3D blocks on cross-stitch

Endless fun

A photo posted by Shannon Finnegan (@shanfinnegan) on Jun 24, 2015 at 11:59pm PDT

(This artwork on Instagram is created by pattern artist, Shannon Finnegan)

Such a simple small cross-stitch, but it works on many various levels.

1. From 2D to 3D.
   The flat pixel-based medium of cross-stitch is brought out into the 3D world.
2. From 3D to 2D.
   The colors chosen bring out the fact that these are shapes–simply flat shapes.
3. Donald Judd.
   There’s a little bit of Donald Judd in these boxes. It’s hard to avoid the Judd reference when there are stacked rectangles with a gap in between each rectangle. 🙂
4. Cross-stitch.
   Cross-stitch as art is really cool. When I first graduated from college almost 20 years ago, I was interested in doing cross-stitch. Translating the 32-by-32 pixel grid the Mac OS 8.5 icons into the cross-stitch grid. Sadly, I never really developed this idea into reality. Despite the pressures of others saying it wasn’t good art, and the pressures in the late 90s that men don’t cross-stitch, I bought some yarn and plastic grids to create the cross-stitches. I made a couple of them, but I never took it forward. Seeing artworks like this by Shannon make me happy to see them being created.
5. Simplicity.
   While a hug cross-stitch can be nice, this smaller size is more refined and focused.
6. Q-Bert.
   It feels little bit like Q-Bert. Maybe one of the higher levels of Q-Bert.