Wonderland

Not too dissimilar to the Winter Sunset piece, this embroidered needlepoint item certainly reminds me of 'the north', albeit with a bit more of an early 80s twist.

A wooden bridge leads you over a stream, through a farm field dusted in snow with a barn or community of buildings appearing in the distance on the horizon.

The colour palette used is very representative of what those 'non-sunny' winter days looked like. A sheet of grey, with some lighter grey on top to bring depth and contrast to the sky. 

An inscription on the back reads "from Mom, to Roy & Judy, xmas 1982" insinuating that this was probably a Christmas gift given. I wonder if it was selected because it reminded the "giver", or "mom" of a specific memory of their past. I wonder if I would find a similar piece in a Brooklyn thrift shop. Or Texas. Is nostalgia shaped by region? 

It's primarily, at least in what I've been able to make of it over the last 40 or so years, shaped and deeply molded by lived experience. Maybe 90 percent of the time. That may not account for the sensation of "anemoi", a nostalgia or yearning for a past you've never experienced, which is definitely a feeling I've felt many times before, but I do believe familiarity is responsible for the majority of that mood. 

If I had the resources, which I definitely don't, I'd love to try to gauge reactions to a piece like this on a wide scale level. I feel like "regionally", the results would vary drastically between a deep recognizable longing for somewhere you've trudged your soaking wet boots through, and a complete void of nothingness. 

I'm hoping that if you'd read this far into the 'product description' of this piece, you'd probably be in the former category, but I might be wrong!  

If you happen to have grown up somewhere that NEVER saw snow, I'd be curious to hear from you about your feelings towards a piece like this. Is it closer to maybe something you'd see in Disney movie? Would it be comparable to how I would feel seeing a needlepoint piece of palm tree's?  Shoot me an email and let me know -- timepassagesshop@gmail.com