nottene

Shame!

2009-06-10T21:50:00.002-04:00

I'm ashamed to admit I managed to erase all of the photos off of this blog. I know I could blame being a new mother and going back to work, but really it was standard issue impatience. I was updating my own website and clearing off my server without checking or thinking. AAGH!

I've told myself I will find most of the images, but I don't believe myself.....feel free to goad me.

I do plan to post new work as well as new interesting inspiration, and in fact all of my past writing is still on here....so please don't go away.

Above is the amazing 7th anniversary present from my husband. Brass.

New project

2009-04-01T16:47:00.003-04:00

Please excuse the light posting, I'm busy with my latest special project. Willa-Clare arrived on March 6 at 6lbs 6oz and 19 inches.

Hi tech/Low tech

2009-03-16T23:05:00.003-04:00

I swear this is the last content I repost from PSFK for a while!!! Here they write about designer Maarten Baptist and his new collection that goes straight from rough sketches to 3D production, entirely skipping the process that would geometrically perfect his sketches.

Another instance of integrating a high tech method with a low tech way of thinking. I think maybe this is what I've been finding a lot of lately, maybe I need to be focusing on low tech methods merged with high tech ways of thinking?

Video game

2009-03-13T23:05:00.003-04:00

Okay, maybe I'm getting into a trap of just reposting too much from PSFK, but here they lead me to another lovely project, site & maker...

Esquire wrote about this guy's video game work. It's the loveliest gaming I've ever run across. I'm so not into video games, but my dad was an engineer and we had lots of computer access in the early years and loads of hacked video games. The one I loved best was called Haunted House where the screen was all black and you were represented by a pair of eyes. You could pick up only one item at a time and you must avoid monsters and ghosts. The items can only be seen when the player uses the 'fire' button on the joystick to light a match, illuminating a small radius directly around his character; this can be done an infinite number of times, although the match only lasts for a limited amount of time before being snuffed out. I think now I loved that so much of the game was not visible on the screen but happened in your own mind, sort of a conceptual blindness....

ANYWAY, back to Jason Rohrer's games. They have low tech graphics, but complex emotional components. Here's a description from Esquire:

In Passage, you’re this little pixelated guy. You live in the stripe of color. The stripe is twelve pixels tall. It’s green. All else is blackness. Your job is to move up and down and left and right through the stripe — the “forest” — in search of treasure chests, sort of like in the Legend of Zelda....But soon you have to make a choice: share the world or keep it to yourself. You meet a girl. Your fat-pixeled soul mate. Link up with her and a heart explodes. You’re in love. Now she sticks to you as you move through the forest, less easily than before. It’s a trade-off: You can get more treasure by staying single, but bond with your “wife” and you earn double the points for every step you take. If you’re like most people, you’ll choose the comforts of companionship. Only, as you trudge across the stripe, something happens. Your pixels begin to fade, gray out. Your hair recedes by degrees. Your wife slurs into a matronly shape. It hits you: This is going to happen to me. Age, decrepitude, ugliness.

Another lovely hi tech/low tech intersection.....

Mail art

2009-03-11T23:05:00.003-04:00

Another good one. A friend of mine from art school and I tried to send mail art back and forth to each other for a while after graduation....we never came up with any as lovely as these....although I don't think we really thought about it in terms of connecting with the post office.

** She has a book of them!

3 related projects

2009-03-09T22:59:00.002-04:00

PSFK often links to really great projects, and sometimes I find several over a series of weeks or months that just seem to speak to one another. See the 3 below:

Blurb
Project
Creator
"Each month or so, we release a new issue of "i left this here for you to read." We then leave them in public places (such on park benches, on buses, in airports and dentists' offices...) for anyone to take--free of charge. Currently, we distribute our magazine in about 25 cities in the US and Canada....This project was started by Tim Devin, but now involves more than 100 people."

Blurb
Project
Creator
"For our latest mission, 20 Improv Everywhere agents personally welcomed home total strangers at JFK airport. Grabbing first and last names from car driver signs, we greeted strangers with personalized posters, flowers, balloons, and a 10-foot wide banner reading, 'Welcome Back.'”

