Screenprinted tessellation of death in procion dye. I drew out an accidental 5/16th of an inch shift both ways for 2 and 1/2 yards cotton. I'm glad I didn't do the entire width of fabric and left it to undulate [it was accidental because the stencil wasn't fitting but shhh] I'd like to do white on an offwhite fabric, I think that would be pretty, then maybe try fiber etching this into silk/rayon fabric.
We were supposed to make a yard of fabric but because I'm stupid I didn't get to finish it. but atleast my teacher was impressed. This is done by taking a small woodburning stencil tool [the tip is like a felt pen] and melting the plastic fibers to make little tears in the fabric. It's pretty but it's not done...ever.
This is called burnout on silk/rayon. It's like magic. Like stupidly toxic magic. the goo stuff burns out the...uh the rayon leaving the silk threads behind. I put it on a darker background so you are able to see that it's pretty much see-through. The bottom picture is what happens when you leave all your hard work [top image example] out to dry and someone gets it wet after it's dried and therefore mushes all the burnout paste into a giant wet cloud shape. The plan was to make these sheets into a lantern until I found out that you can't iron it into a pretty pattern if someone's already fucked it up.
My materials class is just so...I don't know...but I just thought I'd share one of my favorite accidents. This is rust on cotton. I first wrapped the fabric into a tube and bound it in bailing wire then doused it in vinegar and water. Then I unwrapped it after a week and placed it on a giant flat sheet of rusted metal and doused it again. Then I came back and added some steel wool. Tahdah. It's about a yard long this is just my favorite part. The other fabrics I tried didn't turn out so liquidy but I got a lot of beautiful cross patterns
This was a project where we had to walk down Mark St., SF and smell things, write them down, and then find a way to map at least 3 scent places. I'm only showing two because they were all really horrible to begin with but the 3rd one was just really ugly. Sorry the pictures are so yellow...and that I can't draw or paint...or make a tunnel book. Basically I chose 3 really difficult things to make a project. yay me! I think it's a good start for something better. These are just sketches in more ways than one. Especially because the way I wanted to print the text didn't work so I had to do it on the computer right before class and I had 4 layers but for each book the 3rd layer on all of them didn't really make any sense so you can still see my little "cut here" markings. I don't know...sketches...could've been cool.
When me and Crista were on our way through the shady streets of sf we saw a church with open doors and a for sale sign on the gates. It was completely epic. this creepy man had bought the church and the church had just left all of this waterdamaged stuff behind including birth, death, and marriage records. Almost everything this man found was on sale. And this is exactly what our show is about. So some of the pictures we took will hopefully go up in the show. I should have taken more of the sale prices on everything but...oh well. I WISH I HAD A CAR...AND A LOT OF MONEY. because our show would have been perfect with the altar and the pews and the everything. uuugh. but the guy was way creepy and kept trying to force us into buying things even tried to give us gravy boats...so I stole a bullet out of the makeshift collection plate instead. ha. what an asshole.
I made some Makeshift Posters for the Individualized Show I'm organizing. We had a little poster party where some people came to help out and one of our guys Lael created the stamp to make it all look a little more cohesive...Though they all look like children made them so no worries about that. I don't have images of other people's but I'm sure someone else does...somewhere.
A little sample for my Franken Fabrics class [we destroy fabric to make new fabric]. I burned the cloud things with a heat gun on polyester then heat transfered a xerox transparency onto the fabric then rusted some lines throughout the clouds and then embroidered the holes created by the heat gun with some gold thread. I think it'd make a great poster if I scanned it...The transfer didn't turn out too well because I get so bored with ironing. I can't take it. I was thinking it would be nice if I ended up embroidering the image of him in gray scale. It was also suggested that this become a sculptural piece instead of just a wall hanging which I like [light box maybe?]. It's hung up right now in the textiles department so maybe a better picture later.
“For all the men who have been singed and driven back by flame.”
It is a spectacle reserved for the night. The heat that bakes your face, pulsing and igniting a slow whiskey soaked grin that can barely swallow around the racing heart that’s beating in your throat, leaving your stomach clenched and empty. The air is thick with giddy fireflies that smolder into moths of feather ash. It burns as you inhale or are you exhaling? Fire-starter, fire-breather, you are the book burner.
At first application it has the notes of a hidden library: of the cool dark mustiness of mold and dust, flowing into a warm mixture of paper, leather and printers ink. It bursts into the heart notes of a bonfire with hints of vanilla and warm stones, glowing like an ember and tingling with whiskey and kerosene. It then fades into a cold smoke, ash falling on the rain-soaked tar of a tree lined road at 3 am, the in-between hour of a misty fall morning.
This project was for my What Smells class [about scent and perfumes, the industry and historical significance/loss of smell] we had to create an incongruous perfume [a perfume that doesn't fit...that shouldn't be a perfume] based on a brief created by a client of our choice. I chose the Firemen of Fahrenheit 451 as my clients. The first paragraph is the brief and the second are the notes of the imaginary perfume. We then had to design something like an ad campaign, a bottle, a radio ad, etc. I was the only one who made a bottle model. It's a super janky tape imitation of a zippo. I wish I could actually make it...all of it. Im super impressed by my photoshop skills though ahaha. I'd really like to continue making perfumes of/for/about characters in books. A whole series...It'd be fun...if I had time.
