The final nesting place

Bird's Nest Dress, 2009
off-loom garment free-woven from shoe strings,fabric scraps, ribbon, wool yarn and felt

Building the Bird's Nest Dress, progress notes 3: What to wear in this particular naked city

I'm working on a solo exhibit for Fitchburg State College's Hammond Gallery (Massachusetts) in September called "What to wear in the Naked City." The show is a psychogeographic exploration that stitches together connections between the psyche and environments – both the body's immediate environment (clothing) and the larger environments of cities. I'm interested in how places imprint themselves on the mind and how this imprint affects (easy or encumbered) movement through those places.

Pieces for the show include clothing built of found objects from 3 places I've lived recently: Los Angeles, CA; Knoxville, TN and Fitchburg, MA.

The Bird's Nest Dress (below) is constructed from shoestrings and other scraps found in Knoxville, TN. Here's what I've built thus far:


For more about the Bird's Nest Dress, click on the label "Bird's Nest Dress" below.

Building the Bird's Nest Dress, progress notes 2: Do, undo, redo

Because the process of the Bird's Nest Dress is free-form, I've had to rework the structure of certain parts several times. Here are some pics of the uninterrupted progress:

Building the Bird’s Nest Dress, progress notes 1: We won’t play your distinctions between nature and culture

Barbara Kruger, We Won't Play Nature to Your Culture

I began the Bird's Nest Dress free-weaving project a few years ago in tandem with the Figleaf Loincloth under the intention of joining the two pieces together into one garment. The Bird's Nest Dress with Figleaf was to be one in an ongoing series called "Wardrobe for Paradise."

In the series, I was playing with nostalgia and the Edenic myth as it relates to the female body, to (what I consider) a misguided notion of "returning to nature," to modesty, suffering, clothing, hair and covering.

In the Bird's Nest and Figleaf pieces in particular, I wanted to make connections between two different processes of free-associative weaving and speak to how organized activities – whether they be the repeated motions of birds or humans – result in binding disparate elements together and in building protective coverings. I was thinking of the nest as a place to lay eggs (not to mention a derogatory term for female pubic hair) and of the fig leaf as this trope in Western painting used to cover female genitalia (and hair).

Though it's customary to associate weaving (or building in general) with the inception of human cultures, I'm interested in the similarities between human weaving and other animal weaving in much the same way I'm interested in similarities between dendritic forms of both trees and freeways. I don't see the two as distinct or oppositional, which I think ultimately unveils my progressive hopefulness in the ultimate outcome of human evolution.

Pictures from stage 1 of the Bird's Nest Dress:

Fig Leaf Loincloth

I just finished this piece yesterday:


Fig Leaf Loincloth
off-loom tapestry woven with bamboo and cotton fibers

It only took a little over a year to finish. See previous post.

Of course, I was working on other projects as well and would set it aside for months at a time. Still… what a labor-intensive process… and what a feeling of accomplishment to finally have it completed.

Here are a couple of process pics from the recent stage of work:


Front view, with second cardboard loom
See first cardboard loom / cartoon for the leaf from previous process post.


Back view

Fig Leaf Loincloth and yarn p0rn

Yesterday was the first opportunity I had to get over to Loops (here's the website). I've wanted to go to this yarn store since they opened in the spring, but never seemed to get around to it.

I got this lovely yarn in the picture below to finish off my fig leaf project – part of the Wardrobe for Paradis series. It was supposed to be the strategically placed focal point of the Bird’s Nest Dress, but the fig leaf has separated itself from the dress and morphed into a garment all its own – a loin cloth.


The yellow-green yarn is 100% bamboo. This stuff is luxurious. Silky and almost hemp-like. It's beautiful. The pink stuff in the left background is a silk / wool blend -- extremely soft and silky. Both are imported from Japan and carried by Habu textiles based in NYC. Check them out; they even have a silk covered stainless steel yarn. Wow wee. Both the yarns I bought have just the right amount of sheen for what I need in this piece.

Process notes and photos are in the previous post.

Fig Leaf / free-weaving process

I used my own free-weaving process that I sort of make up as I go along. I've laid out the steps I went through below. (Forgive the poor quality of the pics.)

I first drew a cartoon on cardboard from a composite of found photo images – the cardboard cartoon was both loom and a loose color / value guide

Then I cut around the cartoon

Next, I stitched in the main structures (in this case veining) with strong cotton yarn sewn directly to the cardboard

And then stitched it to another piece of slightly larger cardboard and outlined the whole leaf with heavy wool yarn that I secured with thread

I trimmed the base cardboard and cut notches in the edges to hold loose threads… then began free-weaving

I just kept filling in more areas and changing threads often

At this point, I’ve woven to the density I want. This is weeks worth of work for something not much bigger than my extended hand, but is exactly what I want as far as size and structure

…the back side with all the loose threads tucked in their respective notches… and here you can see the source of cardboard – a pizza box from The Red Onion, a fine mom and pop pizzeria with great pizza.

Then I separated the two cardboards with the seam ripper

The two pieces of cardboard

This is the tricky part: I had to cut away the structural yarns from the original cartoon being careful not to pull them out of the weaving

The freed form… looks like a sea creature

I wove the ends back into the weaving as I would with a tapestry… and again, a very long process… only half-way done at this point

The front side

Hairshirt / Wandering in the Desert

I just finished making a hairshirt... something I started a few years ago (see previous process post).
It's the first finished piece in the Wardrobe for Paradise project.


Hairshirt / Wandering in the Desert

Hairshirt (Work in Progress)

Here's the process for my Hairshirt, the first piece in the Wardrobe for Paradise series:

This is how it began a few years ago (yep, a few years). It was something of a drawing/painting using my hair, handstitched between 2 layers of tulle. I was thinking of aerials and meandering.


a (fuzzy) detail


and some cufflinks coiled from dreadlocks of my own hair (I decided not to use these)


front view on Freida the dressform


back view