Blurb
Project
Creator
"Visitors can buy a T-shirt of their own choice, the only condition being that they share a bit of personal information about themselves, or more precisely: their name and address. When paying for the T-shirt at the museum-shop, the information is automatically mapped in Google Maps, thereby making it possible to see where each T-shirt ends up after leaving the museum."

hairwork

2009-03-06T22:58:00.001-05:00

I just started reading this interesting book called Love Entwined: The Curious History of Hairwork in America that I got from Christmas from my mom. It's a bit of an academic book, but my interest was sparked when I got married and my aunt lent me a beautiful piece of hairwork to wear that was my great grandmother's (a Norwegian immigrant). I could believe it was made of her hair! Of course I can't seem to find a picture of it as I wore it that day, but here are some other beautiful hairwork images:

This is what a lot of the plates in the book look like, but not what the piece I wore is like at all.

This one is a bit closer to it, although there were no metal parts. I also found this website that explains that a lot of this woven "Table work" technique began in Scandinavia. It describes the "Table work" technique as similar to bobbin lace making. There are also a lot of images around of hollow pieces (like the last image below) that are worked around a mold to keep them hollow.

passage quilts

2009-03-04T22:57:00.001-05:00

Craft posted about Passage Quilts and while this project is totally low tech, it's so in sync with my interests lately. I can't stop copying and pasting quotes from teacher/maker Sherri Lynn Wood....

"Begining with the architecture of the clothing, these quilts are pieced without a predetermined pattern. This process provides the maker an opportunity to examine his or her life patterns."

"The resulting quilts reflect the relationship of the maker to the materials, retain a sense of the body, and in the case of bereavement, carry the consoling essence of the beloved."

"Making a Passage Quilt is an external, hands-on experience that mirrors and reflects the interior process of bereavement and transition."

"Often people express a fear that they may be overwhelmed by grief and I remind them that they are simply, always making a quilt. This process provides a safe container, which will enable you to literally touch your grief and stay present to the task at hand."

Leah Buechley

2009-03-02T22:57:00.003-05:00

Leah Buechley is someone I found in my research for my MA dissertation. At that time I saw a lot about her printed circuits and smart textile work. I recently found her talk about High-Low Tech craft and while I do think it's really interesting, it still doesn't quite touch on my interests. I love the concepts and the ideas behind it, I'm just not that into the actual materials and product output of this sort of craft. A quote:

This talk will discuss this "new craft", envisioning a future in which individuals integrate traditional craft, engineering, and web-honed communication skills to build and share information about "high-low tech" devices like temperature sensing scarves, algorithmically generated furniture, and radically customized cell phones.

Do you really want a temperature-sensing scarf? Maybe it's just me.....what do you think?

Disappearing ink!

2009-02-27T22:56:00.000-05:00

Okay, it's really self-erasing paper, but it's still awesome! (although I think I'd rather have ink....)

Mobile Darning

2009-02-25T22:55:00.001-05:00

Agh!! The most lovely project!

The Free Mending Library in San Francisco. PSFK writes:

On his old ice cream cart-style, treadle-operated sewing machine, [Michael] Swaine sets about mending and altering people’s socks, jocks and frocks and it’s all for free. Michael is interested in engaging the community to rethink their relationship with clothing and the disposable nature of fashion.

See more here.

Design for Mankind Magazine

2009-02-25T22:54:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, Design for Mankind announced the launch of the first issue of Mankind Magazine! I love the website Design for Mankind, but I have to admit I haven't bought the magazine yet (even though I've got it bookmarked and on my "to do" list....I did look at the sneak peek, hoping that would get me going. I need a rainy day stuck at home? Or things to just s-l-o-w d-o-w-n at work!! I'm so curious to read this.....the cover is lovely, no?

Shoes Tell Stories

2009-02-23T22:54:00.000-05:00

Short note on an upcoming exhibition that sounds worth seeing. The Perfect Fit – Shoes Tell Stories will be on display at The Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA from June 6, 2009 – January 3, 2010. I'm so there....

crow vending machine

2009-02-20T22:52:00.000-05:00

This is an old one, even for me, but it's just such a sweet project I can't resist. I'll keep it short so you can just check out the project itself.