I'll come back and show the actual psd wrapper once I compress it or whatever.
I'm actually really proud of these; though they aren't perfect [I can't do perfect. Obsessive, yes but perfect , never] This is the first time ever I have sketched an idea and it has come out exactly like I wanted it to. It was funny because I told my teacher he wasn't allowed to talk to me about my project [he really loves helping figure out problems and talk us through why we're doing what we're doing which is super exciting to have such a responsive and thoughtful teacher but at the same time it makes me almost always regret or rethink what I'm planning to almost disastrous ends] and he complied with my wishes though I could see it was a struggle for him not to discuss it with me. I also didn't tell anyone else what I was doing and it really helped not talking about it, just going ahead and doing it. If they asked I just screamed something like 'puppets' or something so then we nicknamed me the puppet master. And in the end that's how they turned out; toylike. I began with 100s of old postcards I found from this woman who traveled all over the place and wrote on these cards as if they were a diary or something. It was kind of sad because they were never sent to people. So I decided to bring the postcards together in a communicative way I guess...The people are from Israel and Italy, the hotels from Amsterdam, the long building from Sweden, the cars from Norway, and the mountains from Austria. I have many more cutouts from all the places she traveled and would like to continue making these interchangeable landscape rings. I think they're fun and it's a new way to do what used to do all the time, collage images, but in a wearable way. I'd like to work with silver or something though...nickel is such a bitch to work with: most jewelers despise and disown it because it's so brittle and hard and stupid and super poisonous. For some reason it's the only metal I work with. I guess I like killing myself faster than I thought.
This was my 'final' for casting. I reused my basket from my textiles final from last semester and inverted a sand casted glass dome into it so that you could look through the bottom of the basket as if it was a telescope or a kaleidoscope. I then made another basket to accompany the telescope but instead had the dome protruding and inserted a light on the inside of the basket. The lit one was less successful than the telescope so I'm not going to show it. It was very satisfying to hold and look at different light sources. The texture of the sand casted glass created a sun or moon scape depending on the strength of the light source. I think people enjoyed it and they encouraged me to go bigger with different lenses and different materials. I'm really excited about continuing the idea and surprised myself by looking through a sketchbook from last year and finding a similar construction/idea that I had wanted to make. I'm glad my head tricks me into thinking something I think I haven't thought before.
Holograms are officially the hardest things to take pictures of. ever. well...besides the back of your own neck...I had to bump up everything contrast, temp, tint, saturation, etc wise just so you could see some sort of image even though they're blurry because I was holding a lamp in my mouth, the camera tilted at an impossible angle in one hand and the hologram at any awkward angle I could get at with the other...now I have cuts all over my hands. anyway these are part of a series of jesus with kitchen supplies like strainers, drains, cupcake/cookie tins, etc as halos because jesus is magic and likes to hide everywhere...like toast...or stains. I have one more jesus and 2 others that have nothing to do with jesus that I could just not get good pictures of... the deformed glass jesus was dripped into an impression of the same toy mold I'm using in the holograms...happy easter from the "purportedly magic jew"!
This is the 'finished' piece of the wax paper lace in progress post. I'm not too happy with it. I think the idea is fantastic but just technical problem after technical problem made me kind of give up and I just wanted to be done. After about a month working on this I just wasn't interested anymore and then that last final rush to finish just didn't work out; the clasp. Again I like the idea of the clasp [the design of which I stole from an antique book cover which connects the piece to the library stamp used for the lace pattern...in my head] but it just didn't turn out like I had expected and what I was doing [grinding the metal down so I would be able to bend it in order to fold the halves to create a back and front] ended up snapping the metal so in the end I had to epoxy the magnets to 4 seperate nickel pendent pieces which looks horrendous. I was working to 'de-value' the aristocratic ruff collars of the Elizabethan era by using wax paper and nickel while at the same time attempt to 'up grade' the wax paper material by historical association. I named the piece 'In Memory Of' because of the library stamp of Werner Lewald [who ended up being a WWII hero and president of half the bay area transportation companies before he died, which then ruined my piece for me because I felt like I was 'using him'...which I was] I used to make the lace pattern. I think there's a total of 15-17 layers of wax paper...I don't know...like I said...my idea is good I just can't ever follow through.
I found this really fantastic...jersey? tubing for sale at anthropologie for $9 a box [originally priced at $80 or something outrageous]. I think it had come with instructions from a crochet/craft/artist/company/I don't know but they were missing. I should have gotten the other box because it is the most peculiar fabric...ever. Anyway I got bored and started knitting this eskimo hood/cowl thing in stockinette stitch [check out those size 19 needles baby!] which I normally hate because it curls, but since it's so big and heavy and chunky I thought it might work.
