Layers of Meaning
commentary on design, fiber art, & modern embroidery from Serena Fenton
Luisa Cevese creates "Fossilized Textiles" out of industry waste: "large blocks of unusable end pieces, damaged fabric, yarns and threads, salvages, small pieces of uneven cloth, cuts from garments... Riedizioni doesn't discriminate between natural or man made fibres, the only criteria is to select the textile which enables us to produce a constant design out of a discontinuous element."
From this, she creates a variety of practical household and fashion items. An article in Metropolis magazine explains Cevese's process: "The company is just one of many that supplies Cevese with silk and tie remnants for her Riedizioni line. She fixes these leftovers in large sheets of resin then cuts them into handbags, change purses, floor mats, place mats, and blinds."
Recently Cevese received some antique fabrics and a new concept was launched. "Getting that textile was purely accidental, but something clicked,” Cevese says. “I decided that if I cut it into a bag it would be a nice decoration, but fixing it in resin as a whole expresses the history of the object much more strongly." These works are carried by the US Store, Moss. Their internet catalog describes one work: "'Tappeti da Tavolo', or table runners, are mosaics created from vintage table laces, cottons, linens, and embroideries, each worn from personal use, but now 'fossilized' in polyurethane."
Examples of Cevese's fossilized textiles:
mosaics from vintage tablecloths
Pages from the textile archive, discolored by age, eaten by worms and insects and filled with hand written notations.
Recontextualized wool prayer rugs from various parts of the former Soviet Union.
Cevese sums up her philosophy: "My objective is to find the simplest solution which involves, in the widest possible sense, the minimum of waste."
Moss store images by Davies + Starr
Digital kimonos are appearing in Japan. The actual kimonos are made of fabric, but the fabric is digitally produced. Several media outlets have reprinted an Associated Press article on Kimono designer Yuko Iwakuma. "Her 'digital kimonos', which she began selling last December, go far beyond the flower and bird designs of tradition, abounding with keyboards, playing-card kings and queens, puppies and apples."
An article in Asia's Straits Times gives more details on the digital printing process and includes pictures of the fabric printing process. " Digital design and ink-jet printing also allow kimono makers to avoid excess inventory and relieve growing concerns about a shortage of skilled hand-dyers. At her workshop, Ms Iwakuma uses an Apple computer to design kimonos and sashes. She says the motifs are attracting women in their 30s who seek inexpensive and modern-looking kimonos they can wear to dinners and parties, or just for fun. One kimono is priced at about 63,000 yen (US$574)."
Yet another article in Japan Times gives more details: "Tokyo-based kimono retailer Kururi Inc. started marketing its own digitally designed outfits in April at one of its three shops in Shibuya Ward, with prices starting at about 39,000 yen.
Kururi President Izuru Miura said the digital method enables the firm to produce custom-made kimono with unique patterns at low cost. "Kimono dye houses usually accept orders to dye one pattern onto 10 rolls of cloth, but refuse to dye onto just one roll," he said. "If we made 10 kimono with the same pattern, sometimes it would be difficult to sell them all."
By using the digital method, the firm can produce as little as one kimono with a specific pattern. This gives the product added value and helps the company reduce inventory costs, Miura said."
Silk painter/fiber artist Jeannine Reno tracked down Iwakuma's web site. All text is in Japanese, but the photos are great! Some elegant patterns, while others are just plain fun.
Creating a family photo quilt that is not sappy, sentimental and kitsch is a challenge. The tendency is to take a small emotionally significant photograph, (a wedding, a new baby, a deceased parent) and print that directly onto a piece of fabric. The problem grows from there: how to surround the photo: more photos? Sentimental fabric?
Immigration and Integration: A portfolio of work reflecting the experiences
of immigrants and their descendants in the Jan/Feb 2004 issue of Fiberarts magazine offers an array of image driven quilts that are powerful visions. They demand our minds as well as our emotions.
Andrea Kalinowski has created a quilt, almost 8 feet tall, that features one ghost-image of a 'Jewish immigrant pioneer' woman, which is superimposed over a patchwork of the stories and images of other pioneer immigrant women.