The New York University graduate student offered the birds coins and peanuts from a dish attached to a vending machine he’d created, then took the peanuts away. Klein designed the machine so that when the crows searched for the missing peanuts, they pushed the coins out of a dish into a slot, causing more peanuts to be released into the dish. The Binghamton crows quickly learned that dropping nickels and dimes into the slot produced peanuts, and the most resourceful members of the flock began looking for more coins. Within a month, Klein had a flock of crows scouring the ground for loose change.

Dress

2009-02-18T22:49:00.000-05:00

Saw this post on Make about a thousand weeks ago, but only recently clicked on it at home—all video content blocked at work :( and it led me to Electric Foxy (which is awesome) and described by writer/founder/whatever Jennifer as:

Clothing is a core part of our expression and offers ways for us to communicate who we are and the context in which we live. Technology enables a richer connection with people and our environment and offers a new platform for communication and expression. By merging the intimacy of clothing with the empowerment of technology, electricfoxy garments strive to enhance our lives and offer a much richer language for self-expression.

As you may have gathered from my work since leaving CSM, I'm less interested in the technology aspect as I am the human connections and communication involved in clothing and fashion, but nevertheless I still find sites like this fascinating.

Back to the original spark for this post, I finally ended up on Exercices de Style's website to see their Walking City kinetic dresses. The video over on Make Zine does them no justice. See some still images below and then click to see the videos here. I love the way Ying Gao talks about air and clothing. That's something I really relate to.

Ever since Justin & I went to Montreal in December, I've been dreaming about that city, but now I'm even more intrigued.....

handbags

2009-02-16T14:28:00.000-05:00

Outsapop is a rather recent addition to my bloglines, and she posted this about a project called Counterfeit Crochet where everyone crochets replicas of designer handbags. Across the board, I love the crocheted versions more, not because they are designed better or even are aesthetically more pleasing, but they are just so much more visceral, I can't resist them:

And of course, I couldn't resist the Coach example:

A Top Handle Pouch of all things! Ha!

This project also reminded me of the old Mary Ping project Slow and Steady Wins the Race, a favorite of mine in graduate school. In the eighth installment she remakes several designer hand bags all in white canvas....not quite as visceral as the crocheted bags, but something lovely about stripping them down to their essence and removing all the graphic identifiers. The Dior:

Anyway, the Counterfeit Crochet project led me to Stephanie Syjuco's own website and to all her interesting projects there. I really should write a whole post about her work....take a look around her site. I think Personal Protest is my personal favorite.

Learning

2009-02-12T22:09:00.004-05:00

Over the last couple months PSFK has posted about various learning related items that I found really interesting....

Sophie Howarth was a speaker at one of their conferences and she runs a small shop called School of Life which runs classes about how we should live. Not only is the website just lovely (truly an aside), the classes sound amazing. Last fall, Alain de Botton ran one of the "Holiday" classes called Heathrow Airport with Alain de Botton that explored the idea of Heathrow airport as a destination instead of a point of transport. Another of my favorites are the Meals they put on. All strangers eat together....just check out the links and look around. You won't be disappointed.

This one might be defunct by now, but The Temporary School of Thought (definitely closed upon further investigation). PFSK describes the school as:

Classes take place in a beautiful townhouse and range from “infrastructure for anarchists” to book binding, laughter workshops, bicycle maintenance and gardening. Everything is free, the event is dedicated to the admirable ideals of mutual learning and skill sharing rather than making money.

This last one is less a class and written about as more of an enterprising approach to getting new work, but I think it's also an interesting concept in learning. John Morefield is an ot of work architect who has set up a booth at a local farmer's market in Seattle offering architectural advice for 5¢. Really, he's gathering contacts and referrals for new work, but what I think is interesting is the learning experience the shoppers at the farmer's market are getting. Think about how nice it would be to be able to pick the brain of someone in any profession...chatting with a plumber or train conductor or someone who works in a food processing plant. Think of how much interesting info you could absorb. It's sort of like having someone in the family who does a job like that. I love this idea!

