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

Already September

It's September and I'm working though my studio is far from being set up. I'm just working around the mess. Will be back with some pics in a week or two.

The weather is still extremely cool here in Mass and some individual trees have already begun to change color. Fall is going to be brilliant!

Setting up the new studio in New England

We made it to Massachusetts last Friday without any major moving difficulties. We arrived to find the place beautiful! ...and the weather cool. We're both excited and happy to be here. Even the cats love it here; they have plenty of windows and a sunporch (which I've already set up with an easel, a work-in-progress and some painting supplies).

I'm still working on arranging the shelving and stash in the fiber studio. Will post more as things progress.

Moving Update

Frank and I found a great place to live in Massachusetts! I'll have a home studio for at least the first year or two, but I won't have it set up until August. In the mean time, I'll continue to pack... and then the move...

See you again in August.

Studio clearout and traveling to New England to find a new place

I cleared out my Knoxville studio this week and have been packing things up for my and Frank's move to the Boston area where he'll be starting his new job as a tenure-track professor. This has been a long road for us (8 years in Los Angeles for our respective graduate programs and then a three year appointment in Knoxville), but worth it to be finally headed where we want to be.

Of course, we'll both miss all of our friends, family, fellow artists and colleagues, but we're absolutely thrilled to be settling into a new life in an exciting new location.

I'm writing this from a hotel room in Newark, Delaware making my way up to New England where I'll look for housing. I'm on the road as a pit crew member of an ultra-cycling record attempt. My mother-in-law's husband, Gerry Eddlemon holds the national first place record in state crossings and the world's second place record. On this trip, he'll be attempting two more state crossings in New Jersey and Vermont. In exchange for my help as a crew member, we'll be stopping in Massachusetts between rides so I can look at housing.

Here are Mikki and Gerry together in the Connecticut crossing. And though the article doesn't mention it, Mikki is an extreme athlete as well having won several marathons and long distance runs in her age category and placed first in several races in the Senior Olympic Games... hence the big banner in the first picture welcoming "ULTRA EDDLEMONS."

Frank will be flying into Boston in a few days to meet us there. Exciting stuff!

Open studio: Instances of resistance

This photo montage is another piece in the Instances of Resistance series where I search out and photograph feral plant life growing among human construction / ruins.

I've used some of the same digital photos as the smaller pieces on paper below. The difference is that the photos in the large piece are printed on fabric, montaged onto a raw canvas and over-stitched using the sewing machine.

Instance of Resistance #10: Feral greenery in the underground city
digital photos on fabric over-stitched onto canvas
3' x 4'

Here's a detail of some of the stitching:



Below are a couple of the ones I printed onto Bristol Board then drew over with a soft-lead pencil.

I chose drawing as the medium because I wanted to put my own hand into the photos and make a connection between the role of subjectivity in my art practice and the un-tameable, rogue plant-life. I also thought that drawing would be the best way to animate the plants with playful and caricature-like personas.

I enjoy how these pieces invoke nostalgia (a theme in my work) with their simultaneously shadowy presence and candy-like preciousness.

Instance graffiti #4: 11 feral plants, 8 twigs and 1 cross-beam in brick ruin
digital print and pencil
2008
8" x 10"

Instance graffiti #1: 12 feral plants among others in brick ruin
digital print and pencil
2008
8" x 10"

The stomping grounds / Knoxville in the NY Times

A fellow artist friend who also recently left the area just emailed this link:

music, art, food, green

The article definitely focuses on some of the better aspects of Knoxville.

Sale! studio materials and equipment

I haven't posted in a while because I've been both out of town and working on clearing out home and studio for our upcoming move. I do have some new work as well, but don't have the photos back from the photo shoot yet. Hope to post those soon.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been selling some of the sorted items and studio furniture and plan to sort out more items for First Friday, which is next week. So far, I have for sale:

Consew industrial sewing machine with table
vintage and other fabrics
miter box, saw and other framing tools
35 mm cameras, Pentax and Cannon
Bell and Howell 16mm film camera
slide projector
opaque projector
art tackle boxes
storage boxes and containers
small frames
vintage tables

... and lots more that I can't remember right now. Will update if I think of anything significant.

