This week’s Friday Fibers Roundup features a mix of soon to be open exhibitions as well as articles focusing on the inclusion of humor and the abject into art. 1) Symmetry Breaking presents eight artists from the Pacific Northwest: Emily Counts, Jovencio de la Paz, Jo Hamilton, Anya Kivarkis, Brenda Mallory, Kristen Miller, Emily Nachison …
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This week’s Friday Fibers Roundup is a collection of articles and exhibitions that critique our current culture (both local and internationally) and offer insightful ways to rethink how things are traditionally done. 1) “A Legacy: Hair, Language, and Textiles” by Sonya Clark reflects on the use of familiar materials as language used by craftspeople, and …
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This week’s Friday Fibers Roundup explores projects, artists, and exhibitions that attempt to pick apart the categories of art, craft, and design that we so often put people’s work into. 1) Have you ever wondered what happens to those massive painted theater backdrops when a show ends? Well, Jen Kahn (who has been a stage …
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This week’s Friday Fibers Roundup features a variety of makers addressing the conceptual feast that blankets have to offer. From political to personal, comfortable to subversive, blankets have been a tool that artists have been using for ages. 1) “The Colorful Quilt Squares Chilean Women Used to Tell the Story of Life Under Pinochet” by …
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Surface Design Association functions primarily on the energy provided by a vast network of dedicated volunteers. While there is no doubt SDA appreciates this service, sometimes a thank you doesn’t go far enough. So I suggested to Managing Editor Lauren Sinner that a recurring artist conversation with a volunteer would go a long way to …
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In light of the conclusion of our biennial conference in Portland, OR, artist, educator, and SDA member Robert Mertens reflects on his experiences, thoughts, and conversations while attending Making our Mark: SDA at 40. “The site of art begins to diverge from the literal space of art, and the physical conditions of a specific location recedes …
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This week’s Friday Fibers Roundup features a mix nature themed articles–from indigo dyeing, to needle-felted portraits of pets, and so much more. 1) Artist Laurel Roth Hope creates humorous, colorful, and one-of-a-kind sweaters to fit a standard urban pigeon–complete with a retrofitted hood with eye and beak holes. While seemingly funny at first, each suit …
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This week’s Friday Fibers Roundup features a combination of forward-thinking fashion, digital textiles, and a call for entries that meshes traditional and digital technologies. 1) “Touch and Electronic Textiles” by Ricardo O’ Nascimento explores the use of capacitive sensing in textiles through various national and international projects (via Medium). 2) Mechanization, Material, and the Matrix …
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Weaving can be viewed as a handcraft, an ethnic tradition, a global commodity, and a prototype for binary systems. It can also be viewed as embodied cognition, a term that came up frequently during a recent conference, Weaving: Cognition/Technology/Culture at Columbia University, New York. The purpose of the conference was to challenge the common assumption …
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Our amazing conference just finished, and to top it off, this week’s Friday Fibers Roundup features articles on some of our Keynote speakers and demonstrators (plus some extras)! 1) This video shows Aram Han Sifuentes’ Protest Banner Lending Library where Sifuentes leads workshops to teach others how to make their own protest banners in lieu …
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