During my short, four-week stay in Florence 2017, I noticed on my walks how many street vendors were selling Florence souvenir ties. These ties became the ubiquitous Florence souvenir in my mind and came to represent the city and my walks there. I bought a series of these ties and decided that embroidering them with Florence’s own emblem and archiectures; the time required to do so, would become emblematic of my time there as a tourist explorer of place and culture.
While there, I soon developed habits to order my time and the most pleasurable one was drinking espresso; also, observably the habit of the locals. Inspired by this connection of habit between us, I immersed the piece’s cotton threads in coffee grounds. What does it mean to immerse oneself in another culture, in another place and time out of one’s own time?
Embroidering the ties was transforming a commercial souvenir with a personal notation of time and habit. In the object of the tie was a kind of written observation steeped in the moment of being there. In the exhibition, the collection of embroidered neckties is in one drawer, with its particular tale of time and place.
just_a_moment 