#studioproject1

Studio Project #2: Mobilize the Cute

As we discussed together during class on Thursday, this post serves to summarize your next studio project I’m calling “Mobilize the Cute.” Get excited!

The processes we study in fiber are undeniably soft, so as artists, we are already always battling with the cutesy nature of our fiber materials and processes, especially if we want to be taken seriously in an art context. For this project I want to tackle, head on, this issue and try to find ways to use “the cute” as a strategy to our art making advantage. 

With this project, you will apply “cuteness” strategically to something that isn’t cute to make a complex, interesting fiber artwork. 

Here’s the plan:

Step 1: Choose 2 sources or ideas of inspiration for your project that are not cute. These can be things, themes, or ideas and they should be different from each other. They are what your project is hoping to be “about”. Be as specific as possible in choosing these sources of inspiration for this project. These sources can be anything of genuine interest to you and will drive your decision making process to what specific form your project takes, how it is constructed, and how it is presented.

Step 2:  Sketch and design ideas for this project using your sources as the inspiration. This will be your homework between Tuesday and Thursday's class this week. Please have sketches of 3 different ideas for the project by the beginning of class on Thursday.

Step 3: Once you decided on a particular direction, make an art project that uses any of the fiber structure processes or techniques we are learning about in this class (crochet, felting, soft sculpture, braiding, etc.) In addition to fiber, your project can also incorporate other materials and processes as long as they serve your ideas.

Step 3:  Consider how the object is presented during the critique as part of what it is. Does it sit on the floor, wall or hang from the ceiling? Is it worn on the body? How does it attach or hang? Why that method or device? How does it contribute to your work’s message or communication? You are responsible for all the decisions you make and how they impact how we understand the meaning of your work.

Step 4. Give your work a title and have this information available with the project at the critique. P.S. Untitled is not an acceptable title for this project. I’m going to be strict about this!

Projects are due on Tuesday, March 19th and will be evaluated in a critique conversation during class time.

Images, above from top:

a few of the artwork examples from the assignment powerpoint presented last week...are they cute??

artwork by Louise Bourgeois, Claes Oldenburg, Yayoi Kusama, Stephanie Mertz, Dorthea Tanning, Joel Kyack

two books on cute if you want to learn more about the subject...

"The Cute, edited by Sianne Ngai" (part of the Documents of Contemporary Art series)

"Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting" by Sianne Ngai

Awesome/Terrible Banners Project Sketches and Ideas Post

To help you prepare for your first studio project, I want each of you to compile your thinking, research, and ideas for studio project #1 that was introduced last week into a post on your blogs. You will be assigned small groups on Thursday to discuss your ideas with, so be prepared with a post on your blog BEFORE class starts on Thursday.

Here’s what I’m looking to see in this post:

1.) 3 sketches of different ideas for the project. Try to push into exploring several different concepts, so each drawing or sketch describes a different idea. Use whatever materials make sense to you to work out your ideas, but insure that digital images or scans of your sketches are posted on you blogs so that I can give you credit for your ideas so far.

2.) Indicate what surface design techniques you plan to use and what materials you plan to use. Anything we learn in class is fair game. You can also incorporate other materials along with fabric into this project, but please discuss any unconventional material ideas with the professor to insure they are appropriate.

3.) Indicate your construction plan this project. How will you make it? Will it be made from one large piece of fabric or smaller pieces sewn together? Are you sewing on the sewing machine or by hand? How does the flag hang?

4.) Indicate how does your project to take into account both sides of the work. Is there a specific front or back or does the work read the same on either side? 

5.) Indicate the shape and scale of the work. Are you using the typical flag rectangular size? Are you making something the same proportion as a regular flag (3 feet by 5 feet) or a different size or shape? How do these choices reflect the ideas you want your flag to describe?

Please do not consider this post and our small group conversations that we will have on Thursday as an approval process. You are encouraged to start on you project when you have found an idea that you are excited to explore. You are free to get started on your project before you meet with your group, if you have not started already. 

Your post is due by the start of class on Thursday, September 28th.

Image above:

Studio Project #1: Awesome/Terrible Banners!

Our first studio project starts with a site: the fiber studio ceiling above our heads. This is the place where our studio project will be installed as a collaborative installation of individual artworks incorporating each of our individual artistic voices into a collective installation experience.

Inspired by the complexity of translations in a fiber reference from the Bible in Song of Soloman (Song of Solomon 6:10) and the plethora of flag based artwork about identity and culture in recent years by contemporary artists, as a class, we will be creating an installation experience with each of us contributing a flag/banner like work that hangs from the ceiling in the center of our fiber studio space. The challenge for each of us is to create an individual object that works in chorus with other artworks to create a unified installation experience.

What do you want to say in your work? How does your individual artistic voice hope to contribute to the conversations happening in art?

Here are the studio project #1 rules:

1.) You can choose what fabrics (cellulose, protein or synthetic or a combination of these) you use for this project. Your ideas should be the drivers of your material choices.

2.) The fabrics you use for your flag/banner should be primarily dyed and designed by you. You can use any of techniques we have covered and will cover in this class so far. This is not a project about using commercially sourced fabric.*

3.) Your project can include a composition of patched fabrics or can be a single piece of fabric. Use your sewing knowledge to patch together a larger piece of fabric from smaller parts. You can use the sewing machine, hand sew, or a combination of both.

4.) This is a mixed media friendly project. You are encouraged to use surface embellishments in your projects, things like embroidery, beading, sequins, etc. You can also include skills and materials you already have from outside of fiber into your fabric designs (such as photography, design, painting, etc.). Your ideas should be the drivers of your material choices.

