Tag: contemporary lace

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Anderson Ranch Arts Center – Soft (and not so soft) Sculpture

I have been so busy that it’s hard to even decide what to write for this post. I should backtrack…

The Kickstarter Campaign was successful. Wooo!! After finding that out, I immediately had to race out to Aspen, CO and The Anderson Ranch Arts Center for my course in Soft Sculpture.

Aspen…yes. Beautiful, amazing, and of course, depressing to leave. Time flew. While it did fit in a smidge of site-seeing and one good hike, most of that time was spent in the studio – a beautiful and well-lit loft space.

A few of my studio cohorts! Such a wonderful crew!

Our teacher, Lynn Richardson was (and I’m sure still is) fantastic. She had the great attitude of, “Yeah! Let’s make this!” Exploration and invention was definitely encouraged. Here’s some of her fabric sculpture…

Red State by Lynn Richardson
2005
vinyl, nylon, steel, lights
20′ x 20′ x 18′

On that note, I’ll just start posting some of my experiments of combining casting resins and lace or other fabrics.

 Cast paper lace.  This was a tricky little mold to make, but I enjoyed the crystalline results when backlit. So much so, a studio cohort even helped me shoot a few videos of it spinning in light. There’s no thread in it (just bits of paper), but hey, it’s definitely lace! I am currently making a series of these in black. Small individually, they could fill a wall and look delicious.

 This is a hanging onion orb, if you will, using only red organza. I recently tried casting one in my own lace, but learned the hard way that I must use clear tints when using my lace – ope!

I donated this little piece to the Art Center’s Auctionette, where I heard it was happily snapped up. This is 100% cotton cast in red-tinted resin.       I am currently trying my hand at this technique to make a lace bowl. I hope to get it cast this weekend (fingers crossed).

Here are a few more studio shots of building the molds and mother molds.     

And finally here I am examining my experiments. I suspended all my little tests so by the end of the week I had a curtain of randomness behind me. I also cast a few fishing bobbers and had some fun little results (the intent is to work with the media on a larger scale, but for the workshop I worked on a small scale to conserve materials and make as many experiments as possible). But I’ll save that for later!

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Can’t See the Forest for the Trees

Woefully behind in blogging, yes. 2011 was a tumultuous year. But moving on, here’s the latest work: Can’t See the Forest for the Trees. 3×9′ (yes, feet) of cotton & polyester thread (Gütermann) and pins (but not as many pins as you’d think). From initial concept to finished work, this took about two months. I hope to post about the process within the week.

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Process is integral to my work and often becomes intertwined with concept as in Can’t See the Forest for the Trees. It is essentially about being lost, about losing perspective (literally or metaphysically) based on one’s position in time and space and how subjective clarity can be.

As such, every detail of the forest was meticulously drawn and stitched with varying degrees of density. Through a finishing process, details closest to the forest floor stay relatively clear. Moving upward, details become fuzzy until we reach the canopy where many details dissolve into abstraction.

A significant part of its making is the fact that part of the work itself was lost in its manifestation. Even the viewer’s interaction with the piece is determined by the viewer’s relative position to the work.

It is the constant play between being able to see the details and the (often elusive) big picture, whatever that picture may be.

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Seen individually, the thread structures form random shapes. Many details become visible up close, but the shapes have little meaning unless seen from a “big picture” perspective.

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My eyes go straight to the bunny in this image, though I had hoped to emphasize the frog at the very bottom. Ah well.