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By Stefene Russell“There’s this weird element about Sign of the Arrow that only people in St. Louis get,” says Jim Finn. “This project was all about the idea of these ladies in St. Louis making canvases for needlepoints of communist heroes as if it was a totally normal thing— instead of a fleur-de-lis, you have Carlos the Jackal.”
For those who don’t know, Sign of the Arrow is a shop in Ladue that’s staffed by volunteer Pi Phi alumni who custom-paint needlepoint canvases. Finn, a filmmaker who now lives in Chicago (his house “is like an MGM lot for experimental animal videos”) grew up watching his sister and mom stitching pillows and purses ... and, yes, had a girlfriend who made him one of the shop’s famous needlepoint belts. Three years ago, he decided he wanted to go through the “weird ritual” of making a Sign of the Arrow project himself. Finn’s films, from the feature Interkosmos to the short “Wüstenspringmaus” (“The Gerbil”) juxtapose pocket pets, karaoke and communism, so portrait pillows of revolutionaries such as Carlos Marighella, author of The Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla, seemed like a logical choice.
“I never met the ladies who painted the patterns,” Finn says. “I had been to Sign of the Arrow, and they have fraternities and beer and tennis designs, tartan patterns, these kinds of things. I didn’t know what to expect, but they were more than happy to do it. I told them that I had these revolutionary-hero pillows, and they just told me how much it would cost. That’s it. In fact, when I was in St. Louis for the holidays, they picked out all the yarn for me.”
The first pillow, depicting Shining Path Maoist Edith Lagos, was stitched with a 13-gauge needle. Finn eventually worked up to 18 (“that’s close to petit-point”), which allowed him to create more detailed portraits, like that of liberation theologian Rev. Camilo Torres. “I was a little maniacal,” he says. “I was getting carpal tunnel, so my mom would do a little, my sister would do a little ... I watched a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation and I, Claudius.”
The pillows have been exhibited in group shows, including The Workmanship of Risk, which opened this spring at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. Finn’s now in production for Las Lineas, six short films based on his “Revolutionary Communist Heroes” pillows, which will communicate in more detail the sometimes vastly different strains of communist thought they each represent. “I chose six people,” Finn says, “who wouldn’t have necessarily gotten along.”
For more information, visit www.jimfinn.org.