5.) Your banner/flag will have 2 sides: one that faces the door of the studio and one that faces the back wall of the studio. Your concept should consider and utilize both sides of your fabrics surface toward meaningful ends.

6.) Your banner/flag should be about some of the ideas of current interest to your work at large. It should serve articulate your own point of view as an artist. Your flag represents you in the larger structure of the installation environment, much like an American flag functions in an international context.

Deadline: Thursday, October 19th. Your project should be installed and ready to discuss together by the beginning of class.

Images above from top:

woven flag project by artist Sonja Clark called “Monumental Cloth: The flag we should all know”

both sides of one of the banners included from the larger installation called  “In the Wake” project by Cauleen Smith for the 2017 Whitney Biennial

artwork by Kimsooja 

film still from 1960s Japanese film “Samuri Banners” 

an image of the women’s March in Washington DC in 2016

an image of one of artist/educator Corita Kent’s annual Mary’s Day parades from the 1960s

historic photo of suffragette protest with banners

an example of a suffragette banner preserved by the Oklahoma Federation of Colored Womens Clubs Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

one major inspiration for our project: the fiber studio site

Seeking to create to zines that express feeling (”to feel”), I’m excited to visually create and explore two contrasting emotions that while so different, are actually just as much the same and can have the same basis for their feeling!

Above: 

Zine #1 (of 2): “To (Have) Love(d)”; outline of zine composition snd incorporation of assigned elements and principles 

Details/concept inspiration!

Close-up of  Zine #1 outline

Above:

Zine #2 (of 2): “To (Have) Lost/e”; outline of zine composition snd incorporation of assigned elements and principles, 

Details/concept inspiration!

“This is not light” or “This is a dream, c.2020″ 

Plaster, gold paint, acrylic paint

Studio Project #1: Grid Structure + Collage = tools for interesting drawings

As we move deeper into the semester and get closer to the end, our class time is shifting away from the still life into the contemporary practice of drawing from a bigger more zoomed out lens. As we have seen in our lectures on contemporary artists using drawing through out the semester, every drawing is a combination of what it is of, and how and why it is made. All three of these things impact how we make sense of what we see. 

For our first studio project, I’d like each of you to work hard to begin to build in what I’d call “intentionality” into your drawings. As articulated by Margaret Davidson in “Contemporary Drawing: Key Concepts and Techniques”:

“Intentionality means working on your art consciously. Consciousness in drawing calls upon the artist to think holistically about the drawing, to continuously think of all the concepts and how they interrelate, and to remember that every decision has a reason behind it, a reason that pertains to the meaning of the drawing. It takes practice to become conscious of things previously done unconsciously, and it takes practice to assess those things and then choose to either continue them or change them.”

This project is one tool for you to think through what this might look like and to begin to consider how you can make your own art with intention.

Some decisions are made for you for this project, specifically: technique and surface. But many decision are still wide open: subject matter, mark marking style and mark making materials, what kind of space is described (illusionistic, flat, abstracted, expansive, etc.) and scale. 

The rules:

1.) Use a grid structure to create this drawing.

2.) You will create a collage as a tool to make your drawing. This collage should incorporate ideas, forms, images and materials of genuine interest to you as an artist. The finished collage is what you will use as the source of your drawing. This source collage will not be shown with the drawing, but is a tool used to make a drawing.

3.) Use provided paper for the finished drawing. You can adjust the actual size scale of your drawing as your ideas dictate within this limit. (You can decide to cut the paper to the appropriate size or shape for your ideas.)

4.) Media is open for this drawing. Color is also an option if it is helpful to how you want your drawing to communicate.

Things to consider:

What do you want your work to communicate? What subject matter, forms, ideas, moods and concepts are you interested in exploring in your work? How can the process of a drawing best serve your ideas?

As you work through the composition of your collage remember that it is going to be translated into drawn line and value. Use your collage as a starting point and tool to help you create an interesting drawing, something that expresses what matters to you as an artist. These don’t have to be the most important or profound ideas you can imagine. Sometimes a silly idea can make for the most compelling art. Draw from what you understand and are interested in spending time thinking about.

Studio Project #1 is due on Wednesday, November 20th.

Images above:

title: PARTY STEVE 

Per il primo Studio Project di questo trimestre, io e @iddp-flori abbiamo dovuto arredare un appartamento per una famiglia di quattro persone con un budget limitato ad Affoltern, un quartiere di Zurigo.

Abbiamo visitato l’appartamento lunedì per prendere le misure e fare le foto e poi abbiamo cominciato ad immaginare che tipo di persone potessero viverci e di che cosa potessero avere bisogno. 

Così, abbiamo creato la famiglia Büchi - Ortiz, formata da Rabea, una maestra svizzera e Juanpa, un cuoco spagnolo. I due si sono conosciuti ad un festival a Barcellona e si sono subito innamorati: adesso hanno due figlie, Tabata e Marisol, entrambe in età scolastica. La famiglia si è appena trasferita dalla Spagna e ha deciso di educare le proprie figlie in casa fino alle scuole medie. 

Per lo stile dell’arredamento (vedi mood board) ci siamo lasciate inspirare dai negozi di seconda mano, visto il budget limitato della famiglia, e abbiamo optato per uno stile eclettico, tendente all’industriale/scolastico, con un’influenza spagnola e con un richiamo al mondo del cibo, vista la professione di Juanpa.