AMLAS Updated Catalog

CAYCE ZAVAGLIA

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The Alchemy of Cayce Zavaglia

by Jeannette Cooperman

Step back, and Cayce Zavaglia’s cross-stitched portraits are paintings, their subjects softly alive, every detail rendered with precision. Step forward, and they are abstract grids of stitched Xs that you cannot imagine as to how they would conjure such a portrait. You step forward again, forced to participate and realize Cayce is making bits of wool do the work of paint. This play of illusion and opposition began in 2000, when Zavaglia became a mother. Determined to have a nontoxic studio, she poured out all her turpentine. Then came the epiphany: instead of putting craft into her art, could the craft be art? She began painting with wool, changing the direction of her embroidery stitches to pick up shadows and create the illusion of depth.

These portraits are larger than life, not small and delicate ovals worked on a hoop in her lap. She wanted to get embroidery out of women’s laps and find new possibilities for this ancient and often underestimated craft. Refusing to elaborate or prettify, she made her “embroidery” hyper-realistic and true to the tiniest detail. Your eye pauses again and again, delighted by the stitched hem of an undershirt, the sheen of a button, the creases in skin, all perfectly described, alive.

She tested her new medium, pushing the wool to express thousands of colors and textures. When she needed her next challenge, she played with opposites again, asking herself what kind of needlework she least wanted to do. The answer was easy: counted cross-stitch. She had loathed it as a kid, and she still had no interest in its tedium. But, what if she created the illusion of cross-stitch?

Close up, the Xs looked modern, stylistic, abstract. Tilt them slightly, and you enter the realm of traditional religion, which added a layer of significance and controversy. Intrigued, Zavaglia dipped a nib in ink and began a portrait made of tiny Xs. She chose blue ink as an allusion to the old iron-on transfer patterns. Stitchers were meant to cover all the blue, but she opposed that, too, by making the blue ink the point. Next, she made a colored-pencil portrait of her daughter Raphaella. Instead of beginning with a professionally lit portrait with its subject carefully posed and looking straight at the camera, Zavaglia deliberately grabbed a casual, throwaway shot from her phone. We see Raphaella, her eyes hidden by cool sunglasses, looking into the distance. We cannot even see her eyes, yet the image has all the immediacy, emotion, and complexity of the direct gazes in Zavaglia’s earlier work. How she has managed this is part of the work’s mystery. Is it the Pointillist precision with all those bits making a seamless whole or is it the warmth of the wool absorbing all the light and pulling you straight in?

She isn’t sure herself but after that colored-pencil portrait, all her resistance fell away, and she picked up a needle and spent months cross-stitching a version four times as large. In

this Raphaella, there are background details that, along with the landscape reflected in the sunglasses, shift us away from a domestic intimacy like Vermeer’s and open Raphaella to the world.

What is most striking about Zavaglia’s cross-stitch portraits is how many moods these Xs can capture. Some subjects look serene, others as though they were caught unaware. Rocco at 16 —a follow-up to the tightly embroidered, richly colored Rocco at 7— is stitched only in shades of embroidery-transfer blue. In the first work, the embroidery holds the image together, and if you come close, the stitches look like brush-strokes. The more recent portrait— which looks just as painterly from a distance—is broken into abstract bits, and the white spaces between the Xs vibrate, adding an almost nervous energy to her son’s thoughtful gaze.

Zavaglia likes to keep us wondering. Wait, is that one stitched? Are those stitches actually paint? Is that ink or wool or cyanotype solution or gouache? She also plays with size, at times bringing her work a little smaller, then taking it large-scale again. The process is methodical, yet the result is startlingly intuitive.

Unspoken, for example, is a chaotic, arresting, 7-by-8-foot mix of her own stitching’s underside. It is composed of vintage needlepoint, a scattering of delightfully lowbrow pompoms that refuse to take themselves seriously, and, mixed into the darkness, the added texture of beads, sequins, and costume jewelry. The portrait’s knots and snarls convey indecision, the wide eyes and parted lips, uncertainty. COVID-19 had torn away our comforting assumptions, just as 9/11 had. We were vulnerable and “all that mattered at the end of the day was family and love.”

Family and love are not typical terms for a contemporary art manifesto, but they thread through Zavaglia’s work. The pun is made inevitable by her work’s continuity, one piece bound to the next by blood as well as art. Her dream was always to be both an artist and a mother, and she saw no tension between the roles. Rather, she was struck by how similar they were: the late nights, the second-guessing of your own decisions, the slow unfolding and lack of any guarantees, the unseen and unpaid labor, the exhaustion, the tenderness.

With humble, everyday crewel wool, she paints silence, hope, innocence, struggle. And to keep the creative momentum between those massive, painstaking portraits, she takes fragments of paintings she loves and reinvents them in quick ink drawings as homage. Or, as in her latest exploration, she turns them into cyanotypes. They, too, are blue: the color of beginning, for generations of cross-stitchers, and one more note of continuity in her work.

