Angela Eszter Wells

Arbutus Gallery, KPU Surrey, BC

Photo cred: Colin Madden

Fast Fashion Angela Eszter Wells Cloth, clothing, packing tape, 227cm x 72cm Acrylic on canvas, 152cm x 152cm 8/04/2018

Attempt to recall any event without a memory of clothing and fabric of some sort floating to the surface. Our connection to cloth is a touchstone of our experiences which aligns with our identity. Clothing and fabric span the breadth of our values and desires.

My work is an examination of the different routes this clothing takes through our lives. I use clothing that is no longer wanted, that is bagged at the thrift store, unsold, waiting to be collected into shipping containers donated to third-world countries where it is com-modified by middlemen or dumped in landfills. Altering them is a way of questioning the attitudes, values, and desires of societies which have embraced a consumer era of ‘fast-fashion.’

Lots of ideas but finally finding narrative within my mock-up pieces that resonate. Floating cloth on the canvass, piles of clothing produced in a ‘fast-fashion’ climate, containers of clothing donated off our soil, to end up in sub-Saharan Africa, disrupting and decaying while we wipe our hands of the problem and continue to consume at an alarming rate. Yeah clothes are heavy.

I wrote about my own experiences with clothing and fabrics in the last post. There are layers of stories contained in cloth, clothing, fabrics. My intentions with this art work is to express those layers within a form of color and dark bundles of fabric arranged in the windows of the Arbutus Gallery.

Test for numbers required. 300 rolls should be enough for two windows. Windows: 89.5“ x 28.5″ each frame . 20% bright color (white, teal, green, blue, pinks, red), 78% drab color (grey, brown, black), 2% gold

Lots of drab colors

This work is inspired by my observations of ‘fast-fashion’ shopping habits in North American. This is what I am doing with several bags of used clothing collected from a thrift store in Tsawwassen. These are unwanted clothes that will never sell in the local market. They are collected and donated to sorting companies who then ship them overseas. They will become the commodity of commercial profit agents and middlemen, recycled and eventually sold in markets in sub-Saharan Africa, known as chagua, mutumba or salaula. Eventually they will be buried in African soil or incinerated.

The rolls are reminiscent of fabric ends that can be bought in a fabric store. It is the last piece of fabric left on a bolt that is usually a meter or less and bundled to make room for new fabric bolts. The are bought by crafters and quilters, or eventually go into a bargain bin, and then eventually sent into the secondary market via collection bins.

I’m examining the meaning of clothing in my own life. Memories from my childhood--the Sally-Anne, as the Salvation Army was nicknamed, down on Columbia Street in New Westminster--the tables piled with clothing, drab, dark heaps that we thrust our hands into shoulder deep, thinking the ‘good stuff’ would be found in the middle. I was seven and the tables were elbow high. The piles were mountainous. I floated between the tables too afraid to try anything on for fear of snakes sewn into the sleeves.

I remember a pair of pants with flowers and a baby teal background that I wore till threadbare. My bed quilt was made on the sewing machine with polyester patches cut from my mothers old clothes. One time my lamp fell on it and melted a hole. There I discovered my baby blanket sewn in between the flannel backing and polyester, for warmth.

Fast forward to fast-fashion. A new era picking up momentum since the early 80s.

More cut & roll preparations for upcoming installation

Deconstructing 500 articles of clothing was a strange experience that led to deep considerations of the rhetoric around clothing. For example the act of cutting up a heavy winter coat to roll into tidy bundles requires considerable time and energy (about an hour), which creates a meditation of questioning the logic of sending this fabric overseas. How exactly could this be of use to someone in a hot climate, or to the youngest and most vulnerable in a population. If it is re-purposed, how are the buttons and zippers processed. What about the tools required to do such a task, how are they sourced and sharpened. The question of working conditions came to mind after even a few hours of bending over a cutting pad handling scissors and rotary blades that got dull quickly. What about colors and sizes/body shapes and weights. Many of the clothes were dull greys and beige, bulky and wide waited, with broken zippers and torn hems. I breathed in fabric fibers that caused itchy eyes and congestion. It made me think of the bundles of material that were fumigated with toxic chemicals before packing to be shipped to Kenya. After cutting and rolling 200 pieces of women’s clothing, some of it became dear to me. Items that I initially saw as castoffs started me thinking “OK, I could wear this.” By the 400th piece I didn’t look at all, and became robotic with the process of cutting off sleeves, rolling strips of deconstructed pant legs. There were so many layers of thought that was tapped into during the process of creating this work.

