I’m getting the feeling that these plaster pieces (pictured in the last post) are really successful. I showed them to my dad this morning and he was especially into the darker colored one (on the left). He mentioned how he felt as objects they were something ‘unmanufacturable’ and that looking at them, he wasn’t concerned with taking them apart but just appreciating them for what they are. The plaster effectively defamiliarizes the familiar clothing-ness about the garments, but even though they are stiff and almost archeological, they still are recognizable as shirts. I was thinking last night, in the vein of the Japanese broken and gold mended tea bowls, that instead of painting the seams to highlight them, what if I gold leafed them? Or maybe they are just fine as they are? Its hard to know when i should stop adding to them. I also like their solidity in juxtaposition to the seam drawings. What if my installation was a crowd of empty people, sort of like a mingling art show of stiffened seams and plastered mutant relics? I can imagine doing more of these in portland. A whole crowd, free standing, communicating.















{these photos are from style rookie's flikr and are inspiring surfaces for the plastered mutants. }

this is me experimenting with plastering/painting the mutant sculptures. First I coated them in another layer of epoxy, and sprinkled plaster onto them. I went the plaster down and kept sprinkling more on it. I am planning on using paint to make lines where the seams are on the clothes. and then maybe even going further with some paper mache.

I was sort of bummed out last night because I found someone else that makes seam drawings, although she doesn’t call them that. Her name is Jean Shin, and while I’d seen her work before (she is a friend of Julia Randall’s). But anyway. There is something about feeling like something is wholly original, and I really felt that about my thesis…. This whole feeling (and I’ve also been feeling pretty jealous of Joanna Newsom’s newer album lately) reminded me of an essay I read in college called ‘the ecstasy of influence’ by jonathan Lethem based on this quote:

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated." —John Donne

I always rationalize copying in terms of covering songs in music—like if I covered thom yorke, it would sound like me, because I am my own vessel that is regurgitating someone else’s work. but her's look a lot like mine! and she even used hangers! ugh. so now I really want to find a way to make the seam drawings wholly my own and not go the ‘obvious’ route with them. Jean Shin’s work, while similar to mine in that she uses discarded clothes and often asks people to donate stuff they don’t want as her materials, her work mostly centers around creative reuse of masses of one thing (umbrellas, bottles, computer keyboards, etc.). her seams are mostly either suspended, unstiffened, and tangled, or hanging on hangers or clotheslines and rendered 2D. Also she only made hers out of button down shirts. So I really do want to go with Cara’s suggestion of stiffening and hanging them in space. I feel like then I will feel like they are wholly mine. Also I want to make more ‘outfits’ out of them. Lethem writes, “Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. Any artist knows these truths, no matter how deeply he or she submerges that knowing." Its true that I can feel it when I’ve invented something and I am aware when I’m inspired by someone else’s invention. If only it wasn’t so hard to be an inventor! I hate how ideas have to be unique in art these days for them to feel worth making. I was so reticent to give my unmaking video secrets to my own sister because I didn’t want her to ‘steal’ what was mine, instead of it be a collaboratory sharing. "I can no more claim it as “mine” than the sidewalks and forests of the world, yet I do dwell in it, and for me to stand a chance as either artist or citizen, I'd probably better be permitted to name it." I remember this consoling me when I first read it, because it sort of reinforces my thom yorke cover theory—that as long as you have your own personal context for experiencing the world, you are aloud to own things because your response is unique to you, and no one else. Would it go against this theory to ask how I can inhale my own work and exhale it as more wholly mine? "when damn near everything presents itself as familiar—it's not a surprise that some of today's most ambitious art is going about trying to make the familiar strange.” YES. "we're surrounded by signs, our imperative is to ignore none of them.” Collecting, always looking, gathering. And then my favorite, when texts and textiles tie together into neat metaphors:
"Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. Neurological study has lately shown that memory, imagination, and consciousness itself is stitched, quilted, pastiched. If we cut-and-paste our selves, might we not forgive it of our artworks?" I am finding myself very inspired by string metaphors lately, and wanting to make them physical. Yesterday while getting my oil changed I re-read the Invisible Cities by Calvino and remembered what installational fodder that book brings. I could make a video for each city. I like Octavia and Ersilia best, because they mention strings most overtly. Joanna Newsom sings about 'this system of strings'; i definitely need to use systematic string in my installation in portland. in this installation by jean shin called unraveling, collected sweaters are unraveled and the strings connect two walls and swarm above-- i like the metaphor this piece presents-- of connecting, of being unmade and broken but it being a way to reach out to another.

{photos: 1 & 2 my own mutants, jean shin's seam series, Cut Outs and Suspended Seams (2004), Unraveling (2006-9); the ecstasy of influence by Jonathan Lethem can be read here}

Portland-- right now I feel like there is too much going on with my ideas for this show. Waiting for it all to congeal...i have so many ideas and different pieces, yet I want it to be more installational/experiential. Trying to figure out what to bring and what to leave here. Hoping that the thoughts will jump into position once I get a new change of scenery.