Olga Waters has followed used a simple photo collage technique in her quilt, Light Down Under. Using images of her family's past, Waters tells the story of fleeing Holland after world war II in search of a new life in Australia. The colors in Waters' work move from stark black and white to rich warm hues and swirling leaf-like lines.
Other images are abstract impressions or three dimensional works. The article is a treasure trove of ways to incorporate memory, but leave out the mawkishness.
The New York Times reviews the show Design Is Not Art: Functional Objects From Donald Judd to Rachel Whiteread, at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. There are some new and interesting quotes in the first half of the article on the "what is art / what is design?" question: "Donald Judd intones that art and design fulfill two entirely different purposes. Scott Burton seems to argue against the distinction, stating that contemporary art is taking an increasingly 'relative,' or physical, relationship to the viewer: 'It will place itself not in front of but around, behind, underneath (literally) the audience in an operational capacity.' Richard Tuttle states sagely that 'a great designer has to know everything while an artist doesn't have to know anything.'"
Finally a conclusion is reached: "Artists can do whatever they want in their art; such liberty is the point of the activity. Design involves a kind of selflessness and a complex awareness of the givens: the human body and its needs, social space, the laws of gravity, the means of production and the demands of the marketplace."
Sadly, from the web view, the review is more interesting and thought provoking than the actual exhibition. The artists invited to submit an object are all "well-known Minimalists, Post-Minimalists and post-Post-Minimalists". The work appears like a reunion of international style groupies who are trying to keep up impressions for in their declining twilight. The chair pictured (right) is supposed to express 'sculpture in love with furniture'. Maybe. But I wouldn't want to sit on it on an icy January night.
I think I'll skip the art and stick with the quotes: "As a designer, however... he can be authoritarian and even sadistic."
Embellisher part II. We don't have a lot of resources for the embellisher in the US; nor seemingly in any of the English-speaking countries. However Babylock (I believe) is a Japanese company and they seem to have had the machine over there for more years and in Eastern Europe as well. There is a group in Russia going by the name Yaga who appears to be turning Embellisher-crafted items into art fabric available in commercial quantities. It is amazing to sift through their website and revel in the imagination, beauty and productivity.
Their explanation of what they are doing (note the parallels to the embellisher):
"Yaga-fabric is a joining into one whole cloth of various fabrics, yarns, threads, fibers in any combination without seams, stitches, glue, and other auxiliary means. By analogy with metallurgy it is a fusion of textile materials.
Yaga-fabric is distinguished by its great patterns, plasticity, depth and texture effects which can not be achieved in other technologies.
Yaga-fabric is not only primary cloth for further work but they can be also referred to a handmade art-object unique due to its origin. The figurative row of Yaga-fabrics is endless"
Some of the links are in Russian and some in English. You choose a language at the front door. There appear to be different images, possibly catering to the differing markets.
handbags
palatins (sarongs?)
shawls
brightly colored shawls
shawls - wallhangings
dresses
and more dresses
sweaters
window covering
more window coverings
placemats
sofa throw
and more sofa throws
Earlier this summer, I purchased a new machine made by Babylock called the embellisher. Babylock is marketing it as a threadless sewing machine and showing it with a variety of 'crafty' objects. This really does not do justice to the machine. The embellisher is designed using "the European art of machine needle felting. The Embellisher meshes fibers together, using... 7 Special barbed needles" to create surface embellishments. Unlike traditional felting, you can use most any fibers. My current favorite technique is felting silk onto a dark rayon velvet. Since the fabric tends to move and gather in unexpected ways, the techniques lends itself most easily to abstract imagery, though realism is possible, as well.
Babylock is finally realizing the artistic potential of the embellisher and has a site with a flash movie showing a variety of items made using the embellisher. Unfortunately, there is no commentary, just photos. I can tell you that the gold fabric with the gorgeous texture is created by running a flexible fabric, such as a silk dupoini, under the embellishers' needle, using a grid pattern. Needless to say, the embellisher can be combined with tradition quilting, embroidery or art fiber techniques to create visually rich art works.