Jessica Smith Artist

OBSESSION OF THE PHALLUS

‘Limited to practising art with needle and thread, women have nevertheless sewn a subversive stitch – managed to make meanings of their own in the very medium intended to inculcate self-effacement’ – Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: The Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. 1996

‘The woman who refuses to see her sexual organs as mere wood chips, designed to make the man’s life more comfortable, is in danger of becoming a lesbian – an active, phallic woman, an intellectual virago with a fire of her own.’ – Barbara Creed, ‘Lesbian Bodies: Tribades, Tomboys and Tarts’ In: Feminist Theory and the Body, 1999. 116