I want to experiment with plastering/painting the mutant sculptures. using gouache or something to paint lines where the seams are on the clothes. My dad gave me some plaster to experiment with—I’m imaging putting more epoxy on the pieces and then just sprinkling the plaster on; even doing some paper mache, covering the pieces in paper pulp/trash and plaster. The lines could be black on white or maybe even blue on white. I wonder if this whole yearning to switch materials up is out of line. Maybe I’ll let myself do this tomorrow.

Today I went to the library and got some books on tape from the library for the road trip ‘grapes of wrath’ and ‘the sound and the fury’. I think I’m going to document a garment somehow moving through the landscape up north. I like the idea of creating backstory for a garment in actual reality (and showing evidence of it through photographs), and juxtaposing that with an invented sentimental fantasy (that I would record as sound). Questions, though:

-would i be wearing this garment or is it lying on the ground? hanging on a tree?

-what garment is it? should it be something iconic (a black dress?) or more quirky?

for some reason i keep thinking about my green cashmere sweater that i got at the barn. i just feel like it must have a crazy old and classy story because it is cashmere and from the '50s but in perfect condition.

{photos: manuel neri kneeling figure (1960), abandoned sweater photo from this flickr)}

ok-

thinking about how to highlight the material traces of making (the seams) on the mutant clothes. As you can see in the hanging dress piece and the mutant shirt on the wall (above), I used ink before the garments were epoxied and it ended up bleeding all over the clothes and not really looking how I wanted it. But i do really want to engage with ink or paint in some way to highlight the seems; I remember Schiff showing me old Japanese tea bowls with cracks mended with gold, I want the cracks, the seams of the garments to be showcased. i feel like that was what i was really going for in my map pieces from school, and then achieved it in a less direct and more formal way in my thesis. i think i am bent on using ink or paint to showcase the seams because of its direct link to drawing -- i want to make a drawing out of the labor enacted on the cloth.

I’ve been bargain barning like crazy and selling things at boutiques and its become a really fun way to make money while I don’t have a job. I love the concept of digging in a pile of crap and finding something that will become special if I deem it so. Its sort of like clothing gentrification. I’m getting a ton of etsy play too, which makes me wanna keep making wearable fashion objects to sell. I just don’t want it to distract me from sculpture, but somehow feed in. on a walk with my dad this morning, we talked a lot about the power of video and how to use a space in the most dramatic and important way that I can. It got me more excited about sculpture and I really want to project unraveling knitting onto bargain barn sweaters in a clothesline. It would be awesome if the show was really dimly lit and there were just little spotlights on certain pieces and then a projection.

tonight i'm going to this show at ben's project space-- 63 bluxome st. san francisco. the totem and the ocean.

To do:
- make a new fibrous stop animation (green mohair???)
- play piano and sing more, write a new instrumental song
- ink/acrylic seams on mutant clothes

{photos: my own mutant clothes, japanese tea bowl mended with gold from this site}

little glove sculpture ..............................................................................................warm and cool fabric collection
(inspired by joanna newsom song)



idea web ................................................................................................................another mood board


mutant shirt sculpture........................................................................... 'the in-studio gallery'


mutant dress sculpture..............................................,................................................. sorry, sari


sari + studio mate................................................................................................................. sari


http://odios.tumblr.com/post/2885764984/magicisland04

{photos: all my own from my studio}

i am always collecting jpgs (i separate them by month) on my computer sort of like a perpetual virtual mood board like fashion designers have. this month's collection so far has a very distinct Color palette, army greens and muddy wine red, mostly. i am thinking of dying some of my mutant clothes and seam drawings so that my portland show reflects this 'color way.' dye seems like a way to change and bite into the materials and revamp them, take them farther from bargain barn loot and clothing cast offs. but is it important that they retain their old color personalities?

I spent today coating my mutant clothes, sari piece and camo piece in epoxy to stiffen them. they look really good and creepy empty. yesterday my family and i went to the city to look at art and some of the things i was really responding to were work that had a very tangible feeling of the artist's handling the work, like i could very visually imagine their process and it was clear they just loved the hand to material experience. (ei. robert brady, manuel neri)


i know that sort of thing just sort of comes out of art when the artist engages in that hands-on experience with it, but i was thinking of ways that my work could feel more like that to people. i already let threads hang and leave seams raw, but what are other ways to show that trace of making and show my revelatory process to people? through my recent experiences with epoxy, i am realizing that i really feel like i am 'making art' when i am engaging in materials that are messy. i had the idea of further stiffening the mutant clothes with something visibily messy like plaster. What if I covered some of the mutant clothes (after epoxy) in plaster?

