Ready-made: Sewing machine.

INTERVENED OBJECT

SEWING MACHINE: THE WONDER OF MECHANICS

Between 2010 and 2014, I worked with drawing and painting on various objects that had a special or symbolic connotation for me. These artworks were perhaps a bit literal or a very obvious metaphor, but I really enjoyed creating them. I still have some of them at home. I worked with the idea of ​​"ready-made" or found art, where an object without an artistic function in its initial conception is decontextualized and, with a specific intention, can be highlighted (or analyzed) by its origin, its way of functioning, its materiality, what it implies for human beings, etc. In the case of the objects I worked with, by highlighting their aesthetic aspects, I focus my attention on the beauty of their parts, the symbolism of some of their processes, or how they affect people's lives. The sewing machine appeals to me, aesthetically. for a simple reason: it's a thread-twisting machine, a knotting machine that performs the wonder of joining pieces of fabric with stitching. For someone as far from the sciences of engineering and mechanics as I am, the task the machine performs fills me with wonder. That thread lowers with its pierced needle, which, as it spins, intertwines with the lower thread, with the perfect tension so that it rises and both knot on the surface of the fabric being joined. Brilliant. I know, it's very obvious. I'm also greatly amazed by the radio, the telephone, the internet, electricity, etc. That needle, with the precise movement and force, minimally pierces the fabric, knots with the one below, and amalgamates the fabrics, creating a piece of clothing or other item, creating something new.

Investigating another aspect of this machine, without any interest in describing in detail the history of the sewing machine, which is already well documented by experts, it's surprising to know that it's not as old as one might believe. Its origin dates back to 1755 (patented in England by Charles T. Wiesenthal) as an industrial machine. The first domestic machine was patented by Isaac M. Singer, an American, in 1851. The domestic machine was a labor revolution, especially for women, as it was one of the first industrial jobs they could hold, though it was rather poorly paid, but it was still a job. Many could sew at home and then deliver to the factory, allowing them to generate income from home. Before the machine, clothing was made by hand; just imagining the time it took is frightening.

Regarding the machine as an aesthetic object in drawing and painting, I worked on the analogy of the lower thread as the roots of a plant or tree—always present in my work—then the trunk and a tree as the element that emerges from this fabric—earth, a new creation inhabiting the earth. The fine roots are so similar to thread, alone they are fragile, but a knot of several of them is almost unbreakable manually, like a trunk, like fabrics, textiles. Networks and interrelations.