Learn to knit

2009-01-19T17:42:00.001-05:00

Believe it or not, everyone wears this expression as they learn to knit!

sweet prints

2009-01-15T16:32:00.000-05:00

I love the textiles from Sirena con Jersey (Mermaid in a Sweater!):

I'm not so into that kind of acrylic jewelry also on their website, but the knit designs especially remind me of learning how to use the knitting machine and how awesome it felt!!

dye class

2009-01-13T09:26:00.001-05:00

It seems oh so long ago now, but in November I taught a class on Natural Dyeing at Etsy Labs and I found a few snaps of the class at work:

It looks like all of the classes at the Labs are ending this month and moving over to 3rd Ward (which has an awesome space, I visited this weekend!). So it looks like today will be my last class at Etsy.....but....stay tuned, I expect to have some classes set up with 3rd Ward soon. woo!

embroidery show I want to see

2009-01-12T16:31:00.000-05:00

The New York Times had an article about an embroidery show Bard College & The Met is presenting that sounds good. Here's a few pics of some of the pieces on display (to be honest, the Times article has better photos than these from the Bard website):

My favorite quote from the article:

But the basic concept of embroidery is like rudimentary geometry. It centers on the merging of two very different dimensions: a flat grid of fabric, and thread, which is an extended line of many colors. This is achieved by the hands, eyes and brain of one person, who attends by one stitch or another to every centimeter of a work’s surface. The simplicity and concentration are always felt, no matter how complicated the actual motifs become.

The exhibition runs through April 12 at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture 18 West 86th Street in Manhattan.

There's also a seminar....maybe I should go?

other kinds of knitting....

2008-12-31T11:18:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking a bit about other ways of knitting lately. I've seen some lovely ideas (click links for directions):

finger knitting:

Ever do this? I used to finger knit with loose strings when I was a kid....never made anything out of them of course, but maybe I should start now.

comb knitting:

I feel like girls in my school used to do this. I don't ever remember doing it though.

and for the really hardcore: Wii knitting!

This looks way out of my league, but wow!

thoughts on "handmade"

2008-12-17T15:28:00.001-05:00

Way back in October Core77 posted about an opening at Kiosk (who I love), but what interested me most was some of the writing about the project, read my copy & paste job below (since the exhibition is long gone....):

What is it about things made with our own hand that makes them more fun to use? Why is a rough handmade aesthetic so appealing right now? How can making an object intentionally less "functional" bring us closer to the pure experience of using that object?

I think about this a lot, and it really resonates with me. I wish I had gone to the exhibit because maybe it would have helped me answer some of these questions! Anyone out there have any good theories about the appeal of handmade objects or how functionality (or the lack of) affects the experience of using an object? I would love to hear others' thoughts....

Christmas cards!

2008-12-15T13:25:00.000-05:00

Make linked to a great collection of Christmas cards Illustrator & cartoonist Roy Doty has made every year since 1946! There's some lovelies in there, take it from someone who also handmakes a Christmas card every year (that would be me) and knows how much work it can be!! I wish I had seen these before I did my card this year....I'm inspired now! Here are a few of my faves (hint: the interview is pretty great too!):

1964

1950

1963

A really good quote

2008-12-12T20:12:00.000-05:00

A wonderful artist I know (who is working on a great project about beauty, btw) posted about this on her weblog, and I'm just going to copy 'n paste the whole quote for you here too because I think it is SO great:

I'm going to tell a story. It's about biscuits. Please bear with me. A Buddhist priest told me this story, about how he used to be the chief baker in his monastery. He tried to make the best biscuits he could make - fluffy, buttery, warm, delicious biscuits. But no matter what he did, the biscuits were never good enough. Too dry, or too moist, never quite right. He was getting very dissatisfied and upset with himself. Then, he realized that he was trying to capture the essence of the biscuits that he had as a child and that the biscuits he remembered were an idealized, unreal version. The reason his biscuits never tasted good enough is because they never could be, but only so long as he tried to capture the essence of an unreal, imagined perfect biscuit. When he realized this, he decided to make the 'biscuit of today' not the biscuit of the past. It was imperfect, unlike anything he remembered as a young child, but the most delicious biscuit he had ever had, because it simply WAS. It was not idealized or perfected, it was just itself. And it was perfect in its imperfections, because there was nothing else it could be. Ladies, I think it is high time we all start being the biscuit of today. Love yourself as you are, perfectly 'imperfect.' And do not put a knife (or botulism) anywhere near your cooter.

I just really love imperfect things....and this is the kind of thinking that got me into the Virgin Knitters/Beginners Luck project. Everything is so much more special with lumps and bumps, don't you think?