new work: reconstructed destination

new seam drawings

map ideas:
mend: reconstruct, rectify reconstructed destinations passing destinations nomadic errant migration reconstructed migration settling

wabi sabi: all formations are imperminent combine flux imperminance passage current hunch a seamed migration
derive

- my current inspirations for march-

polka dots, seams, and 3 D drawing

compulsive hoarding / stacking of trash & junk (on the ground)

closets and clothes hangers

{photo credits: 1 & 2 comme des garcons ss'10 rtw, 3 my own seam drawing, 4 sartorialist, 5 & 6 comme des garcons fw'09, 7 patrik ervell ss'11, 8 anselm kiefer's 20 Jahre Einsamkeit (twenty years of solitude) 1998, 9 hoarders on a&e graphic, 10 song dong's waste not, 11 assorted hangers, 12 closet (unknown sources)}

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)}

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}

Went and saw erin turner’s show in san fran last night. I left feeling pretty inspired and fell asleep with my mind buzzing with ideas (love that.) her work had some overlaps to mine, and I was excited by how she used a space that I am going to show at in the future. I think it was essential for me to critique her show in order to help me structure my own, because there were things I really responded to and liked about the show and things I would have done differently if it were my project. 

The show, as I experienced it at least, was about a huge red piece of hairy rubber that had gone on a journey from her hometown in Tulsa, Oklahoma all the way to the gallery in sf. The whole show was pretty dimly lit, and there was a slide show being projected of the red thing’s very visually striking journey cross country... amazing photos.
The red rubber piece was intertwined on the ceiling with a large intricately woven intestinal shape made out of newspaper. There were paintings on plastic drop cloths on the walls and also paper mache’d chicken wire pieces in a corner. At one point the artist asked the people at the art show to lie down on the ground and she played a sound recording that was layered poetry that somehow related to the whole thing but I found pretty abstract.

the most successful things --- i really liked:
-that the red piece had been on a journey—and the slideshow described where it had been. It was autobiographical about her own voyage from her hometown westward, but the piece was there to absorb it. while i was looking at the sculpture, i was very aware that it might be soiled with all the places it had been. the photos were beautiful and they gave the red piece so much history and personality.

- she used the gallery space so dramatically; it was impressive in size and there was so much going on (painting, sculpture, projection, sound, performance)

- Mythic quality. Even though it was hard to decipher, the red piece looked like fire and there was something about it that reminded me of native American ritual and dance. The installation was called ‘the totem and the ocean’ which led me to believe it was about something deep but i kinda liked how vague the references were.

After seeing erin’s show I jotted down ideas for my own show, naturally getting stressed out because I am going to make a similar (although slightly shorter) journey to Portland next week.here's what i wrote down:

-basis for the show: seams document labor as drawing
- must use space dramatically – installation/experience, not just discrete sculptures
-should the drive to Portland be documented like erin's red piece? (i could document scenery, a garment’s journey from santa cruz to Portland? the embedded stories in clothes that i could create myself.) this could be worth doing even if i don't end up using the photos.-video/sound – maybe I shouldn’t think about the san fran show right now... a few posts back i was writing about making videos with music and maybe i should just show a few in portland? even though there might have been too much going on in erin's show, there is something so powerful about orchestrating an entire experience -- and trying to incite all the senses.




-large installational task for 3 weeks… how will I spend my 3 weeks in Portland? i liked how erin used the red piece to make a journey and the newspaper piece to work on when she got there. and like my commercial pattern pieces in my thesis, i love laborious big tasks, masses of one thing. i am imagining a web of cut away seams suspended in the center of the room, as i described in this post, sort of like eva hesse's tangled pieces or marcel duchamp's 16 miles of string.
- use bargain barn clothes/collected materials, references to clothes line/closet, heavily OCD/organized packing – my own wardrobe, materials. Should I bring my keyboard?
-Etsy? Idea of money/value somehow present, sentimental value/stories meets retail
-Plaster/paint – messy art – these can be discrete pieces

to tentatively include in the show:
-camo piece
-sari piece
-jackets
-tent
-videos
-clothesline w/ bbarn/personal clothes
-seam drawing installation
-mutants

to do before i go:
collect knittings/yarn for videos
organize stuff I printed at fabric workshop, bbarn stuff, etsy
cut seam drawings and make mutants – plaster, paint

to bring:
sewing machine, thread, sewing supplies
computer
camera
piano?
Clothesline/pins
Fabric workshop work
Personal clothes, bag of thrifted bbarn clothes
Etsy clothes
Seams/mutants

