Arthur!

I almost never pick up free "magazines" on the street. They usually have too many ads, or interviews of overly-hyped celebs, little new info, or stories that would require research or time....which is all a consequence of beign free, I suspect. Anyway, Justin always brings free magazines home, and he found a really good one this week. It's called Arthur and it's seems a bit hippie/pychedelic (they call themselves a "transgenerational counterculture magazine") which is not my thing, but they had some really good, a bit off the radar, articles in this issue (number 26!). You can pick it up on the street or download the whole shebang on their website. Here's some pieces I liked:

Lavender Diamond's BECKY STARK

I have never heard of Lavender Diamond, but you can hear them here. A beautiful girl with an intersting story. And of course lovely songs.


Thurston Moore & Byron Coley have an audience with YOKO ONO

I know she's contradictory: sometimes raising money for good causes and others famously selling off Lennon's estate for her own profit, or making music I can't bear to listen to but paintings and films I absolutely adore. An excellent interview that critically looks at Ono's work as well as revisits her life thus far.


Zen humorist/media innovator HENRY JACOBS

I'm a little bit in love with Henry James....he plays left-handed ping pong and wants to make a movie about it to show the world the other (better!) side of America than the one most people in other countries see.


Fringe knitter TINA MARRIN

Her work reminds me a bit of Clare Tough's early designs. A download is available on Tina's how to make your own miniature knitted skunk.


MIRANDA JULY's time machine

Sweet illustration, fun little interview.

Time & travel connected

On Friday September 14, 2007 at 6PM EST performances occurred across 21 cities spanning the globe. This project, called 21 Cities at Once Performed, was part of the Conflux Festival. Curated by Nat Slaughter and Hope Hilton, the way they write described the project really resonated with my interest in clothing:

As a curatorial collective, we are interested in wireless network systems existing not only through the use of computers and the internet, but through a human awareness of simultaneous participation and collective consciousness.

I think clothing can be a "wireless network system" that is outside all things tech-y. Ideas about social status & behavior are communicated through clothing, as well as messages of approval, resistance, and memory. I wrote a bit more about these ideas here and in my MA dissertation.

At the time of the performance I was scheduled to fly out of LaGuardia airport in New York City. I figured I would be right over the city at exactly 6PM. The idea of being over the city instead of on the streets like everyone else intrigued me. I would become a part of a whole group of airplanes in motion, which itself is actually a wireless network connecting cities.

So I decided to document my participation in the largest wireless network in the sky (surely by weight anyway!) by constructing a garment that could record my experience. I made a paper flight vest that I folded carefully and brought onto the plane and wore throughout the flight. I think the idea of recording experience in clothing is something people really do all the time. We have examples in everything from lucky socks to wedding dresses to gift garments unsuitable for wear but always cherished and kept anyway. Here's my flying experience:

BEFORE flying




AFTER flying




I flew with Justin Hardison who did a field recording of our flight, available here.

Barely back....

I have returned and have a whole bunch to say about my project for Conflux/21 Cities, but getting back into work has been super crazy busy and I have footwear sketches to do too. And I forgot my sketchbook in Colorado and am desperately waiting for it to be shipped back to me....waah! Tomorrow!

Away

I'm about to get on a plane and do my performance piece for Conflux's 21 Cities at Once Performed. I'll post all about it you can be sure. Then I'll be away all week, so posting will be sporadic at best.

Fiesta in Pamplona

Last night I rewatched the movie Talk to Her and it reminded me of this book about Pamplona that Justin picked up in a charity shop. The book and the movie are just full of great images of the clothes and the ritual that surrounds clothes in bullfighting.



The beautiful fabrics and rigid silhouettes affect the form of the bullfighter... and the state of mind as well, I'd bet.



And look at this guy! Just the regular Joe-about-town at the Fiesta.


The book, Fiesta in Pamplona has a cover of a Picasso drawing/engraving. The photographs are all by Inge Morath.

