Upholstering/Sewing Studies

Sewing Vinyl and then reupholstered my couch pillow.

yay!! first post

most recently, i have been collecting old mackinac island images from family, friends etc. (such as the sampling shown above).

i love the tone and overall mood of these pictures and find them to fit in perfectly with the aesthetic i am aiming for.

they are charming, nostalgic and even though i don't know most of the faces in them, i find that i can intensely relate to the characters they depict.

while i don't yet have a plan for their use, i find them inspiring.

i have also begun work on a series of small collages a la joseph cornell-ish (more pictures to come).

Current Processes

As of late I have been working on a couple of different ways of transforming the images and information I have already created. I'm trying to engage multiple processes to find a combination that produces the strongest imagery and concept.

One of these processes is printing. Ultimately, my images will be displayed in a printed format, and I want to experiment with the size and type of surface they will be printed on. I have never printed larger than 17" x 22", so right now I am working with Patrick Young to print them at a height of at least 2 feet. We'll see what happens! These are the images I sent him to print in a large format (they are also different images than the ones I showed the class previously):

I have also been experimenting with drawing directly on printed photos, which I think would would more cohesively if I can do a successful photo transfer/print on drawing/watercolor paper. Here is an experimental example:

And current inspiration and upcoming Pennystamp's speaker is:

Wangechi Mutu ... here is some of her amazing painting/collage work that I really admire for both its aesthetic inventiveness and its subject matter.

Reference Books

Reference (books): Edsel Ford and E.T. Gregorie: The Remarkable Design Team and Their Classic Fords of the 1930s and 1940s & The Art of American Car Design

Illustration

To sum it up, the past week has been all about setting up the right conditions for my work. I have to re-take/re-document all my garments because my camera is broken (I'm going to do this with a digital camera for now until the other is fixed). I also signed on for private lessons on internal fabrication with a professional seamstress- she'll show me how to create that professional finish for the innards of garments. We'll be meeting 2 days a week, every weekend. Moreover, I talked to Nancy Thorson about dress forms- she'll help get me a discount on a dress form and I'm currently working on my grant proposal with this dress form in mind. I'll be purchasing a size 2 dress form by this weekend. We do have size 6 and 8 dress forms in the Fibers studio, but those are limited and I would prefer to have my own for convenience and consistency. Anyway, so far I've completed some sketches and started sewing a sample dress to explore the limitations of materials and structure.

Here are some of the sketches and I'll be posting photo-documentation of a sample garment soon.

Sidenote: I'm also working on my marketing at the moment (name of line and logo).

Collage Sketchs

I used collage's as my form of sketching. The narrative I want to portray is the story of a girl whose past manifests itself into a physical being. She has repressed a series of traumatic events, but by doing so they have combined together to form a sort of demon that is haunting her. He is trying to force her to look at him or in other words, forcing her to confront her past. I am trying to "sketch" different ways of representing this relationship, and identifying the characters in each relationship.

I have been spending some time working with the interview I recorded of my own answers to the questions i created for my initial interviews. I took one answer and posted it to my website Mixed Messages.

Here it is for your listening pleasure ;-)

My answer to the question:
When did you notice you were different?


I also spent Sunday with my mom who came up to visit.
I was prepping myself, and her to do an interview, but I realized I didn't like the questions I was going to use, so I am spending the day revising my questions which I will ask her once she returns from her training in clinton township.


More to come..
Love.Much
Mari.Noelle