Knit Frog

What an amazing treat today! I sat in on a 2D Design Class in the ASU Fibers program. Elise, who was leading the critique, allowed me to sit in as a guest in her class.

The assignment, as I understand it, was to take a ritual or ceremony and re-interpret it or translate it using the techniques learned in class. Here were a few of my favorites (not in any particular order – I really loved them all). I personally tend to like work that falls into the following categories: evoking strong emotions of controversy for dialog, provide a unique expression of our heritage in the domestic arts, or an expression on communities or culture.

I was really glad that I was just a visitor today. I’m new to hearing art critiqued at all, or thinking about it in terms of the way it was discussed. I found the comments from Elise and her students to be as important as the the art they produced in my introduction to this new world.

• “Daily Untitled” – Mirror hung. Hand dyed, embroidered Scarves placed over the mirror. It was an interactive piece. The ritual was that when she was a kid she played with her mother’s many scarves to dress up and play. Now she uses them to get ready on the go.
  Critique – Beyond this project, I enjoyed this lady’s thoughtful comments of everyone else throughout the class, and the scarves themselves seemed like they would be extremely marketable. Her work was really well constructed, and  her line of scarves were each unique but complemented one another well at the same time. Her execution was simple, and fully thought out. It made sense.

• Introspection – I don’t know if that’s what this project was called, but this student stated that the project was a reflection of the introspection she has been doing. She used to use bright colors, and her color dying has been turning to more organic themes. It’s hard to describe this gorgeous project well. It looked like a lovely sheer tapestry to me when I saw it across the large room we were in. It caught my eye among all the other projects right away. It was feminine, had peach, olive, and all kinds of layers and embroidery sewn in. When I saw it, I thought right away that it was a style that I would probably want to learn if I were in class. She mentioned she used tea stain to achieve the beautiful peach sheer color.
  Critique - There were three sections that had layers of rings that formed pockets in the art piece. One student commented how it was almost like tree rings. That was my favorite comment made in this critique in the context of introspection. I think it is brave of this girl to pick introspection as a ritual because it doesn’t fit as cookie cutter as some of the other concepts, but I like that it should be a ritual we do to grow and push ourselves forward in life.
• Smoke Shrine – This student got everyone talking! He made a green pillow and placed an embroidered Marlboro menthol logo on  it. He died a bunch of cigarettes to look kind of like money, and placed them on top of the pillow. He placed candles around the pillow, and basically made a shrine to cigarettes. It was kind of a love/hate concept.
  Critique - It was funny to watch the class be in a split decision over this. There were some smokers in class who were more inclined to see the pedestal side,  and there were non-smokers who were immediately turned off. I liked that he evoked emotion. That is what art is supposed to do.
• Inspired by a Baby Blanket – This student was inspired by her childhood baby blanket that was falling apart. She traced all the holes in it, and put those holes in the piece she made. The project was all muted, off-white coloring. It had all kinds of techniques and processing applied to it. She used pigment stamping and incense sticks to burn holes in the fabric. She had a background layer to give it more depth since the foreground layer had holes cut and burnt into it. The overall effect of her work made new fabric look old and warn like her childhood baby blanket.
  Critique – If I could have taken one piece home with me, this would have been it. One student actually loved it so much, she asked her if it was for sale during the critique! I wanted to stand around and stair at this piece longer. It was larger than some of the other pieces. To me, it looked like it belonged in a Brazilian Anthropologie photo shoot draped over beds with brightly colored birds nearby.
• Toilet Paper Art – This student took a roll of toilet paper and covered it in tiles of sewn together dyed fabrics with whimsical embroidery on different squares. The square closest to the roll said, “How are you?”
  Critique - Loved the student reactions to her project, and this girl’s unashamed admission of being unwilling to use public restrooms. I also liked her explanation of the awkward social question, “How are you?” I agreed with it being a weird thing to say to people. Why does that have to be a social norm in our culture? I know in other more religious cultures, people bestow blessings on each other as a more standard greeting. People say “Peace be with you” and all kinds of lovely blessings to one another. In the US, we’ve boiled it down to “How are you?” I think it deserves to be embroidered on toilet paper. It is very awkward.
• Dinner Table – This student embroidered place settings of where everything should go on a dinner table: plates, forks, spoons, knives, etc. she also embroidered where mother, father, daughter, son should sit. She burn holes in the fabric showing the decay in society that threatens the tradition and family eating together.
  Critique – This was a really beautiful, powerful concept. I almost felt like crying when we were talking about it because it was easy to understand it on a lot of social levels, and at intimate levels, too. You could picture where everyone in the family should be sitting just like where a dead man was in chalk outline in a murder scene… kind of like the murder of the family. The accuracy in her embroidery was really lovely, and added to the emotion of it all along with the burn marks in the cloth.

