A narrator in embroidery, Cory Feder threads stories with yarn and needles. Artist-in-residence for Green Box Arts, Feder is inspired by the San Luis Colcha Embroidery Project.  

As the women of the valley embroidered their generational story, of tradition and family, Feder’s artistry combines Asian history and 21^st century stories, with an ode to nature.

Titled “The Celestial Journey,” Feder’s piece is enriched by her curiosity.

“I grew up in Denver and never really knew about Colorado’s specific traditions like those in San Luis,” she said. “It made me feel so much more excited about the area’s cultural heritage.”

Working in a studio provided by the arts organization in Green Mountain Falls, Feder is crafting the story of Asian influence, past and present, on the history of Denver.

Although of mixed Korean and Jewish heritage, Feder turns to the role of the Chinese and Japanese in her work.

“I wanted to do an historical-learning project, with documentation and stories from the community that maybe other historians have brushed over,” she said.

In the past, the Chinese arrived in Denver to help build the railroad and work in the mines while the Japanese worked more in agriculture.

“The Japanese were farmers who grew sugar beets,” she said.

The stories are woven into the fabric of Feder’s embroidery where she includes a dark note in Colorado history.

“Many Japanese were interred in the prison camp in Granada (Amache),” she said.

In addition to telling stories of the past, Feder incorporates nature into her work, a segment of Garden of the Gods, for instance.

Feder’s narration material is churro thread from a shop in Taos, N.M.  The colors spring from her imagination about possibilities. With a solution of water and pine bark, which she found on a nearby trail, Feder discovered a golden color.

Rather than considering dandelions a weed, Feder instead soaked some in water to come up with yellow for her thread. A solution of mushroom brings out light brown while her own avocado pits provided the solution for green.  

“I want to incorporate as much of the natural environment that is doable,” she said. “There is so much you can do with plants.”

The work is a progression of a mural she painted that honored Denver’s Chinatown of the past.  The piece, commissioned by Colorado Asian Pacific United, is on a wall in the Auraria Campus in Denver.

Heartened by the revival of Asian tradition in neighborhoods such as Little Saigon in Denver, Feder incorporates the present in the embroidery.

In Green Mountain Falls, Feder works from a photo of “The Yellow Peril” By William Wei, to create a story that includes the Archangel Michael, a buddha, a cross, mountains and sky.

Feder’s residency concluded last week, but she will be back to show her work during the Green Box Arts Festival which runs from July 4-19. For information, check greenboxarts.org.