Willow Stacey doesn’t like the Things Men Say
While scrolling through Willow Stacey’s Instagram, I pause on an image of a tea
towel displaying the words, “You can play the gender card, but it’s all bollocks”. The artist’s grid is filled with similar creations — a conglomeration of dishcloths and doilies with colourful letters spelling out quotes that make me squirm.
That’s the point, though. Stacey’s Things Men Say collection is exactly what it says on the tin. Whether that’s something the artist has overheard, or that’s been said to her, or another woman has scribbled down in Stacey’s “little yellow book” (which she brings it to each art show for contributions), every phrase hand-stitched into the artworks is something a man has once uttered.
Stacey admits that the project — and even the medium of embroidery — isn’t where she expected her degree in fine art from Leeds College of Art to take her. But once she’d felt the cathartic release of taking matters, quite literally, into her own hands, she couldn’t stop. “Once the words had left my hands, they no longer had any power or hold over me,” she says. “Eventually, I’d like to be able to embroider every phrase that’s been submitted to me. That would be the final step in the cathartic process of sharing.”
For Stacey, then, the project is a form of female strength — something that can be summarised by a quote the artist lives by (even though she can’t quite remember where it came from). “I read a quote years ago,” she says, “that said something along the lines of, ‘You never know the wrath of a woman until you see her punch a needle thousands of times.’ I couldn’t tell you where I read it, but it’s stuck in my mind ever since.”
This excerpt was taken from HUNGER Issue 33: Good People. Stay tuned for the full story.
- Photographer Olly Dundas
- WriterScarlett Coughlan
- Hair and Make-Up ArtistLeanne Shaw at ME Agency using using ARMANI BEAUTY and LANCÔME
- ProducerAbby Rothwell
