Art as a Bitter Pill, Coated With Sweetener

By ROJA HEYDARPOUR for the New York Times, June 5, 2007

IN a sweet, thin voice that broke into a giggle, Andrea Dezsö showed her delicately made book of paintings, which took her a year to complete.

“This is when insects come and attack Steinway Street,” she said of one of the pictures, as she sat in her apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens, which also doubles as her art studio.

Then there was the diagram she painted of the inside of a dead fly she found on the street. And the embroidery series, 50 stitchings on white cloth called “Lessons From My Mother,” which was recently shown at the Hungarian Cultural Center in SoHo...

... Working in the city has provided fodder for many of her ideas and for her embroidery series, which she stitched while traveling throughout the city. A woman stitching in public is viewed differently in different neighborhoods, Ms. Dezsö found.

“If I’m in Queens, people think I’m a traditional woman,” Ms. Dezsö said. “If I’m in Manhattan, it’s the hippest thing.”

SEE HER WORK HERE:
Tamarind Institute
Andrea Dezsö