unmakings

these two (above) are working better than the others – the overt pattern of the polka dot one and the white on white on both are satisfying and also they seem to be another step removed from clothing. After my first crit with the appendix folks last night, I am realizing that most successful work is not so obviously clothing in its form. The materials I use already suggest clothing (they are clothes), and it seems more conceptually satisfying the more abstract I get. For example, my thesis videos suggest clothing in their knittedness, but don’t take on a clothing shape or literal form and thus can be read as more than just ‘sweater,’ there is more of an architectural leap that can be made. Or the parts where the commercial pattern sculpture diverged from the directions into abstraction are the parts that highlight the directions themselves. Still hoping to remove these seam drawings from the flat plane of a wall, but now im thinking more about this as an installation. In the crit we walked out into the alley way and entered the gallery as if we were visitors coming for the opening, and the space is like a bright diorama and there are a lot of possibilities about making the long view of my show a dramatic one. The first thing that came to mind, naturally, was a video projection on the back wall and protruding wall sculptures on both side walls, but, um, I’ve already done that!
Today I was looking at a lot of rodarte knits online and was so inspired by the webs of knitted mohair they use in their sweaters, dresses and stockings. Almost spider webby and gothic. I was imagining creating the string system from the ceiling and have some of it be knitted—zach suggested during my crit that I could make my videos literal and I could actually knit the walls—overwhelming, but possible. Tomorrow I want to try hanging some of the pieces I’ve made at clothing height from some sort of web string system (its so comfortable to work on sculptures at body height, like working on a dress form for fashion.)
I don’t know how I feel bout this wooly piece I made today. It is made out of sweater seams, felted and covered in plaster and elmer’s glue, and just for kicks I threw that vintage bra seam drawing on it after looking at all the rodarte collections.


Before critiquing my work last night, we went over to Maggie casey’s studio to look at work she is preparing for show in Oklahoma. I was inspired by the ‘generational’ process she has been using on her biological works; she makes a large amount of ‘items’ and then chooses which ones are ready to be added to, making 2^nd, 3^rd, and for some, 14^th generation pieces that slowly inhere detail and become precious and important. I was thinking about this overlapping with the way clothes accumulate sentimental value as they pass down through generations, or become stained or torn and those Japanese tea bowls mended in gold again. So much to think about!

{photos: 1 & 2 & 3 my own work in process, 4 my unmakings, 5 rodarte fw08 (style.com), 6 my own work in process, 7 maggie casey/josh pavlaky silt; from peak to protein (2009)}