nuue by studio koya

synthetic fibers wrapped around a form and heat set -- each garment uses no excess materials.

and to listen:
http://vimeo.com/694885
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGgGW1ZalY

jorie graham
To a Friend Going Blind

Today, because I couldn’t find the shortcut through,
I had to walk this town’s entire inner
perimeter to find
where the medieval walls break open
in an eighteenth century
arch. The yellow valley flickered on and off
through cracks and the gaps
for guns. Bruna is teaching me
to cut a pattern.
Saturdays we buy the cloth.
She takes it in her hands
like a good idea, feeling
for texture, grain, the built-in
limits. It’s only as an afterthought she asks
and do you think it’s beautiful?
Her measuring tapes hang down, corn-blond and endless,
from her neck.
When I look at her
I think Rapunzel,
how one could climb that measuring,
that love. But I was saying,
I wandered all along the street that hugs the walls,
a needle floating
on its cloth. Once
I shut my eyes and felt my way
along the stone. Outside
is the cashcrop, sunflowers, as far as one can see. Listen,
the wind rattles in them,
a loose worship
seeking an object,
an interruption. Sara,
the walls are beautiful. They block the view.
And it feels rich to be
inside their grasp.
When Bruna finishes her dress
it is the shape of what has come
to rescue her. She puts it on.

fashion inspires art

{photos: 1 yohji yamamoto; 2 Comme des Garçons fw 1995-1996; 3 vivienne westwood photographed by inez van lamsweerde; 4 comme des garcons ss 1997; 5 comme des garcons fw 2008; 6 comme des garcons ss 1997; 7 comme des garcons ss 2010; 8 comme des garcons collection unknown}

photo inspies for june

{1 and 2 henrique oliveira, 3 do-ho suh, 4 chiharu shiota, 5 polka dot couple, 6 michael johansson, 7 comme des garcons fw09 asymmetrical coat, jun takahashi dress detail}

i have been blogging less because i have been making very little in terms of art work in the past few weeks as i settle into my new job (landscape architecture studio admin assistant/ graphic designer/web person) and new house, decorating and making artistic choices more on the domestic level (putting up stuff i find on the walls and replanting little succulents into mini terra cotta pots, drinking beer in my garden and reordering my closet. lately mostly what i've been doing at work (like i wrote in the last post) is digitizing and organizing images for the image library they have here-- some are mundane pictures of benches and lamp posts but often i come across interesting sculptures, walls or earthworky unusual treatments of land. i think this job is rekindling my interest in mapping also-- the architects here all use aerial perspective for their drawings and have pretty intense schematic and symbolic systems for representing different elements of landscape. reminds me that as much as i have read and waxed on and on about globalized labor and the loss of the handmade these past few years, its really the mapping, systematic and imformational aspect of clothing patterns that really drew me to them. they map the body in this weird totally unemotional way. i want to do more stuff that relates to clothing with blue prints and landmaps-- in portland i got kinda into going to home depot as sort of a project runway type exercise -- like running around with a cart looking for things that are ment for landscape/architectural construction and reinvisioning them in processes that are clothing related. like knitting construction mason line. i have this silly yearning to make a garment out of traffic cones. i am actively looking for a studio for this year. tomorrow i am looking at one in the dogpatch. i know i tend to be pretty hard on myself but not making much after having so much momentum for the past 6 months, the residency hopping and constant studio dilegence--- now i feel like most of my time is spent imagining myself as an artist but not really actively being one. oh well, it'll happen soon! also, after talking with ben more about the show in his space that he runs with anohter person here in san fran, it seems like they have too much going on and dont know whether or not they want to continue using their space as a gallery. so its still pretty up in the air/ unlikely i will have a show there. i was sort of releaved (weirdly), and i think its because i realized in portland how different working towards the idea of a show and my studio practice is, and i feel like i really have to address what is more important to me. my thesis was largely an installational idea that used material studies in the studio to become a grand experience, and then portland had a similar rhythm in my mind. it seems like the knowledge that people will come experience the work, thinking of them walking through a space, makes me feel that a show has to be installational or environmental for it to be powerful, which i know isnt true but i think at least right now, is the most exciting type of work that i respond to in shows. but, as an artist i think i enjoy a studio practice that is more material and labor intensive, hands on, exploring processes and inflicting different actions on objects in a systemized whimlike way. so these two things seem in conflict and maybe i'd just like to focus on the latter right now. and also, once i get a studio i can always invite people over to see the work, i'm not too worried about it. anyway i should get back to work... attached are some images i liked from the image bank that i found recently.

...and just so i don't forget:

-i find this women's apartment inspiring for domestic purposes: http://freundevonfreunden.com/jenna-brinning/?sessionId=s3dlbvo84lu4sd6f88ang0hot4

-someone emailed me this link for this show in philly of fibers/found objects artist sheila hicks' work http://www.icaphila.org/exhibitions/hicks.php and i love the images included in the online write-up. i'm including the images here.