More conceptual, less material

Here's some playful work from 2001 which I thought was appropriate at this time as I continue to clear out more studio materials... all in preparation for our big move to the Boston area!

These pieces are from the series Found Landscapes in which I chose plywood panels (from the hardware store) with woodgrain patterns suggestive of landscape features. I brought the features out by staining the panels with oil paint.

In the first piece, I collaged a smooth stone in the center of a concentric ripple pattern and then accentuated the pattern by staining with blue paint. In the second, I used yellow paint to stain over a 1/4 circle shape in the upper left corner. Then I outlined the shape and drew sun rays with pencil to suggest a child-like symbol for the sun.




Just as a curious side note, Cathy Malchiodi in her book Understanding Children's Drawings (p. 212-13), suggests and cites research that claims that children who are facing death or loss of a relative will often place a sun in the upper left corner. When I worked with children, I noticed however that most children (even those who are not facing such a loss) tend to put a sun in the upper left corner.

Of course, children from other cultures have different symbolism. For instance, I'm unable to find a reference, but I remember seeing a documentary during my studies about Australian aboriginal children who used semi-circles to represent people in much the same way western children might use the stick figure.

Meditation on the horizon line by way of the map

In the continued effort to pair down materials and use what things I already own, I've been recycling some paper I made several years ago into collages called "Meditations."

I call them meditations because the process is repetitive and structured. Repetition within a structure not only requires a certain amount of patience but allows for the mind to occupy itself... and thus open up to new possibilities. In that respect, I see these pieces as objects in their own right but also as a sort of clearing out which will make way for other work that has yet to be conceived.

Meditation on the horizon line by way of the map, 2008
handmade paper, wax, acrylic and other media

And an image and link to an earlier "Horizon Line" performance:

Performance, Endurance, Monika Weiss and Baptism of Water

I've started another blog, Endurance Studio, to document a long life/art endurance project. Actually, document isn't entirely accurate because the site will become a piece of net art in itself as the narrative unfolds.

The purpose of the project is to organically narrate my shift away from material objects, which has been happening in my work and life for several years. The unburdening process is slow, often uneven and not necessarily a progression.

We shall see where the project goes and how it brings itself into form over time. For now, consider the performance work of Monika Weiss:
baptism of water

And some writing by George Quasha about her work, endurance and the body: conceiving body

March First Friday: Meditations on patchwork, collage and the grid

First Friday has come and gone without much event, which is not to say that the evening wasn't busy or that we didn't have lots of visitors.

In the midst of other projects, I've been working on some hand-made paper collages that I call Meditations (one was hanging for First Friday). I don't have any photos to post yet because the work is being professionally mounted for re-framing (and as prep for a decent photo). The Meditations are grids of inch squares of handmade paper layered on a painted ground. They're a bit like paper quilts but with a mixture of wax and other paint media.

The process and ideas are extensions from the aerials made from paper / cloth covered panels and the stitched aerials. The difference is a more structured and limited format (the grid). But all of these modes are still about the construction of a surface built from a body of coalesced materials that are molded together (almost sculpturally). There's lots of polishing and finishing that draws from ideas in painting though the processes are very different than most painting or drawing in that mark-making, the hand and image are less relevant than the surface and the object itself.

Working with similar ideas, though polishing the surface through photography, Gwenn Thomas arranges fabrics into patchwork patterns and then uses photography as her finishing tool. Here is an untitled piece where the depth of the fabrics and the shadows they cast contrast in relief to the flattening medium of photography. As such, the arrangements become representations of an object that never was constructed.

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.

February First Friday and attachments to place

This weekend was First Friday and though we didn't have much in the way of new exhibits, I did get a chance to talk to Amanda Sparks, one of the artists in the Crave exhibit, which opened last month at UT's Downtown Gallery. I wrote about Amanda's exquisite pop-up book in the January First Friday post in which I lamented not being able to meet and talk to her about the work. But as the calendar fell, we were fortunate enough to have the show run through two First Fridays and I spoke with her about the piece, which is unlike anything I've ever seen. Here's an image from one of the pages.

