women in her community to see. The hand-stitched cloth that she has been working on for years is part of her dowry is evidence of her ability to create beauty.

The bride also wears a long white dress, with intricate lace, a patterned red woven cloth, The red thread signifies her family bloodline and as she leaves her family home and gets into the waiting car, she breaks the thread to represent her leaving. She wears a blue ribbon to ward off evil spirits.

The entire process of embellishment is astounding to witness, as seen in the film, One Day on Earth.

Even the bride’s face is embellished. It is painted with three golden circles, symbolizing the golden roads one follows in life. Next comes three inner red circles that symbolize fertility. Blue and red dots represent prolific progeny.

HENNA

Ancient wall paintings discovered during the excavation of Akrotiri (destroyed by volcanic eruption in 1627 BCE) show women adorned with henna on their nails, palms and soles. The tradition has continued and expanded.

Throughout the Middle East, parts of Northern Africa, and Asian, henna was used to ornament and to decorate the body for ceremonial and religious purposes -- for weddings, circumcisions, and other rites of passage.

Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Christians and Zoroastrians all signified an oncoming wedding by decorating the bride (and sometimes even the groom) with henna.

Henna is the only species of plant in the Lawsonia genus. The leaves contain lawsone, an red-orange dye. Henna does not stain the skin unless the lawsone is released, when exposed to an acidic liquid, such as tea.

The application of the paste takes practice and patience. For the optimum stain the paste has to be left on the skin for several hours, and regularly touched up during the process.

At first, the tattoo appears as orange, then darkens to a brownish color over the next few days. This embellishment lasts the longest when applied to palms and soles.