Stitches In Time -Spring 2015
Embroidered narratives recreate scenes from Melville’s classic for “The Mighty, Misty Monster,” a new exhibit at the NHA
by: Marianne R. Stanton
photography by: Terry Pommett
Susie Boardman sits on her couch, her caramel-colored Norwich terrier Sukey curled up beside her while she listens to the crisp British voice of actress Tilda Swinton reading those familiar words, “Call me Ishmael.”
Thus begins “Moby-Dick,” and Boardman’s multi-year project to create embroidered narratives of 17 scenes from Herman Melville’s iconic piece of American literature. They will be on view to the public this year when The Nantucket Historical Association features them in an exhibit entitled “The Mighty, Misty Monster: Moby-Dick Embroidered Narratives.” It opens April 11 in the gallery of the Whaling Museum.
When Boardman began the project several years ago, she elected to listen to the audio recording of Melville’s tome online at mobydickbigread.com rather than simply read the book. The sentences are dense, and Boardman found an ease in listening to the story unfold as spoken words. All the chapters are available online thanks to a collaboration in 2011 between writers and artists that coalesced around a whale symposium held at Peninsula Arts, the contemporary-arts space at Plymouth University in England. The Moby-Dick Big Read was born out of that and features recordings of all 135 chapters read by as many voices, some famous such as Swinton, the actor Benedict Cumberbatch, and our own author Nathaniel Philbrick, who reads Chapter 14, “Nantucket.”
The words are the inspiration for Boardman.
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