Evil Tender Presents: Artist Alaina Varrone

The work of East Coast Embroidery artist Alaina Varrone is an exploration of camaraderie and human magic. Her recent series of embroideries simply titled ‘One,’ ‘Two,’ and ‘Three‘ shows Varrone working through a narrative foreign and strange.

The pieces were created for ‘Evil Tender Presents: In Reference,’ a group show of printmakers and painters all using the same photographs as reference for new works created for the exhibition. Varrone puts our heroine in a lush and vastly textured woodland, surrounded by a curious and violent gang of moss-covered bog men. Her setting is oddly witch-like, the folk art of a lost civilization.

The scale at which Varrone works is daunting. ‘One‘ and ‘Two‘ are each over eight inches round. Her ‘Three‘ is twenty-two inches long and eight inches high. Each piece delves into the imagined surroundings — the tree’s bark and the woman’s hair, the teeth and moss. Her shadow and dress. Varrone is fearless in her technique and has created a series of works that unearths distant magic.