Sins and Needles: A Story of Spiritual Mending

by Ray Materson

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Author: Ray Materson

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Hardcover:
ISBN 10: 9781565123403
ISBN 13: 978-1565123403

Ray Materson wanted to be a priest when he grew up. He was an A student and sixth-grade class president. But in college Ray began drinking, which led to drug experimentation, which devolved to an addict's life of living fix to fix. Finally, petty acts of theft and the end of loans from friends led to carjacking with a toy gun and a sentence of twenty-five years behind bars.

One miserable day in prison, Ray remembered an image of his grandmother sitting on the porch with her embroidery. At about the same time, the University of Michigan was to play in the Rose Bowl. Improvising a needlework hoop, Ray made a maize-and-blue Michigan M so he could officially cheer his team to victory. Soon Ray was sewing small flags and emblems using threads pulled from socks for pieces commissioned by fellow inmates, who paid him with cigarettes. Over time his work became more intricate-miniature masterpieces that told stories from his past and illustrated his dreams for the future. In stitching his artwork, Ray found hope and salvation.

Enter Melanie, a woman who sees Ray's work in a local exhibition and writes him a fan letter. Ultimately she marries him while he's still in prison. With Melanie's encouragement and perseverance, Ray's artwork gains national attention and is a smash hit. To this day, his work is represented by the American Primitive Gallery in New York.

Illustrated with fifty pieces of Materson's artwork, Sins and Needles is the riveting story of Ray's journey-of how a broken man manages to put the pieces of his life together in a most unexpected way.

From Publishers Weekly

Ray Materson, a good student who wanted to be a priest when he grew up, began doing drugs in college and got into trouble with the law. He was sent to jail for a car-jacking (in which he used a toy gun), and while there, learned how to embroider. Sewing with the threads of unraveled socks, Materson made intricate works that depicted everything from his favorite football team to the confinement he felt in prison. Along with his wife, Melanie Materson, he tells the story of how he found hope and salvation through art in Sins and Needles: A Story of Spiritual Mending. The book includes illustrations of 50 pieces of Materson's needlework.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From

Ray Materson was, he says, "a good boy gone bad." He had been an A student, even class president once (in sixth grade), and had hoped to become a priest. But dysfunctional family life and an increasingly troubled, aimless adolescence led to alcohol and drug addiction, a failed marriage, petty crime, and a 25-year sentence for carjacking with a toy gun. He started turning around irrevocably, though, during the 1988 Christmas season. The University of Michigan was in the Rose Bowl, and to cheer the team on and bolster his sagging spirits, he stitched an M out of thread from his maize-and-blue socks. Soon he was embroidering flags and emblems for fellow inmates. As his work became more sophisticated, he got media attention. Other changes coincided. From prison, he corresponded with, met, and eventually married Melanie, a writer who proceeded to promote his needle-artwork and has helped him tell, compellingly and with winning simplicity, an inspiring and touching story of the transformative power of art and the resiliency of the human spirit. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Sins and Needles: A Story of Spiritual Mending