Presenting the original artwork featured in the beloved children’s book, My Bed: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep Around the World, illustrated by artist Salley Mavor, this exhibition consists of eighteen hand-embroidered, three-dimensional tableaus. Each intricately rendered scene captures the spirit of a different place and way of life, while illuminating the universal theme of children falling asleep. Scenes range from children falling asleep on a houseboat in the Netherlands, in hammocks in Brazil, on a rooftop in Morocco, on futons in Japan, and on an intricate carpet in Afghanistan, to name a few.
Mavor lives and works on Cape Cod, in Falmouth, Massachusetts. She was studying illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design in the 1970’s when an insightful teacher encouraged her to tap into her playful side. She discovered that working with stitching and soft sculpture allowed her ideas to come alive in new and unexpected ways. For most of her career, she has followed this path, creating stitched scenes in bas-relief, much like miniature, shallow stage sets, with figures imposed on embellished fabric backgrounds.