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)}

lately i've been having a hard time getting myself to work on the sculptures that i intend to bring to portland. i remember getting this way when i was working on my thesis-- finding myself becoming bored with a labor-heavy task i set out for myself. wracking my brain on ways to keep it interesting. feeling down on myself for procrastinating. i know that making art isn't always fun, but i wish i felt like what i was doing was more meaningful to me. i find it interesting that right now i am more interested in thrift shopping, looking at fashion blogs, working on etsy stuff... i think i am using clothes to distract me from sculpture, which is weird because my sculptures are essentially garments, just mutated and unfinished. after two largely unproductive days, last night i was brainstorming on ways i can keep this process fresh, keep myself excited, incorporate these 'distractions' into my work in some way, not be bored. thinking of what gets me really excited about being in the studio.
1. working towards a deadline shabang. (portland! i don't know what my problem is, i have a show coming up! hopefully when i get up there and am in the space, the excitement will return.)
2. getting feedback and talking about my work with people that are into it and into ME. (cara commented a few posts back, really fodderous and excited, my fave unofficial professor. and portland, well, that will be just crit central.)
3. clothes, stories, music (singing/piano), sunshine. bingo.

so i've got all these epoxied printed doppleganger (thanks cameron for title idea) sculptures lying and hanging around here. i have little interest in working on them right now, especially because the stiffer they get i am afraid about how much i can fit into my car on the drive up. (ps. anyone in the bay area wanna come to portland?) so i've been stiffening soft things to make them hard. mutating old clothes to be material, handcrafted, sloppy beings. i do want to stiffen some seam drawings but i sort of want to wait until i get to portland to do this because again, after the epoxy goes on, fabric can actually break and i think it will just be easier to bring them as seams. i am excited by this body of work at times, its hollowness, materiality-- i feel like this stuff is more bulky and solid than any work ive done before. cara mentioned in her comment about how she liked my using the hangers to 'bookend' the pieces, tying them back to their origin as clothing and highlighting the tension between clothing and sculpture. thats what it has become in my life, a real tension. my goal is to make it more fluid. she suggested a hanger at both ends of the dopplegangers to relate two ends to each other. she's right, when ever i see the camo one i laugh a little, it does look like a creepy caterpillar. she also pointed out all the layers of process i am enacting on these things, which is something i am trying to be more explicit about.

i have been thinking a lot about that video idea i had a few posts back, about making an 'album' amount of instrumental songs/videos that are tied together. i really want a reason to be composing music seriously. and i do find making videos quite rewarding and meaningful. i had a revelation about the connection between playing repetitive music on the piano and knitting. its almost the same sort of repetitive meditative hand to object process, yet with knitting you are left with a material trace and unless you record the piano, you are left with nothing. in this album of songs/vids, what comes first, what births the thing, a song, or an image?should there be video in my portland show? or should i set boundaries and wait until my san francisco show when i'll have more time to do the full album? i don't really 

like setting boundaries as to medium, and i still have about a month until my actually opening in portland (i could make a few videos if i decided to, but that takes deciding). one thing that i am really interested in is writing stories from the perspective of a garment, in its journey into becoming (making) and through its life, for example hanging in barneys new york and then ending up in a thrift store in california and then being made into paper pulp or something. i thought maybe i could read the stories over the videos. i also had the idea while i was swimming today that it would be neat to project onto garments themselves as if i was imbuing them with anarchic making energy. maybe they are on a clothes line?(i found this picture awhile back of giraffes projected onto a clothes line and i think about it a lot) . i want to make something that is at once familiar to people in form and also strange and thought provoking. Knitting is strange yet familiar. We are estranged from the simple process. We don’t know the real story of how an object comes into being. Maybe we don’t think about it when it presents itself to us. we can only make it up. i need to incorporate my bargain barning more (i have been going to the bargain barn and then selling things i find to vintage boutiques in the bay area, and this whole value shifting process is very interesting to me)-- the process of gathering, selling, peeking into objects inhering monetary value after having it and then not having it for a while. the idea that clothes are merely material stitched together, yet what store they hang in (or in the case of the b barn, pile in) determines their value, its a phenomenon that is endlessly fascinating. i really like the idea of imaging stories of the lives of these garments, from pristine and fancy to garbage. from trash to spectacle and back. its almost like the clothes are portalsinto these imagined worlds. the imagery in the videos could be portals into their story, into the real truth of happenings. My voice is a narrator. and then there are the making processes of how they come into existence in the first place, maybe in a sweat shop in india in 1993 or someones grandma's singer machine... then there is the question-- when does a garment come to life? is it when the first needle goes in? or are they alive when they are sheered from a sheep and are fibers raw on the spinning room floor? or silk worms cocoons being spun in little green houses in greece? is it the construction of a person that gives them life?so i've got all these ideas. but as for a show, what do we see?

{photos: dress from my etsy, my dopplegangers (in progress), photo from my friend elyse's tumblr, unknown photo source, skirt photo from face hunter}