The Stitch Artist Helping Combat Media Fatigue
As we tumble down the rabbit hole of daily current events, the combined phenomenon of doom-scrolling and media fatigue makes it difficult for us to extend our empathy and attention to every conceivable issue — especially when those issues become our realities rather than abstracted sentences we read through and cast aside. Founded in 2012, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project (EHRP), a nonprofit organization whose mission is “to humanize inequality” through journalism, grapples with this very issue as affiliated writers engage with topics ranging from culture and labor to housing and education to mobilize readers into questioning the status quo.
So what can be done to mitigate media fatigue? What is the most effective way to keep the public invested and activated instead of barely processing the news cycle? Stitch artist Diana Weymar, creator of the Tiny Pricks Project (2018–ongoing), recommends embracing more traditional modes of accessing media — through embroidery in particular.
Read the full story in Hyperallergic.
Diana Weymar in collaboration with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, artwork from Moving the Needle (2023), embroidered textile series based on a quote by reporter Ray Suarez from his 2021 essay in the Nation, vintage textile, hand-stitched cotton embroidery floss, 8 x 5 inches
Diana Weymar in collaboration with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, artwork from Moving the Needle (2023), embroidered textile series based on a quote by EHRP reporting fellow and Navy veteran Alex Miller from his 2022 Esquire piece, vintage textile and box, hand-stitched cotton embroidery floss, 6 x 6 inches
Diana Weymar in collaboration with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, artwork from Moving the Needle (2023), embroidered textile series based on a quote by Alissa Quart from her recently published book Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream (2023), vintage textile, hand-stitched cotton embroidery floss, 7 x 7 inches
Diana Weymar in collaboration with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, artwork from Moving the Needle (2023), embroidered textile series based on a line from Jen Fitzgerald’s poem “American Landscape: Inheritance” (2020), vintage textile, hand-stitched cotton embroidery floss, 7 x 7 inches
Diana Weymar in collaboration with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, artwork from Moving the Needle (2023), embroidered textile series based on a quote by EHRP reporting fellow Ann Larson from her 2021 essay in the New Republic, vintage textile and box, hand-stitched cotton embroidery floss, 7 x 10 inches
Diana Weymar is an artist, activist, and creator of Interwoven Stories and The Tiny Pricks Project, both of which are open for public participation. Her work has been exhibited and collected in the United States and Canada.
Co-published with Hyperallergic.
