Sampler Series

The Sampler Series is an exploration into the authority of words that are used to denigrate and diminish women. Placed in the context of a ‘sampler’, rendered in an elegant script via the use of peragamo and entwined into a white background of delicate lace like collage, the viewer is asked to explore levels of femininity, domesticity and implied shame.

The stitching of samplers was historically taught to women from a young age as a way to promote and signal both virtue and achievement. By placing the words, spinster, hysterical, bitch, slut and shrill into the traditional feminine craft environment of a sampler, parchment art and lacemaking, the Temple Sisters are repurposing and appropriating the word from a sense of patriarchal ownership.