Per Spook

This time last fall, I spent a few weeks in Scandinavia and saw this show at The National Museum of Art Architecture and Design in Oslo. Per Spook was a Norwegian fashion designer with his own haute couture maison in Paris from 1977 to 1995. His work has incredible prints and unusual silhouettes, something I think is a rare combination. Spook is still active as a designer, he creates prêt-à-porter under his own name in Japan (!). These images are scanned from my catalog of the exhibit, and there are a few more scattered around the internerd (lots of crystal....I guess he did some glassware work), but I didn't dig up anything recent. Nothing compares to seeing the garments in real life. Now I wish I'd bought he catalog to the Sixties Fashion exhibition I saw in London before we left!

phonics illustrations

Yes, it's been a busy day (outerwear! design card deadline!), but I've had these illustrations in my visual journal for ages. They are from my phonics book in elementary school. I loved to think up all kinds of narratives for the bottom picture...who lived in which building, whether the man on the raft was the woman under the umbrella, who would join the girl swinging (or who left her to swing alone), why no one was on the bus....more deep thoughts throughout the week, I'm sure.

ouch....monday.

Easy post day....from an old book of illustrations above and below a few favorites from my collection of old photos I've bought at yard sales, etc.

Round up 5

I wish I could say all of my links today are about fashion week, but I'm just not that organized. I'll try to put everything in a few categories though.....

Fashion or Fashion Week related:
• Kathleen is doing a great batch of posts in honor of NY Fashion Week. My faves, he comments on the pages of September Voque and a vintage Lane Bryant catalog
• Burda just launched an updated website. I posted about it before too.
• St. Jude's Gallery produces gorgeous fabrics designed by some excellant artists and designers.
• Mrs. Dean links to some beautiful fashion photography (click on Les Habits).
• Angel Chang, whose S/S08 show is today (right now!) and who I worked with a bit on this collection (my contributions were dropped), got a nice little blurb on Style. [via]
• Fashion show invitations! (also, I realized Slow and Steady Wins the Race, which I wrote about before, is still in production!! SO wish I was going to that show)
• A short, sweet piece from Cathy Horyn.

Things to make:
• Print out your own graph paper!
• Shoot better product photos

General sites I should have linked to something specific about and I always meant to read but never had them on my RSS feeder:
• Life Hacker
• A classic

Unusual, amazing bits:
• A couple of good links from the ever excellent Boing Boing. A relief map rug by Laurens van Wieringen and a woman visits her on heart [Link]
• An interesting bit about hand gestures

Thoughtfulness:
• I am so in love with Entwinements. Two recent posts, slowness and mindful making
• When I was working as a graphic designer my favorite cards and mailers to get in the mail were from James Victoire. [via]

Not bad, actually. Most fashion related.....Have a good weekend!

digital fringe

I also have a video up on Digital Fringe, which is part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Right now you can see all the multimedia work on the website, but they'll play on screens all over Melbourne from Wednesday 26 September to Sunday 14 October. The Fringe says:

This curated playlist is a product of the extensive callout to over 50,000 emails on all the major arts lists. In this callout we ask people to ferret around their hard drives and dusty camcorders and submit works that will be shown all over Melbourne and beyond. The nature of a web based call out means that there is material coming in from all around the world; from professional artists to thosw who have just completed their year 10-multimedia project and everybody in between.

My piece is on old-timey story about a man looking for something to wear and you can see it here

map of manhattan

The other thing I did this long weekend was clean out my desk....I found this lovely old map of Manhattan and I couldn't resist posting a bit of it. On Sunday, we walked all along the Hudson River Walk. You can see the piers on this section of the map, but of course the lovely greenspace isn't on this ol' map.


The bridges here look so wide....I like how the ferry lines are even represented.


The green wavy gorgeousness of Central Park nestled into a perfect grid.


Sometimes I don't even recognize New York.

Conflux

This year I celebrated Labor Day by laboring over my work. Which was difficult because of the unbelievably perfect weather, but was very necessary and actually felt really good. One of the ideas I've been working on is for the 21 Cities Performed project by Nat Slaughter & Hope Hilton for the Conflux Festival in two weeks.

The 21 Cities at Once Performed project is "a performative, global network where invited participants create public intersections to occur simultaneously around the world." I love Slaughter & Hilton's interest in "wireless network systems existing not only through the use of computers and the internet, but through a human awareness of simultaneous participation and collective consciousness." Some of my very first projects with clothing stemmed from an interest in connecting to other people. I often hope my work is a two part process. Part one being my creation of a piece, and part two being someone else's use of it. I really enjoy the idea of thinking of this connection as a wireless network.

The other great thing about the 21 Cities performance is that anyone can join in and particitpate. if you go to the website you'll see you can still enter your own idea and perform on September 14 at 6 PM EST. I'm going to be doing a piece with Justin Hardison in an airplane over New York.