Zavaglia’s cyanotypes are fresh, fluid, contemporary. The images have gone down as freely as ink spatters, and the process takes ten minutes instead of the ten months a cross-stitch portrait can take. Still, there is alchemy involved. The finished work will carry traces of the sunlight or clouds that shaped its exposure. Some pieces will feel finished already; to others,

she will add hand-stitching or highlights, fuzz the ink, or spray on a neon color that brightens the work. The subjects come from the kaleidoscope of images in her mind, some she has loved since she studied art history, others she encounters in our image-driven world.

Portrait began with one of her mom’s old passport photos and took on accidental mystery. Prayer incorporates a fragment, taken from an old masterpiece, of a monk’s quiet face and folded hands. With Zavaglia’s skillful cropping, even details from works painted centuries ago look so modern and time collapses. It’s a trick she likes to play.

Centuries have elapsed since the Coptic cross-stitching found in Egyptian tombs, since the silken cross-stitch of the Tang Dynasty and since the cross-stitched geometrical borders on medieval Romanian blouses. Now Zavaglia has pulled that simple X into portraiture, using wool to describe the light reflecting on a lower lip, the corner of an eye, or the fasten of a button, and creating color illusions with techniques impossible to imitate. In her hands, wool has startling powers. “I feel,” she says, “like it’s not done showing its potential.”

JeannetteCoopermanisastaffwriterforTheCommonReader,ajournaloftheessaybased atWashingtonUniversity.HerdoctorateisinAmericanStudies,andhermastersfocused onsymbolandmeaninginthevisualarts.Authorofsevenbooks,shehaswonnational awardsforinvestigativejournalismandculturalanalysis,andherworkhasbeencitedinBest AmericanEssays.

Wool cross-stitch and acrylic on Belgian linen

95 1/2 x 80 1/2 inches

Rocco at 16 , 2022

ForWhitney(AfterVanOosterwijick), 2023

Wool cross-stitch on red canvas with sequins 30 1/2 x 28 1/4 inches

Raphaellaat21, 2023

Wool cross-stitch on Belgian linen

56 x 45 1/2 inches

Unspoken, 2021

68 x 71 1/4 inches

Hand wool embroidery, acrylic, vintage needlepoint, Pom Poms, sequins and costume jewelry on raw Belgian linen

Rocco at 7, 2023

Hand wool embroidery with acrylic background on linen

30 1/2 x 28 1/4 x 1 1/4 inches

Dad, 2007

Hand wool embroidery with acrylic background on canvas 14 x 39 inches

Luca, 2020

Hand wool embroidery with acrylic background on canvas

8 3/4 x 7 3/8 inches

Cyanotypes

10 3/8 x 7 1/2 inches

Portrait, 2023

Cyanotype

18 x 24 inches

Propaganda, 2023

Cyanotype with hand-stitching

Prayer, 2023

Cyanotype

Pup, 2023

Cyanotype with spraypaint 10 1/8 x 7 inches

Peace, 2023

17 x 12 inches

Cyanotype with spray paint and hand-stitching

12 x 9 3/4 inches

Portraiture, 2023

Cyanotype with hand-stitching

Promise, 2023

Cyanotype with hand-stitching

12 x 8 1/4 inches

Pain, 2023

Cyanotype with hand-stitching

15 1/16 x 11 1/2 inches

Protection, 2023

9 x 12 inches

Cyanotype with spray paint and acrylic

Abbi, 2023

Calligraphy ink on paper

16 1/8 x 12 1/8 inches

After Bilinska, 2021

Calligraphy ink on paper

15 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches

16

After Millet, 2021

Calligraphy ink on paper

x 12 1/8 inches

15

After Lucien, 2021

Calligraphy ink on paper

x 12 1/8 inches

After Géricault, 2021

Calligraphy ink on paper

16 x 12 1/8 inches

Matteo Cross Stitch Colored Pencil, 2022

Colored pencil on paper

12 x 16 inches

RaphaellaBlueCross-Stitch, 2021

Ink and hand cotton embroidery on Arches paper

15 x 11 inches

Sun, 2022

Colored pencil on paper

16 1/8 x 12 1/8 inches

In Remembrance, 2023

Colored pencil on paper

31 3/8 x 23 1/2 x 3 inches

PortraitofMartina:Recto/Verso, 2023

Lenticular acrylic panel in light box

46 x 33 1/2 inches

Although I was trained as a painter, I have spent the last 20 years embroidering portraits of my own family and friends. When the pandemic shut down the art world, it seemed like the perfect time to experiment in the studio and try some new things. I was not wanting to abandon the previous work, but rather wanted to discover what would be the next chapter of my studio practice. For the longest time, I have been running from the title of “fiber artist” because as a visual artist I know that this is only part of what I do in the studio each day. However, my work absolutely nods to my own love of craft and the centuries old tradition of needlework.