Every project gave me insight into a student’s personality and passions, and you could tell they all put a lot of thought into their work. I suppose I expected students to be more timid about their work because I had less confidence about myself when I was in school. I so admired these students for their courage to defend their work, and take criticism. It’s not an easy thing to do at any age. They all had strong creative concepts. It was impressive how many were refined, and close to being fully realized.

It’s been over 10 years since I graduated from university. I haven’t spent time in a college setting since. I have been indoctrinated by the corporate world. Like alcohol destroys brain cells, I think corporations may have destroyed parts of my creativity. I didn’t take many art classes when I was in school because my family didn’t really see art as an option for people like us. I was taught to think about things that could earn a living, not what would make me feel alive and passionate about life. I love my family, but my family has got it all wrong.. sorry family. I love you, but passion should come first. Risks are worth taking.

Mr. McCuistion and I are currently hosting a creative group in our home. We meet once a week, and are going through the book, “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity” by Julia Cameron. We just finished Week 7, “Recovering a Sense of Connection”. One of the tasks during the week involved creating a collage as a form of pictorial autobiography to include past, present, future, and dreams. It was also within the constraints to just include images I like. I was supposed to timebox myself to 20 minutes. That did not happen. I have a little more luxury with my time right now than what is typical for me, so I had fun with this creative exercise.

I used a black poster board as the backing, and layered it with larger images to serve as the collage background or base image layer. Then I began filling in another layer of images in the foreground of the collage.

"It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you're not." - bird quote in my collage

I noticed that a lot of the photos I ended up using landed on the theme of dreaming in some way. I placed this floating cross-legged girl looking through a window in the middle of a hiking trail. It makes me think of how I want to sit and stair at the whole world, and explore it all.

The girl below playing in the sand reminds me of when I visited Florida on a family vacation when I was a little girl. I saw the ocean for the first time, and collected sea shells. I knew then I wanted to move to a warmer climate. I asked my mother why we lived in Wisconsin. I was confused why people would choose to live in the cold when there were warmer, in my little girl opinion, more beautiful place out there to live.

I now see there is a beauty in the place where I grew up that I didn’t know when I was small. They are my roots. Nothing can replace that, but somehow I knew from the first time I visited another place, that I was going to want to explore. I don’t forget where I come from, though. They are two different things entirely.

I included the elephant above in my collage because he is dreaming of beautiful textiles and designs. I love fabric and fibers! I have been thinking of expanding my knowledge of fiber with a class or two once our creative group is over. So far, I’ve found interesting classes at ASU in their Fibers Program and at Mesa Community College in their Fashion Merchandising and Design program. I would love to feel more confident as an artist in these areas. I like the idea of creating, and expanding what I know. It makes everything else I do more fun and satisfying.

Mr. M liked the milkmaid photo below the best in my collage. I picked her out of a Fine Cooking magazine cheese issue I had lying around. Along with it came a story of how there is a legendary cheese made by milkmaids just for women in labor. They women wouldn’t tell the men about it. They kept the production of the cheese a big secret, and just made it for each other when they were in labor. It was all rumors and gossip. Is is said to be a very salty cheese. Apparently someone is still making use of this old legend. I found this labor inducing cheese is still being marketed today, and seems to be doing pretty well.

My mother is in our creative group, too, and it’s fun to see how her collage was different than mine, and how it was similar. Perhaps I will do one every 5 years or so to see how my life in collage perspective changes through the years. If for no other reason it’s just fun to get a little messy every now and then and tear through magazines shopping for fun pictures and things that inspire.

Collage Image Credit:  Images from My Life in Collage project were taken from Juxtapoz, Fine Cooking, Vogue Knitting, Urban Farm Sustainable City Living, Green Craft, and Artful Blogging magazines and Anthropologie catalogs.