Danielle Clough at Paradigm Gallery

Opening August 1 and running through August 24, 2025, the Paradigm Gallery + Studio in Philadelphia hosts “Crewel Intentions,” a solo exhibition by South African artist Danielle Clough. This showcase places Clough’s textured embroidery artworks at center stage, where vintage glamour, hyper-stylized fashion, and contemporary craft collide. Curated with deep reverence for nostalgic media, “Crewel Intentions” invites you to contemplate the thread line of beauty, time, and transformation.

Danielle Clough Embroiders Nostalgia Into New Icons

In “Crewel Intentions,” Danielle Clough embroiders reinterpreted portraits drawn from vintage 1970s Playboy advertisements, elevating pinup girls and Marlboro men into iconic figures of modern introspection. Using thread and texture, she blurs the line between the photographic and the painterly, the antique and the avant-garde. Her subjects, removed from the original sexualized context, find new life in wool and color, existing within immersive compositions that both honor and interrogate the images’ original intent.

The works reflect Clough’s fascination with capturing the visual grain of retro magazine print, often cropping, recoloring, and meticulously crafting each portrait until it becomes an intimate emblem of nostalgia. Her playful yet sophisticated approach fuses crewel embroidery practices with contemporary portraiture, resulting in richly dimensional pieces that feel both tactile and cinematic.

Danielle Clough: Threads of Time and Technique

Danielle Clough’s personal journey is as rich as her needlework. A Cape Town-based artist trained in art direction and graphic design at The Red and Yellow School, Clough rose to prominence through a multidisciplinary practice that includes embroidery on unconventional surfaces like tennis rackets, fences, and even sneakers. With features in CNN, Vogue, Hi-Fructose, and commissions from clients like Gucci and Adobe, Clough has cemented her place as a global art force.

At the heart of Clough’s appeal is her ability to bridge old and new. Whether threading pop culture icons or naturalistic forms, she treats her materials with reverence. In “Crewel Intentions,” her tactile technique serves as a meditation on aging, both of subjects and mediums. Every stitch is an act of reclamation, a love letter to forgotten glamour and to the humans who once embodied it.

Danielle Clough at Paradigm Gallery: Dates and Details

“Danielle Clough: Crewel Intentions” runs from August 1 to August 24, 2025, on the second floor of the Paradigm Arts Building at 12 N 3rd Street, Philadelphia. The public is invited to the opening reception on Friday, August 1, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. An artist talk will begin at 6:30 PM, offering rare insight into Clough’s inspirations and process. In keeping with Paradigm’s mission to foster artist growth, Clough will also lead embroidery workshops during the run of the exhibition, open to all skill levels.

“Crewel Intentions” is an exploration of movement through time, memory, and media. Danielle Clough threads the needle between reverence and reinvention. Her work revives aged images into luminous new relevance, sparking dialogue around gender, gaze, and cultural legacy.