Grateful Dead, Aoxomoxoa

Embroidery stitched directly through a vinyl record sleeve. 12x12x2 inches, framed in acrylic.      This album pronounced, "ox-oh-mox-oh-ah," was released in 1969 and was a series of firsts for the Grateful Dead. It was the first album recorded in 16 tracks, brand new technology for the time, the first to feature lyricist Robert Hunter who would become a longtime collaborator with the band and also first to feature acoustic arrangements. The title of the album is a palindrome which according to the band means nothing, it just looked cool. When I looked at this album and tried to figure out how to recreate it in thread and textiles I was completely overwhelmed. This is the most detailed album that I have ever recreated. The background reminds me of a multicolor sunset with gradient blues and reds with an exploding sun. The logo is in multi color extruded lettering and there are scarabs, skulls, mushrooms and trees all over the cover. A lot of detail is an understatement. i started by deconstructing the album in background elements and foreground elements. I stitched the whole background in bright colors of yarn and then accented the yarn stitching with rayon thread detail and highlights,. The background has over 50,000 stitches. All of the foreground elements were created as a series of patches, each one individually created and hand digitized, hand trimmed and then collaged onto the album. The patches have over 150,000 stitches by themselves and combined with the background makes this the most stitch intensive album so far.