In this latest series, instead of running away from the world of fiber, I decided to turn my head towards this tradition and see if there was anything left to “mine” and make it mine. I had experimented with cross-stitch as a kid, but was not interested in making it a new addition to the studio strictly because I knew it involved lots of counting and by nature was much slower than hand embroidery. I was, however, interested in taking something that I had zero interest in and seeing if it would spark ideas in the studio.

Cross-stitch transfer patterns are typically the color blue and are ironed onto fabric before a project begins. It is the color of “beginning” before the color thread is applied and the pattern obscured. I liked this idea of using blue and the notion of new beginnings and so began to make blue ink crossstitch drawings. From a distance they would appear to be stitched by hand, but closer inspection would reveal that they were in fact just drawings. I worked from old photos on my camera reel and specifically chose photos that should have been deleted because they weren’t that interesting. I also started to incorporate cropped studies of works of art that I loved in the same way that Van Gogh made studies of Millet paintings that he adored. Working with both of these kinds of images allowed me to keep moving through works in the studio with more thought devoted to each mark and less thought devoted to the subject of the work.

After a series of these blue ink cross-stitch drawings, I started to work in colored pencil and then felt compelled to stitch large scale works. Although it was not my intention to actually stitch cross-stitched works, the drawings compelled me to realize the wool works in this show. The large scale cross-stitch “Rocco at age 16” was intentionally scaled to the size of Chuck Close’s famous big heads. When Chuck Close was all across the headlines for his personal conduct, the Saint Louis Art Museum swiftly and quietly removed their prized painting “Keith” from public view. Close had laid claim to this scale of large portrait for decades. His death in 2021 prompted me to embrace this specific scale for the portrait of my son, Rocco.

I wanted to go large scale to confront the preconceived notion of what embroidery is and what it could be. I wanted to get needlepoint, embroidery, and cross-stitch off of the lap, out of the hoop, and make it immersive so that it takes over the periphery of the viewer. I wanted the work to require a close and distant viewing. I hoped the viewer would approach and then walk away from the work so that the individual marks could be appreciated and then distance would allow for a visual collapse of the x’s into the color, volume, and form of the portrait. The making of this piece allowed me to reflect on distance in my own life: Distance from situations, physical distance from loved ones, and the reality that when we are in the midst of things we can only focus on the details and it is only with the distance of time that we are able to see the whole picture.

“Raphaella at 21” was a celebration of mark making, color, and cross-stitch. I originally intended for each “x” to be a unique color but as I stitched I realized that combining 3 colors within one “x” would add to the realism that could be achieved when viewed at a distance. These variations would be imperceptible from that distance and yet would contribute greatly to the read of the piece from across the room.

The last work “For Whitney” is a study of the painting “A swag of roses, poppies, other flowers and berries” by Maria van Oosterwyck (1630-1693). I have loved Oosterwyck’s work for the longest time and simply wanted to get lost in the mark making of this piece while paying tribute to one of the most remarkable floral and still life painters of the 16th century. Even though this piece is stitched, I think of it more as a drawing and for me personally as a memorial to a beautiful life, wife, and mother.

The cyanotypes started as a way to have something quick and fun to do in the studio. I have never been one to keep a journal or start each day with sketching. These cyanotypes were a way to enter the studio each day and make something physical and yet so different from painting or embroidery. There was a large element of chance and error due to exposure times and amount of sunlight on a given day. The images are taken from works from the canon of Art History that I have come back to over this last year and personal photos. My brain is filled with thousands of works from art history and the contemporary art being made today. My favorite works and favorite artists always find a way to bubble to the forefront or sit in the recesses of my brain. The cyanotypes were quick to make, embraced the drips and splats, and nodded to the works by artists I love. I specifically chose to use the cyanotype solution more as an ink or wet paint and brushed it on loosely and carelessly so that the image appears to emerge from the blobs and drips. I was also thinking about the marks made famous by Jackson Pollock and how they are a fundamental part of every single artist’s studio and yet we resist incorporating the drip or splat into our work for fear that it might appear to be derivative or cliche.

“As Much Light as Shadows” speaks to both the state of our world and the reality of all our lives. Birthdays, graduations, and art openings are held at the same time we may be grieving the loss of loved ones. We are holding simultaneously in our hearts and minds: joy and sadness, hope and disappointment, pleasure and pain, comfort and worry, confidence and doubt. As an artist, I am always looking for a balance of light and shadow within a work of art because it enables me to introduce a more varied palette into the making of each piece. As a parent, I am daily trying to accept the balance of light and shadow within my own life and the lives of my family because it makes for a more meaningful acceptance of what living today really means. We don’t start living when the shadows have lifted we are truly living when there is as much light as shadows.

- Cayce Zavaglia, 2023

Cayce Zavaglia earned a BFA from Wheaton College in 1994 and a MFA in painting from Washington University in 1998. She mounted her first solo museum exhibition of embroideries and verso paintings in 2014 at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Her works are included in the permanent collections of the 21c Museum and the University of Maine’s Zillman Museum of Art, the West Collection and numerous private collections. Zavaglia lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri.