Embroidered newspapers: Lauren DiCioccio (re)makes the front page

In Lauren DiCioccio’s hands, ordinary newspapers become highly compelling memorials to everyday artefacts. She sets out to “provoke a pang of nostalgia for the familiar physicality of these objects”

Hand-embroidery on cotton muslin upholstered around the January 3, 2007 edition of The New York Times

It’s one thing to read between the lines of a newspaper article, and quite another when the lines emerge from the accompanying photo, spilling like streamers from two dimensions into three as the newspaper – and the news itself – recede into invisibility. Lauren DiCioccio embroiders items such as sheet music, plastic bags and 35mm slides as well as newspapers and magazines, siphoning all sense of banality from these objects. In her hands, they become highly compelling memorials to everyday artefacts. She sets out to “provoke a pang of nostalgia for the familiar physicality of these objects”, as she declares in her artist’s statement.

Hand-embroidery on cotton muslin upholstered around the March 19, 2010 edition of The New York Times

In her work with newspapers, the San Francisco-based DiCioccio uses cotton muslin to wrap the bulk of The New York Times, then threads around and inside the contours of photographs in the paper, replicating a given image on the exterior of the cloth.

Hand-embroidery on cotton muslin upholstered around the March 14, 2010 edition of The New York Times

We think you’ll agree that DiCioccio’s objective, to create elegies for ordinary, everyday things, results in an uncanny sense of the familiar blended with a totally fresh perspective – on the news, and on much else besides.

For Once in Your Life, score: hand-embroidery on cotton; mouse: hand-sewn felt, cotton, fun-fur, wire, 9” x 12”, 2012