Tainted Love Rug
For my project, I created a rug music poster made with monk cloth and yarn. I’ve seen a lot of people online making their own rugs during quarantine and I decided to give it a shot. After watching Charlene O’Rourke’s lectures on her life story and quilt making, I got inspired to make my own rug. She stated that quilts do not have to be made for just bedding, but they can also be used as wall art, which gave me the idea of making a rug that I could hang up on my wall. I knew that my project had to relate to 1980’s music and what better way to showcase that than through a fuzzy music poster.
One of my favorite 80’s songs is “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell and after doing research, I realized they didn’t really have cover art for the song. I thought it would be perfect to design and create a music poster for it, especially since there is a lot of symbolism packed into it. In the song, the artist sings about how the love is “tainted” so I incorporated the lyrics, “the love we share...seems to go nowhere” which I think speaks volumes. Typically, people seek a love potion to fall in love, but I decided to incorporate a “love poison” bottle to represent the people in the song falling out of love.
Charlene O ‘Rourke creates abstract quilts that showcase her emotions and feelings. Rose Pearlman, a woman who makes and sells rug art out of her New York City home, frames and displays them on walls. I created a music poster that exhibits Soft Cell’s lyrics visually through sewing together a rug that can be hung up on the wall.
Works Cited:
O’rourke, Charlene. “Special Guest: Charlene O'Rourke Pt. 3”. Sonoma State University. 8 October 2020. Lecture.
Pearlman, Rose. Rose Pearlman, 2019, www.rosepearlman.com/.