Rachel Dickinson / Biography

Rachel Dickinson is a writer and artist living in Freeville, New York. The author of six nonfiction books and numerous travel articles, her next book The Loneliest Places: Loss, Grief, and the Long Journey Home - a memoir in essays - will be published by Three Hills Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, in October 2022. Dickinson has a BA in geology from Kirkland College and an MFA in Nonfiction from Goucher College. She began stitching and painting a couple of years ago, partly as a way to deal with the loss of her son Jack to suicide at the age of 17.

Artist Statement

When swimming in grief nothing in this world makes sense. After my son's suicide, I basically ran away from home as often as I could, searching for unfamiliar landscapes that, oddly, felt comforting. I began painting and stitching several years ago because I knew I couldn't keep running and still be part of a family. In my painting journey, I think I'm still searching for my voice. I know from writing, that it takes time to produce work that feels like it's authentically yours. With stitching, I just jumped in and tried to free my mind from the urge to control every single thing. I stitched on pieces of fabric I found around the house, including tea towels, and turned to nature for many of the subjects. The results are pieces of stitchery that come from the head and the heart.

Curator’s interview with the artist / March 2022

-Thank you for taking the time to speak with me about this important body of work. You mentioned that you began stitching following your son Jack's suicide. When did this happen? What was the reason you started embroidery, as opposed to other creative outlets?

For the first couple of years after Jack’s death, I couldn’t do anything that required any sustained effort. I was able to devour some books – all of them about death like Donald Hall’s Life Work and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed – but mostly felt like I couldn’t take in any other written information. I began to watch a lot of television. I sat in my green chair in the corner of the front room, wrapped in an old red quilt that I retrieved from my mother’s house after her death, and watched episode after episode of serial television. I began with Battlestar Gallatica, probably because it had the most episodes, then began to work my way through British police procedurals. As the moody inspectors tried to solve their crimes in an hour, I think I was working on trying to solve the mystery of Jack. At some point during this television phase, I began to stitch. It was something I could do and watch television at the same time. There was something affirming and soothing about pulling stitch after stitch through random pieces of fabric.

- In your artist's statement, you mention that after Jack's suicide you "ran away from home, searching for unfamiliar landscapes". Where did you go, and what did you hope to find? Are these unfamiliar landscapes somehow depicted in your paintings or stitch work?

 Before Jack died, I was a travel writer. I had a couple of trips already lined up at the time of his death, one of which, I knew I couldn’t get out of because so much work had gone into making it happen. Six weeks after Jack’s death, I found myself in the Falkland Islands, eight-thousand miles from home. In a way, it was liberating. I was in a landscape that reminded me of the outer Hebrides – a landscape I loved – only with penguins and unfamiliar birds. I was there to write about the 30th anniversary of the invasion of the Falklands by Argentina. This led to a short but intense war and I found myself in a place where the older people were still traumatized by the occupation – a kind of community-wide PTSD - something I could easily relate to. While in the Falklands I also discovered that if I traveled to places where Jack had never been, I wouldn’t catch fleeting glimpses of him in the unfamiliar landscape. I definitely see bits and pieces of these landscapes showing up in my stitching – whales and volcanoes from Iceland, ocean life from the Falklands, the idea of space and distance shown in stitching of objects connected to each other by thread.

- Do you find similarities between the processes of painting, stitching, and writing? Are they all equally cathartic for you in your healing process?

 I began painting about four years ago. I started with watercolor then quickly moved to gouache then oils. I was searching for color. I try to paint every morning. There is something about the act of painting – squeezing out the oils onto the palette, selecting the brushes – that takes my mind off of everything else. It is a true escape from worrying thoughts. Stitching is something I do while listening to the radio or watching television. I find that I can miss entire episodes of a program while stitching, but there’s something about having television noise as background that helps me. I can’t listen to music while stitching because I pay too much attention to music. Over the past decade – Jack died in 2012 – I’ve written three books. Two are works of nonfiction narrative and the third is a memoir. I dive into the research of nonfiction and there is little room to think about anything else. The essays that make up the memoir is the most difficult writing I’ve ever done. I began the first essay a month after Jack’s death and finished the last one in November 2021. Painting and stitching are a way for me to not think about Jack whereas the writing was, ultimately, all about Jack. (continued below)

- Tell me more about the book you are currently working on, and your essay titled, "Rage Crafting".

My memoir “The Loneliest Places: Loss, Grief, and the Long Journey Home,” will be out October 2022. It’s being published by Three Hills Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press. It’s a memoir in essays and contains about a dozen line drawings by me. The cover is a watercolor I painted of a snow-covered Icelandic landscape with one farm in the distance. It is a picture of isolation. One of the essays in the book is titled Rage Crafting. I actually misheard someone who used the term rage quitting and then realized that much of what I do is rage crafting. All of the tension of the moment finds its way into everything I do that requires thread, yarn, or embroidery floss. I tried knitting right after Jack died and every stitch was pulled so tight that I had to give up because I could no longer get a knitting needle under the stitch. My needlepoint wasn’t much better. There are patches of tension where the stitches are pulled so tight I unintentionally create lopsided flowers and designs. Embroidery felt different. Maybe it’s the freedom I found – there’s no counting or staying within the lines – and I don’t feel despair if I have to snip some stitches that are showing tension.

- When I look at your stitchery, I am reminded of the term "women's work". What does this term mean to you? Do you think you are drawn to it because of its deep history? 

I’ve always been drawn to handwork, although I’ve never been very good at it. My children can attest to that as they open Christmas presents of failed knitting/sewing/quilting/ weaving projects. I am a master of compounding errors. The first pieces of stitching I did were on linen and cotton napkins my cousin gave me after my Aunt Millie died. I liked the idea of stitching on Aunt Millie’s napkins. I felt the long pull of history, particularly my family history, which is deeply rooted in Tompkins County before Tompkins was a county. I feel like that connection to the land somehow shows up in my work. I know the connection between handwork and women’s work but I have never felt that way about my own pieces. I was first drawn to embroidery several years ago by a book I read about a young English fisherman from Norfolk who was deeply traumatized by his involvement in World War I. He took up stitching and created remarkable pieces showing fishing boats and familiar landscapes. His most amazing piece was the evacuation of Dunkirk, which he envisioned by listening to reports on the radio. His stitching was utilitarian and imbued with his trauma. I understand that.

- What do you hope this exhibit will mean for others who are dealing with trauma, or the loss of a loved one? 

 I believe everyone has to find their own path through trauma. My son’s been dead for a decade and there are still days when I feel unable to leave my house and deal with the world. Painting, writing, and stitching have provided important outlets for me. They connect my head, hands, and heart. My stitching takes me to a world beyond my house and often my sorrow, and I only feel limited by my imagination. I hope others might see that there are many ways to help temper trauma and the deep sadness that often serves as its companion.