Amanda told me that she learned "on the job" how to build each page by studying children's pop-up books and adapting those construction methods to her more complex and multi-faceted designs. Many of her pages included composites of (I'm guessing here) 50 or more images montaged together. It was quite the thing of beauty and delight and eloquently articulated a version of childhood in which place and possessive attachment took precedent.

And by intuitive association I'd like to add (for personal reasons which have to do with detachment from place) a link to Roni Horn's Library of Water in which the artist thoughtfully considers the geography, climate and culture of Iceland.

Alba D'Urbano Collection: Wearable Photography

Many of you may have already seen this work in which the artist photographed her own nude body, digitally printed the images onto fabrics and built them into a playful collection of couture clothing. Once you get to the site, click on The Collection and The Fashionshow links to see more pieces.

The City Without Clothes and the 4-year process

For the New Year, I've been doing a major de-stashing -- donating and giving away to fellow artists many fabrics and materials for which I no longer have use. In the process, I've been clearing out some older work as well. Some pieces I'm re-working or mining for materials, others I'm destroying, but many I'm bringing back out into the light of the studio as that's often my process.

I've heard other artists say similar things about their own work -- that from its conception to the final completion, a piece or series often undergoes about a 4-year process. Some ideas are born fully formed, but many need to ferment in a notebook or project box or even sit partially-formed until mature enough to make their way into the world.

Below is one of those works-in-progress that I started while I was still in Los Angeles. It's another in the aerial / psychogeography series. Forgive the dimly lit image.

City Without Clothes (potentials of paradise) work in progress

The materials are velvet, velour and fleece. The colors may be a bit difficult to read in this dim studio image, but they are very vibrant, yet fleshy: reds, golds, purples, browns, pinks and tan.

In the de-stashing, I also brought out small buckets of velvet buttons in some of these colors that I'd like to add to the piece once I get it stitched together on the machine.

A couple of links in reference to the title:

"The Naked City" is Guy Debord's 1957 psychogeographic map of Paris. Here's an interesting English language article with an image of Debord's map (mid-article). The paper proposes contemporary collaborative and digital mapping of usage (rather than the geometry) of urban spaces.

The "Body without Organs" is a deterratorialzing term from Deleuze and Guattari. This Wikipedia entry offers one explanation that's pretty easy to understand.

My work-in-progress is a sort of map to nowhere (as in utopia). It's bodily, bold, joyful and full of hope. It's personal, in that it's potentially everywhere I may have imagined living, but have yet to even visit. It articulates possibilities and parallel lives that have yet to be lived.

First Friday of 2008

First Friday was a bit too close to New Year’s Eve, I think. People were probably too partied out to show up in frigid weather for yet another event. Though what we didn’t have in quantity, was certainly made up for in quality.

Met some interesting and thoughtful people (mostly out-of-town visitors or the newly relocated) and had some engaging conversations. ‘Delight’ best describes what I felt that evening… both toward the people we met, but also upon discovery of a few remarkable pieces of art.

First, the exhibition at the UT Downtown Gallery is exceptional. The show, Crave, includes 6 artists (whose obsessive processes include some form of collage) and is curated by Matthew Garrison of PA. The curator and one of the artists, Joel Carreiro of NY, were present for the opening.

Joel, who teaches at Hunter College, constructs grid-like montages (many in concentric configurations) on large-scale wood panels. His process is quite remarkable in that he builds his pieces from medieval and baroque art imagery printed onto transfer paper and ironed directly onto the panels.

Of remarkable note is Amanda Sparks exquisite autobiographical pop-up book entitled Half a World Away, in which she reprinted and transformed childhood photos and other photographic images to create an idyllic and nostalgic fantasy world of what suburban life was or could have been. Hopefully, Amanda will be present at the February First Friday, as the show will continue through the first of next month.

And then upstairs from us at 3 Flights Up, are the delightful little snow globes of Robmat Butler in which he creates little suburban vignettes from train shop miniatures… things like dogs on diving boards under clear water with bits of snow or parked cars with rust-tinged water that looks like a the worst L.A. haze on the worst day.

My Necktie Ballgown got another try from one of our visitors. Forgive the blurry pictures; they were taken on my cellphone in dim light.

Here is the very lovely Jo-Jo. David is to her left.

And here are Daniel, David and Jo-Jo.