The process tapped into a deep suspicion of the system of consumerism, waste, donation, and ultimately shipping it off to a third-world stakeholder.

Notes from little brown sketchbook. Site visit to the Arbutus Gallery. Installation begins April 4 for group show

Exploring braided fabric strips. What did we do with unwanted clothing before the trend to send it all over seas began. We didn’t bury this material did we? Did we make something out of the rags. Yeah there was rugs and rope and swings and things. Recently I heard there was a hole in the ground were bolts of fabric were tossed because the print was ugly.

Preparing for the final project. Looking at expanding the concept of clothing. Investigation the accumulation of clothing, fabric and memory, clothing recycled, piled, floating to third world countries to deal with, where we don’t have to see the problem.

Looking at artists works. Sketch works by David Bailin, specifically erasure work “Ladder’s.” Possible to incorporate sketched materials as at this point I am considering a diptych.

Other artists: William Kentridge, “an appropriation of other people’s distress” as he says about his work. I ask myself am I appropriating Western consumerism.

There are areas that look incomplete as I ran out of time. Interest comes from the signifiers within the different types of clothing...ethnicity, feminine, body.

I am pleased with the lack of horizon. My intention was to maintain a lack of perspective in the work.

Progress is slow. Here is an under painting. I have changed the composition as evidenced by the areas of beige tones in the back ground where I will paint grey to match rest of back ground.

Built the canvas stretcher.

First attempt. Difficult to get the frame to lay flat. Canvass was too loose in the end, even after gesso. Went ahead anyway.

Proposal-Urgency of Action

For this project I am planning to focus on color and paint. My original idea was to reference a photo of a scene captured at NYC Pride last year. In the background out on the street, pride participants are seen through a window. The foreground is inside and shows from the side view, a man sitting at his restaurant table.   But I have changed my focus to a collage piece I created for another class this semester.

Urgency of action is relevant to this work as it references the current issues surrounding consumerism and the massive amount of clothing and it’s byproducts accumulating in landfills all over the world.

I made some changes to

Using 18 gage flat sheets of steel to create brackets and sculptural pieces. The conceptual direction is to mount on the wall but also considering a maquette of a much larger public sculpture. The finished work sometimes emerges from the process

This week I completed the mandatory safety test to be able to work in the metal shop at Surrey campus. I’m cleared for take-off.

In-class work on Friday: conceptualizing with sketches for upcoming project .

Images were explored for their contemporary relevance within society. Influences evolve from what feels like another life-time; raising two son’s and watching them develop their skateboarding skills throughout their teens and even into adulthood. I have explored themes around skateboarding in the past through my art, specifically the intersection of skateboarding and urban landscapes.  Skateboarders, along with homeless street people, seem to be at once the pariahs of urban culture, and the omniscient creators of urban architecture. They are the

A trip to the library was not a question as I lay in bed all week with a bad cold. Instead, I flipped through this coffee table special, a gift from my son. The Annunciation receives enormous coverage throughout the Middle Ages onward. My art work plays with the Annunciation past and present. I see the

I am researching ‘how to build a large canvass stretcher’ of a certain size so that I can work on a larger scale than I have to date.

This is a site that builds high-quality frames and ships world-wide. It’s a good place to start, to get an idea of what I should consider in my own build.

https://www.ucsart.com/education/large-heavy-duty-stretcher-design-features

There are several YouTube sites for DIY stretchers. Now that I have an idea of what quality is, I have a better understanding of which DIYs are going to help me meet my goals.

While the search for DIY resources continues, I am building a list of required materials & supplies...

My sketchbook documents specific approaches to each assignment in Open Studio. Through the process of research I was exploring the works of Cady Noland, Martha Rosler and Kelly Lycan, to name a few. My notes include a short poetic style reflection on the work of Maskull Lasserre, Coriolis.