Maggy Rozy­cki Hilt­ner makes great use of antique stores and malls, incor­po­rat­ing what she finds into her artwork.

Maggy notes the tinge of sad­ness in find­ing these dis­carded trea­sures, that often require both time and skill. She also points out the embroi­dery that comes off as snarky — it has the inten­tion of being cute but doesn’t quite get there. I think that’s one of the great things about thread, and using embroi­dery to make an image — thread isn’t a pen­cil. The lines can only go so fine, and you’re often lim­ited by a the nee­dle, the fibers, etc. to cre­ate a really detailed image. Because of this, things can unin­ten­tion­ally take on a whole new meaning.

Appro­pri­at­ing the old embroi­dery, Maggy then uses her own draw­ings to stitch and add to her find­ings. From there, she explores mem­ory, pos­ing the ques­tion of why do we remem­ber the things we do. It cov­ers tox­i­c­ity of rela­tion­ships and the lack­ing of self con­trol, rely­ing some­what on the nos­tal­gia and warmth first per­ceived by view­ing the embroi­dery itself.

All images via her web­site.