Timea Mehesz

Lives and works in Wethersfield, CT

Artist statement

I work with the embroidery traditions of Hungary — Matyó, Kalocsa, Kalotaszeg, Bereg, Hövej — each a distinct visual language with its own motifs, palette, and stitch structure, developed across generations of women’s handwork. I make structured, framed purses that carry this embroidery into a form that is worn rather than displayed. The work moves in two directions. Sometimes I draw new compositions within a tradition’s own logic: studying how a Matyó arrangement builds outward from its central rose, then designing a motif that has not existed before but belongs to that vocabulary. Other times I cut into historical textiles directly — an antique tablecloth, a fragment of a household linen — and rebuild the surviving needlework into something upright, three-dimensional, carried at the body. Both approaches refuse the choice between preservation and invention. Color is where much of the decision-making happens. When a salvaged embroidery meets a new base fabric, I dye and match so the two settle into one another rather than sitting in opposition — the older piece should read as belonging to the object it now inhabits, not as a patch applied to it. Sometimes this means pulling the whole surface into a single tonal range: Kalocsa work, conventionally the most saturated embroidery in Hungary, rendered black on charcoal velvet, legible only through the difference between matte pile and thread sheen. Removing what a tradition is best known for is a way of finding out what...

Artwork