{photos: 1 & 2 erin turner's poly's gone 3 works in progress from the totem and the ocean (erin turner), 4 eva hesse , 5 marcel duchamp's sixteen miles of string, 6 tony cragg (he had a rope tossed into the sky and took a picture of the resulting 'drawing') ... images 1, 2, 3 are from erin turner's website and images 4, 5, 6 were found in a web piece called 'string theory' written by one of my fave craft theorists's glenn adamson from the victoria and albert museum website}

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}

I've noticed a funny cycle that I go through as I go in and out of being inspired. sometimes i feel void of all inspiration and all i want to do is numbly look at fashion collections on style.com or in magazines, but then it backfires and i see something that really throws a wrench in my numbness and makes me so excited and angry at the same time because i wish that i made it so badly and i can't handle it. I was especially inspired this fall ‘10 by the ‘09 fall/winter’s comme des garcons collection. that is to say that i think it is one of the only things that i thought about for an entire 3 months. One thing kawakubo (the designer) did that inspired me to the point of wanting to copy were these ghostlike coats of flesh colored tulle, where all the seams were made visible by the sheerness of the fabric. Brought to my attention one of the reasons I love sheer fabrics so much, is because when the light shines through it’s the seams that really become the focus.
I also love kawakubos sense of utility/fragility that screams survival in this collection—there's the sheer ghostly flesh colored tulle but then there's also military nods of army/navy type fabrics, even ethnic blankets, jacket facades, all collaged together, and I love how she uses what looks like twill tape (that you use to draw on dress forms normally) but she uses them to draw on her garments—completely brilliant! also there are toes painted on the oxfords...

When I was working at Berkeley rep, I learned from the tailor kathy that there are so many innards inside a men’s jacket, and I have been thinking for a while about making a coat where all these 'guts' (interfacing, padding, stitching, etc.) are visible. Or what if there were commercial patterns encased inside? I’ve always thought of the patterns/instructions as being just under the surface of clothes, as if you go back a step and they are revealed. I wonder if I could play with this idea, make the metaphor literal. There is something about sheer fabric covering things, like a haze, or veil, that really gets me; there is a little suggestion of time, or presence, without full disclosure.

[etymological side note again--the word apocalypse comes from Calypso from the Odyssey (there is the Odyssey again, should I re-read?). Calypso is the nymph who hides Odysseus away for years, and the ‘calypse’ part of the word means to hide of cover, and apocalypse originally meant revealing, disclosing, uncovering, which I just am so excited by in the context of clothes, or knitting/unraveling, or getting dressed.]

I wrote before about clothing as protection for survival of change, of being uncomfortable, of the harshness of the world. immediately I think of the convertibility of tents, bullet vests, forts, childhood forts. Lucy orta’s costumes. When I was in philly I found these ‘shelter halves’, (these buddy system ponchos), and I was thinking about rei kawakubo, and this fall winter ’09 collection in specific, mostly just about clothes as cocoons to protect people from the harshness of the world. This was when I was screen printing onto fabrics and found objects at the Fabric workshop and museum where I was an apprentice recently. I was focused on refashioning flat patterns, printing on lots of different fabrics ranging in sheerness/thickness from organza to canvas, even printed on army tents and army jackets that I found at the army surplus store. I even printed on an Indian silk sari. But I printed instructions to make a freaky tankini for siamese twins onto these shelter halves, these buddy system tents, that they actually used in world war II, called Zeltbahns. I love the implied convertibility (from poncho to shelter, the fact that there is this buddy-based assembly that needs to happen, that they are so readily garments and also architecture. Plus there is something so astro turfy about camo. something very nature v. culture in a sneaky way that becomes uber deep. Through some handy internet research, I found these diagrams for set up, that are so incredible I keep thinking of replicating them in some way. I am scared of making 2 dimensional work again, but I think i would be able to if it was disguised as instructions. I will post pictures of the shelter ponchos once i finish sewing together the printed clothing that will emerge from the side, but today i just finished this pixelated camo screen printed siamese tankini (that wont be the title don't worry.) i plan to epoxy it so it will be more like a stiff body shell, so i have to make a mold for that. but you can see in the detail how i screen printed directions for its making directly on the fabric itself. the pixelated camo was really exciting to me, especially when i found out that it is harder to detect a person wearing it than regular camo, like on cameras the pixels hide the wearer better. another bonus about the epoxy that i learned from my prototype is that it will actually tone down the brightness of the camo and the screen printing i did just sings out, louder than pictured here. hawt.

On another note, here are some possible show titles for portland:

universe, cloth, map

ordinary vestiges

instructions and extroversions

seams and extroversions

any favorites? or other suggestions?

{photos: 4 comme des garcons fw09 photos from style.com, lucy orta's refuge wear intervention london east end (1998), u.s. 1943 army photo from olive drab, , my own screen printed pixel camo siamese tankini (currently untitled, prototype)}