Frances Melhop

 

TIMEKEEPER SERIES

"Interconnectivity" is part of the "Timekeeper" series by Frances Melhop.

The idea of interconnectedness is especially poignant now - as we all seem to be deeply connected digitally, while many are feeling completely disconnected on a personal and social level.

​The "Timekeeper" series hovers between embroidery, painting, drawing, and soft sculpture—each one a spiral quietly tracing time and memory. The spiral becomes a visual mantra, embodying the existential dilemma and delight of living within unstoppable time: its relentless forward motion, its circling returns, and our deeply human impulse to mark its passage.

​Stitch by stitch, the spiral grows outward from a central origin, echoing the cyclical nature of life and the quiet energy spirals produce. Like the rings in a tree trunk, each line of stitching maps time, emotion, and experience—capturing heartbreaks, joys, injuries, revisited again and again as the stitch line returns on itself while persistently moving forward. The humanness of each sometimes-wonky stitch is intentional, a mark of presence and vulnerability. They are records of lived time.