Running Backwards

Guest blog post by Catriona Graffius

In his short video, Aubrey Longley-Cook gives us a glimpse into his playful studio in Atlanta, Georgia that seeks to bring together the tactile art of embroidery and visual animation. Like the ancient form of tapestry, Aubrey’s inventive piece ‘Runaway’ tells a continuous story.

[embed]https://vimeo.com/59068327[/embed] And yet, instead of using one large piece of fabric, Aubrey masterfully shows the life of his roommate’s stray dog Gus through fourteen different hand-embroidered frames. Both the front and back of the fabric has been used to show Gus’s troubled past and bright future. When the fourteen frames are photographed and viewed in quick succession on video, the front fabric shows Gus bounding forward into a bright future on a calming field of forest green. Turned backwards, however, and the viewer can watch the stray and messy threads re-enact Gus’s difficult past as an abandoned dog. The marriage of the highly technical world of animation and the highly personal art of embroidery makes Aubrey’s work both touching and innovative. www.spoolspectrum.blogspot.co.uk