Fibers Symposium: OVER

Well, our three-day-jaunt of dressing up, eating well, and talking about Fibers is over. And I can't say I'm that broken up about it (except for the eating well). It was a long few days and I was left a little disappointed.

Official Symposium Site

The keynote speaker, Gerhardt Knodel was excellent--well spoken and clear and interesting. But the speakers on Saturday...the whole theme of the event was 'Materiality' and they seemed to be focusing a lot more on categorization and schematics than materiality. Also, there were many students and artists there at the event, and I really feel an opportunity was lost by not having a forum for the students to really discuss their work and their thoughts on materiality, and share with each other.

Right now work begins on my pulled-through embroidery skirt. My original idea was peacocks, but as I began to drape the fabric, it looked sort of like a strange jellyfish, so I went with that for my embroidery motif.

The embroidery drawing and the skirt waist-band pattern.

Navy blue velvet for the actual band.

And my very sherbet-y, awful painting in a resort motel sort of colors for the embroidery work.

5am Flowers

Mmm, so here's an early-morning, post Flower Show post. Our space is really beatiful, and the show is absolutely amazing. Definately go if you're in the Philadelphia area this week. Right down the aisle from our exhibit was one of jewelrty made completely out of plant parts-so cool.

I had some major issues getting my dress on the mannequin--it was so thick I couldn't re-attach the arms after I put it on. And I had to take it completely apart to put the tights and leggings on.

What's under the massive dress. The mannequins legs were rather longer than mine, so it looks different.

After much cursing, it finally goes on.

Betty setting up her 'Pigeonspiration"


Oh, and we just got our postcards for the gallery opening on Wednesday. Sorry for the the photobooth shots, I don't have a scanner here.

Gallery1

So I forgot to mention! In conjunction with the Fibers Symposium next week, all the Fibers students (all 20 of them, we're a small bunch) got a chance to show in our school's gallery space. I mean, it's a tiny place, and not too fancy, but just seeing the shiny, official looking postcards was really great.

Today was set-up day, the place was filthy! We repainted the walls and all the pedestals and had utter confusion for a few hours as people wandered in and out with their work. But it looks so good, I'm pleased as hell.

Giant Ipod decided to slump over.

Setting up.

Hammer time.

I also just got a sneak-peek at our display place at the flowershow--it looks a lot nicer than I expected.


And finally--my crystalline success.

Failure/Success

So do you want the good news or the bad news?

Good News: I finally got crystalzation. Pictures will be forthcoming tomorrow when I'm more lucid. Turns out that while suspending string in a glass with the mixture generally doesn't do much, pouring it in a shallow pan and placing the string in that works very well. The colors you can get are fascinating, the food coloring doesn't really mix if you make the batches seperate, so you can acheive ombre and tie-dye effects.

Bad news? I am so bad at printing fabric. So bad. So bad.

It's partially because we were using paper stencils for this one, but my registration was awful and I got a lot of fisheggs and white gaps. Picture also to follow on that. On the bright side, I mixed my colors really well--we were using transparent base and pigments, not pre-made plastisol or speedball inks, and it was tricky.

And since I don't want this to be text only, I think I found my inspiration for my next Projects Project. The theme is loose, spontaneous workmanship contrasted with very tight, controlled work.

I want to take this sort of idea from the Fall 08 Marc Jacobs and really expand upon it. I'm planning to do a high-waisted skirt with really tight, controlled embroidery on the top, then bring out the last stitch around the whole thing--like the strings coming out of the patterns here, but across the whole top band. Then take these and loosely net them together into a web of color over gathered fabric that will fill it up, and bring it all in at the bottom.

That is, if I convince my teachers of the idea, we'll see.