In the Name of the Dog: Threads of Art and Memory in Emily O’Leary’s Work

This is an English translation of an excerpt from an article by Sabino Maria Frassà, first published in Italian in LUCE on 26 August

On International Dog Day — first established in 2004 to celebrate the irreplaceable role dogs play in our lives and to raise awareness about adoption and responsible care — we meet American artist Emily O’Leary, whose creative practice interweaves animal advocacy with textile art, painting, and memory.

Photo courtesy Emily O’Leary

Observed every August 26, this day was founded by American activist Colleen Paige to honor dogs not only as beloved companions but also as sentient beings who often save lives, provide emotional support, assist people with disabilities, and bring comfort in our most vulnerable moments. At its core, the day speaks of bonds, empathy, and respect — themes deeply present in the work of Emily O’Leary. Born in Massachusetts, O’Leary studied at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and earned her MFA at the University of Texas in 2018. Her practice, steeped in textile traditions and the ritual of making, oscillates between the familiar and the uncanny, conjuring images that feel both intimate and strangely unfamiliar.

In the heart of Brooklyn — between the scent of coffee and the rustle of thread running through her fingers — O’Leary creates a world of embroidery, painting, and fabric. Dogs (never cats), women, and everyday gestures emerge from her work like fragments of suspended stories, balancing intimacy and experimentation. On a day dedicated to our four-legged friends, her creations resonate with special meaning: not simply as representations, but as silent witnesses to enduring bonds, constant presence, and that form of unconditional love only dogs can give.

Within the contemporary art landscape, O’Leary’s work stands out for its hybrid use of craft and conceptual techniques. Through embroidery and rug hooking, she explores the thresholds between art and craft, transforming domestic materials and motifs into a visual language that reflects on memory, time, and manual labor. Her embroidered samplers, populated with enigmatic figures and dreamlike scenes, evoke everyday life with subtle narrative tension, making the act of making itself visible as both reflection and meaning.

In this interview — at a moment dedicated to loyalty, care, and unconditional affection — O’Leary guides us through the threads and textures of her visual world. She speaks about her creative process, her fears, and the significance she places on time, repetition, and her choice to include dogs as silent yet powerful presences in her work.

Emily O’Leary – Dogs Rug

How did you develop your unique technique that “weaves together” painting, textiles, and embroidery?

I’m drawn to processes that can be undone and redone, worked and reworked, rather than to methodologies where everything is planned in advance and then simply executed. The textile techniques I use are often seen as static or rigid, but in reality they offer great flexibility. Both rug hooking and embroidery are accessible: the materials are inexpensive and the basic stitches easy to learn. Even my paintings share this elasticity in how they’re displayed — they can be moved, recombined, and placed in dialogue with each other.

Your work often draws on embroidered samplers, historically used to demonstrate young women’s domestic virtues. What fascinates you about this tradition, and how do you reinterpret it in a contemporary art context?

At first, I was struck by how the lack of contextual information left so much room for imagination. Now, I’m more interested in what can be deciphered through physical clues: the trace of the hand that made them, individual quirks, the materials available. Of course, there’s also the idea of giving weight to these long-overlooked objects, even if their makers remain anonymous. I find it fascinating how both rugs and samplers feel surprisingly contemporary in how they deal with compositional challenges by adapting images and motifs to the edges.

The embroidered figures in your work often seem engaged in repetitive, almost ritualistic gestures tied to manual labor. What is the relationship between craft, time, and process in your artistic research?

Sometimes I have this strange feeling, as if everything — objects and people — were imbued with a mysterious, almost magical meaning. In my embroideries, I try to translate that perception of an incomprehensible yet meaningful world. The repetitive act of sewing and weaving becomes a ritual in itself. I also think we live in a society that keeps us distant from the manual labor that makes our lives possible. Depicting labor is a way of making it visible. And the traditionally female practice of “decorating” with embroidery and other textile techniques is far more significant than many assume. A huge part of human history has been devoted to textile production, and the time invested in decoration underscores its cultural importance.

Dogs are a recurring motif in your work. What do they mean to you, and how do they fit into your visual narrative?

Both humans and dogs are social animals. Dogs live at the edges of our society, scavengers by nature, until we decide to control their lives, reproduction, and feeding. Just as we empathize with other humans, we project human emotions onto dogs, forgetting what remains wild in them. In my work I always depict dogs, never wolves or coyotes. That’s because, while they’re similar to their wild relatives, dogs have undergone radical transformation through domestication. They are at once familiar and mysterious. It’s something I’ve observed in my own dogs — two sisters, one incredibly expressive and readable, the other more enigmatic and indecipherable.

Why not cats?

I think cats already exist in our collective imagination as wild, mysterious little beings. For me, it’s more interesting to complicate the image of the faithful, adoring — almost drooling — dog. Cats also don’t spend much time sleeping on the ground; they climb everywhere, so they don’t lend themselves as naturally to becoming “rugs.” And portraying them through rug hooking would be a challenge since they’re smaller. Rug hooking is limited by resolution: my linen has a 14×14 grid per inch (though I don’t fill every space, since doing so would make the rug too dense and cause it to curl), and the low resolution of the technique would make a smaller animal, like a cat, lose detail.

There’s a strong element of ambiguity and fragmented storytelling in your work. The viewer seems invited to interpret and fill in the recurring gaps?

I like to include very specific details but leave wide open spaces. I’m fascinated by how small elements can suggest parts of a larger story. In truth, I feel like I, too, only have access to fragments of the stories I tell. I don’t feel the need to guide the viewer — in a way, we start from the same place.

Embroidery is increasingly recognized in contemporary art as a conceptual medium rather than purely decorative. Do you feel part of a new generation of artists redefining the boundaries between art and craft?

I’m drawn to techniques like rug hooking and embroidery for the same reasons that historically led people (mostly women!) to practice them: accessibility of materials and the pleasure of process. Working with these techniques means navigating a balance between mastery of the medium and the productive frustration of its limits. I don’t think the distinction between conceptual art and decoration is particularly useful. For me, it’s more of a continuum. Some artists use embroidery as a conceptual foundation, but I also want to emphasize the value of pure decoration.

Has what’s happening in America under the new presidency influenced your world — one that is private, but inevitably social as well?

I don’t have a good answer to that. The new political reality has thrown my own motivations into a surreal kind of uncertainty. It makes you wonder if the art world simply runs parallel to the world most people live in. I feel like an alien, someone whose work matters even less than before. If a large portion of the country supports discriminatory measures I find abhorrent, who is my work speaking to? Only those closest to me on the political spectrum? Since my work is quite interior, but also attracts a broad audience, should I instead try to create pieces that explicitly confront and reject viewers who hold hostile opinions toward minorities?

And once again, the metaphor of the dog and the pack returns — am I right?

Much of my work is about questioning the line between what we consider natural and innate and what is culturally learned. I think the narrative promoted by Trumpist ideology — in which “non-white” people are seen as intruders and white women as virtuous breeders to be protected — reflects an exclusionary attitude many passively accept as if it were natural, the given order of things. It’s as if loyalty to one’s own group were inevitable, written in blood. And yet we are social animals, capable of reshaping our world over and over, guided by motivations far beyond what’s sold to us as instinctive or “natural.”