Isabella Tallman-Jones is an Atlanta-raised 4th-year Illustration major and Art History minor. With an ever-changing style, what remains consistent is her references to pop culture, history, and mass media in an array of genres. With her eclectic taste and experimentation with the medium and subject matter, the mixture of styles reflects her richly diverse and mixed cultural background. This unique lens lends itself to producing colorful, surreal and, at times, unsettling works that utilize vibrant colors and interesting textures as she creates portraits and other illustrations out of embroidery and cross-stitching.
From a series of self-portraits, Tallman-Jones made this piece to experiment with making illustrations using unconventional mediums that are usually considered domestic hobbies or craft materials, which is a topic that she is interested in as she plans to go to graduate school to study art history in contemporary feminist arts. She particularly enjoys embroidery due to its meditative process of repetitive mark-making and the concept of its texture making it “art that you can touch.” It was rendered with yarn to define the shapes and colors rather than using line work to outline the portrait.
Part of a future series of embroidered portraits, Tallman-Jones used this piece to experiment with scale and color. Using black, white, and an array of blue-toned threads, it was also a challenge for herself to see how close she could get to someone’s likeness through portrait embroidery of a smaller scale, as this piece was done in a 6-inch embroidery hoop. Tallman-Jones chose to represent Baker with the feminine craft, as Baker was a feminist pioneer in her own right, as well as a performer, spy, activist and icon. This will be the first piece in a series of editorial portraits with a twist.
Tallman-Jones creates a visually stunning self-portrait using a mixture of paint and light embroidery. The work represents the anxieties of creating, and Tallman-Jones wanted to represent how anxiety “creeps and crawls over you until it takes over all at once, out of nowhere,” with the anxiety being represented in the piece through blue embroidered spiders, which give the work a slight dimensional texture. Tallman-Jones also hopes to represent a warped and fragile self-perception as well as insecurity and imposter syndrome. This surreal piece is a remarkable sample of mixed media traditional work.
As Tallman-Jones’s first attempt at embroidery made for editorial illustration, the piece is beautifully done through its mixed digital and traditional medium technique and its experiments of warm and cool colors to emulate a light source. The usage of crocheted elements was also added to delve further into the possibilities of her own use of textile and fiber mediums. She uses digital mediums to duplicate the crocheted flower to create a collage-like effect that brings out Tallman-Jones’s exquisite craftsmanship.
The final featured piece is a digital illustration and is a revisited version of a sketch that Tallman-Jones had created when she first started studying at SCAD regarding a stream of consciousness. As the title suggests, the illustration was based on the surreal movie “The Holy Mountain” and is Tallman-Jones’ first intentional attempt at employing a specific style that she has been putting efforts into cultivating. Cult movies and old films have always been a huge inspiration to Tallman-Jones and her art, and in a way, she sees them as surrogate parents. She employs a varied mix of visual elements to create this piece, such as negative space, flat color and line work juxtaposed to more painterly rendering, as well as areas that include texture and areas that do not. Tallman-Jones believes that her old sketches were more true to her as compared to her more recent body of work, but it lacked the technical skill that she has today. Revisiting this piece with her improved skills helped her realize what she wanted to show and portray as an artist.
To view more of Tallman-Jones’ inspiring and gorgeous work, you can check her out on her Instagram @odderie2.0
