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:

Necktie label

I recently added a label called 'neckties' and realized that I don't have a good image of the Necktie Ballgown on this blog. So here it is:



I constructed the Necktie Ballgown by draping, sculpting and stitching together approximately 60 men's neckties into this kimono-like dress and then wore this extremely heavy costume (about 10 pounds) during the performance below.






I recorded this performance at Gaviota Beach near Santa Barbara, CA a few months after completing my MFA at CalArts. The action was a personal commentary on femininity and professionalization and was the second in a less specific ongoing series of Landscape Actions. The piece is called Climbing Rocks in Necktie Ballgown.

Necktie Purses statement

This statement is relevant to the Necktie Ballgown as well.

These purses are sculpted from men's neckties through a process of weaving and draping. The construction does not follow a set plan, but is open-ended and intuitive, a method that allows each piece to evolve through draping, pinning, and stitching over a soft form.

I love working with 1970s neckties because of their bold patterns, brilliant colors, and sturdy polyester. These vintage ties have a particularly playful and showy, almost peacock, quality. What makes them compelling as masculine tropes is what lends them so well to be transformed into feminized objects.

Purse Show Opening

Tonight is the opening for the Purse and Handbag show at Hanson Gallery... from 4 to 7 pm, I believe.

Also, Kevin Cowan of the Knoxville News Sentinel wrote an article about the show, the work and the artists. Here's an abbreviated version of the article online.

Embedded in Kevin's article is a video of Judi Gaston, friend and fellow fiber artist from the Emporium Building Studios on Gay St. in Knoxville. She's talking about her Recyclable series of clothing to which the purses belong. I especially like the bit where she's describing the rustling that the skirt of plastic bags makes as you walk about "leaving a trail of fun behind you."

More Necktie Purses

Below are two more purses I just finished. These will be included in a show this month at Hanson Gallery in Knoxville, TN. I'll post more details once the show opens. But until then, a little preview:

From necktie purses 2

with lining fabric:

From necktie purses 2

From necktie purses 2

From necktie purses 2

again with lining fabric:

From necktie purses 2

and a detail of the quilting:

From necktie purses 2

More Neckties

I've been getting a lot of traffic from two sites who've linked to my Necktie Ballgown. The site pages from Craft Test Dummies and Hobby Schneiderin (in German), have links to other people doing things with neckties as well.

Not too long ago, Erin from Dress a Day also pictured a necktie dress in progress from Cynthia, another of her readers.

Below is a purse I made a few years ago from 70's era ties similar to the ones I used in the Ballgown:




Again, there's something very compelling to me about transforming this masculine trope into femininized forms.

Also, I quite enjoy the sculptural process that I tend to use while working with ties. Maybe because the ties already have finished edges, I feel freed up to treat them as distinct elements that I then can drape and/or weave together over a form (such as a dressform for the Ballgown or a fabric form for the purses). The construction becomes much more intuitive if I allow it to evolve through the materials rather than lock myself into a plan with fussy seams and corners.

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

Joanna Staniszkis wearable art: The Linen Project

some beautiful pieces of wearable art

Click through the gallery to see all these great pieces... more interesting things on the rest of her website.

Situationists meet Wearables

Net_Dérive, by Atau Tanaka and Petra Gemeinboeck with the collaboration of Ali Momeni

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