Words on the Surface, Redux

 

Putting text to the test, we creative women printed, dyed, batiked, stamped and calligraphed through the weekend. Candid comments took my planning to the next step, toward turning this workshop into a proposal for on-the-road teaching. The upside: it seems to be an intriguing topic, one that can take participants in many directions. It works for both advanced professionals and for beginning students (with a bit of tweaking and not too many in a class). The techniques taught can be applied to work of different scale and different formats. Downside: it takes a lot of supplies.

Here are some of the samples I made, and some of the results from participants, as well as a few candid shots of the artists (Mary Ann Johnson, Elizabeth Romanella, Caryl Gaubatz, l to r). The samples are some of Kathy Hayson's pieces. We used soy batik, thermofax printing with shaving foam, sun printing, original stamps and other techniques -- and combined and layered them to create Complex Cloth.

Our intent in these samples shown was to embed the text messages into the surface of the cloth, with the form holding as much importance (and as much of the "message" as any literary element.  That could mean really making it disappear or become a surface texture, or, if we wanted the words to still be legible, finding ways to integrate surface color and texture.

I'm open to ideas and suggestions, and would love to collect jpg examples of other artist's works to include in a slide show for future events -- with due credit of course. If you are interested in being part of this teaching aid, please contact me though the comments section. 

 

 

 

 

 

Emotional Commitment

 

I am temporarily unable to download images from my camera (lost cable), so to keep us all thinking, here is an short excerpt from Dr. Richard Hemming's speech on research. Hemming was a famous big thinker in the development of computers, and the complete speech is well worth a read -- be ye scientist or artist.

 Everybody who has studied creativity is driven finally to saying, ``creativity comes out of your subconscious.'' Somehow, suddenly, there it is. It just appears. Well, we know very little about the subconscious; but one thing you are pretty well aware of is that your dreams also come out of your subconscious. And you're aware your dreams are, to a fair extent, a reworking of the experiences of the day. If you are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake up one morning, or on some afternoon, and there's the answer. For those who don't get committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things and doesn't produce the big result. So the way to manage yourself is that when you have a real important problem you don't let anything else get the center of your attention - you keep your thoughts on the problem. Keep your subconscious starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully and get the answer in the morning, free.

Simplicity and Dyeing

A bit more on the dye ceremony: Pat Schulz, another artist among those present, shared her pictures of the final "product," a unique silk scarf with ruffled edges, due to the two different weaves in the silk. First, the scarf being dyed (before the mordant of iron).

 

 

The simplicity of the ceremony and the beauty of the scarves came to mind with a bit of synchronicity in my reading last night of John Maeda's The Laws of Simplicity. Maeda, a graphic designer, visual artist and computer scientist, is the founder of the SIMPLICITY Constortium at the MIT Media Lab (where he is a professor). He writes in Law 7 (Emotions: More emotions are better than less):

"Growing up, my siblings and were taught that everything in our environment, including inanimate objects, had a living spirit that deserved respect." 'Even a cup?' we asked. 'Even a desk?'...The answer was always, 'Yes.'....Believing that all things around you -- rocks, river, mountain and clouds -- are somehow 'alive' was something that I couldn't grasp as a child. However, as an adult, I prefer the world with its mysteries intact and I find myself comfortable with the thought....

And he  goes on to explain:

"Aichaku (ahy-chaw-koo) is the Japanese term for the sense of attachment one can feel for an artifact. When written by its two kanji characters, you can see that the first character means 'love' and the second one means 'fit.' "Love-fit' describes a deeper kind of emotional attachment that a person can feel for an object. ... Acknowledging the existence of aichaku in our build environment helps us to design artifacts that people will feel for, care for and own for a lifetime."

 In the midst of our disposable culture, a consumerism run rampant, we as artists and as owners of "stuff" could perhaps think a bit more about aichaku.

Dye Ceremony

The day was beautiful. The setting perfect. The ceremony perhaps less of a ritual atmosphere than I would have liked (but as my friend Susan said, perhaps Izukura realizes how little tolerance and experience westerners have of ritual). We sat in the circle of the riverside gazebo, in this early spring wind and sun, and dyed beautful scarves, each woven in two weaves to give texture to the wisp of color that resulted. The dyes were from plants and insects (mine, a final soft grey) was dyed with cochinil.