i also just came across this french artist named emilie faif, who i do find a little too cutesie to be fully inspired by but she uses clothing and fabric in her work and i found this one installation she did involving the pattern pieces to a pair of jeans all laid flat out on the wall.I've been reading one of andrea zittel's diaries, and am very inspired by the way she creates systems and rules that govern her life, and in the diary her life seems so fluidly her art, and all her musings are included, shared with others. i almost feel like blogging is a way to do this, to let people in to what i am thinking (almost) every day even if no one is actually reading. I feel like I am effectively achieving blurring the distinction between my own clothes and clothing i use in my work, but i wonder how i could further embed my systems into my life. or do i even want to?

i have been getting a lot of compliments on the film i did with kira, especially regarding the interaction with my animations and the music i composed. since i have been wanting to do more composing, and have been tinkering a little, i was thinking about making a big goal out of it. i was thinking about the san francisco show at ben's space, and maybe for that show i would do a whole 'album' like series of animations, each with its own customized score. and then it could be a real venue for some sort of performance, music... maybe even some movement... i was really getting excited while i was swimming today thinking about it. i do feel like those films are unique and a good way for me to bridge my music and my art together, and it really feels like 'me' behind it all, i really get that sense of self expression when i show them to people. i think i really need to consider continuing with them.

{photos: from top to bottom, left to right, comme des garcons fw09, jean yves lemoigne, don't know (from tumblr), lisa kehoe a public loo in norway, manuel neri standing figure (1982), robert brady new work (2010), my own dopplegangers and mutants (in progress), emilie faif patron/ vetement isabel marant (2010)}

I wonder if I started this blog as a way to feel like I am accomplishing something without really getting much done. Perhaps a product of my generation of sitting in front of the computer, it feels just like so right, and clicking ‘post’ just feels so completed and good and… ugh! Although it does seem important to be reflecting and processing and not just numbly cutting and sewing, it’s a different thing. Procrastination or not, blogging is really fun. I keep thinking about something anne wilson told me when I was working for her: She told me that she thinks of her thoughts as being written on a booklet of tracing paper, the words that continue to repeat themselves in her thoughts become bolder as they layer over each other, and some are just faint wisps buried beneath layers of other thoughts. Hopefully this blog if anything can be a place where common themes in my thoughts will reveal themselves, maybe some sort of logic will arise from it all and congeal and I’ll feel better about my brain which feels more and more like that eva hesse piece I posted below and less like a nice little booklet of transparent pages. Now, enough blogging about blogging, and on to the good stuff!

i've been using the pieces that i cut out from the garments that I make the seam drawings from, and sort of roughly sewing them together and making these extroverted/inside out raw little garments.

my next question is: how can this sort of 'fashion line' of forgotten cut outs become sculpture? i photographed the garments hanging against the wall (perhaps the wall is where i'm most comfortable making work, stemming from my painting/drawing days). but i want these things to exist in space, empty dress, where you wonder what kind of person (or creature) would wear them.

Cara emailed me (about my seam drawings):

“I wonder if I would like them better as sculpture; if they were suspended in the air somehow, (string/clear filament, startch, wire?) as if on a form. I guess I am interested in how they still relate to a body, which makes me think of the forgotten pieces as well-- I wonder if the could become some kind of mutant objects, familiar as clothing, but also distorted and strange.”

I really liked Cara’s ‘mutant objects, familiar as clothing’ suggestion, applied both to the seam drawings and also to the extroverted garments. My dad has been telling me about the fun to be had with epoxy resin/ carbon fiber, to make things from cloth, but stiffened, like a surf board. And then, behind new leaf I found a boatload of plastic wrap and I started making a mold of my body to shape the mutant clothes over. Today he helped me coat prototype pieces in epoxy so that I can experiment with making these empty mutant clothes, inside-out so you can see the seams. This is a little experiment, hanging to dry with plastic wrap inside. We'll see how it turns out!

{(interesting etymological side note, Extroversion = condition of being turned inside out, also extroverted in the psychological sense…) I like this idea that an extroverted garment is sort of like an extroverted person-- loud and open about the practical, outside social environment-- and also that you can see the labor when the piece is inside out and raw. Possible title? Extroverted something? seams and extroversions. instructions and extroversions}

And the ‘mutant’-ness of this idea reminds me of my final thesis critique with Schiff and Julia, where the two of them sort of unexpectedly described my work as grotesque (I wish I remembered the critique better because I was so tired…), Schiff brought up Eva Hesse and Julia brought up Annette Messager, an artist I had never looked at before.

The Annette Messager installation excites me because she uses the walls, floor and ceiling, the whole room, and really creates almost a freaky stage set for the visitor to derive an experience. Eva Hesse uses resin in her work in a way that i am interested in exploring, to make things that look soft and maybe even look wet, but are actually hard shells. and even though i’m not really ‘going for’ grotesque or spooky, even my music gets described sometimes as an acknowledgment that there is beauty in ugly, or something. I think as hard as I try I’ll never escape the teen witch inside of me.

(all photos are my own extroversions and prototypes, except bottom left photo is eva hesse's untitled or not yet, 1966, and the bottom right is annette messager's articulés désarticulés, 2001-2002)