Ladybird Studio
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Words Christopher Ferguson | Photos Parker Thornton
A young artist creates captivating, embroidered works inspired by fashion, landscape, and nostalgic, personal subcultures.
Jane Reichle was only seven years old when Hurricane Katrina flooded her home in New Orleans, beginning a series of adventures that would take her to Houston before her family settled in Austin. Too young to fully grasp the trauma of the events, she embraced the unpredictability of the era, doodling her way through her notebooks in high school and, eventually, teaching herself the craft of embroidery.
After losing her job in special education during the pandemic, she began to consider her art practice a full-time commitment, soothed by the thousands of repetitive stitches that would aggregate into each composition.
My work comes from a personal place, but I like the idea of people superimposing their own meaning onto a piece. There’s nothing like making a piece of artwork with thousands of stitches and the feeling of absolution that comes with it.” – Jane Reichle
Encouraged by Brian David Johnson of Cloud Tree Studios, she catapulted onto the scene last November in a collaborative show with Fort Lonesome, a bespoke western-inspired chain-stitching and embroidery shop established in East Austin a decade ago.
Meditative and methodical, the 24-year-old artist throws herself into each piece, a daily ritual that has earned her fast acclaim, and, recently, a tennis-elbow injury. “It’s fine; it’s paradise for me,” she smiles, reassuringly.
Her work is pleasant and complex, yet tricky to describe in a few words. Her pieces are at once meticulous and whimsical, symbolic and literal, irreverent and endearing. Her use of color is especially deliberate, evocative of the deep hues of the West Texas landscape, often referencing subjects and motifs following the same thread.
Perhaps most evident in each piece is the time spent linking each deliberate stitch into the next. It is that intentionality, already resonant in a fresh and growing body of work, that makes Jane a captivating artist to follow and collect as she expands her nascent practice.
Prints Please:
Jane is currently working with Lockhart’s Get Lucky Gallery to issue a series of high quality prints of her embroidered pieces.
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I can see the passion behind this post, great job!