The 2009 Student Showcase
Includes:
Heili Aun, BFA Fibers, University of Washington, Seattle
Young Cho, MFA Fiber & Material Studies, School of
the Art Institute of Chicago
Whitney Crutchfield, MFA Fibers, Colorado State
University, Fort Collins
Andrea Donnelly, MFA Fibers, Virginia Commonwealth
University, Richmond
Rosemary Dardick, MFA Fibers, Cranbrook Academy
of Art, Bloomfield Hills
Carla Duarte, Amber Ginsburg, Lia Rousset, MFA Fiber
& Material Studies (Duarte), Ceramics (Ginsburg), and Sculpture (Rousset),
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Ilene Godofsky, BFA Textiles, Rhode Island School
of Design, Providence
Wyatt Grant, BFA Fiber and Material Studies, School
of the Art Institute of Chicago
Alissa Kloet, BFA Interdisciplinary, Nova Scotia College
of Art and Design, Halifax, Canada
Julia Krantz, BA textiles, HDK, School of Design and
Crafts, Gothenburg, Sweden
Heather Macali, MFA Textiles, University of Wisconsin—Madison
Rubi McGrory, MFA Fibers, Savannah College of Art
and Design
Aaron McIntosh, MFA Fibers, Virginia Commonwealth
University, Richmond
Joseph Aaron Segal, MFA Textiles, Rhode Island
School of Design, Providence
Bridget Miranda Sidden, BFA Knitwear Design,
Academy of Art University, San Francisco
Tricia A. Stackle and Andrew Kline,
MFA Fibers, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills
Jodi Stevens, MFA Artisanry/Fibers, University of
Massachusetts, Dartmouth
Heili Aun, BFA Fibers, University
of Washington, Seattle.
My work draws inspiration from the various organic structures of nature. Artistic
aspects like the color, texture, and the shape of the detail in garments are based
on the elements of nature. I use large landscapes with interesting textural and
color patterns from soil and rock formations as a starting point. The rock and
soil formations of earth in places like the Grand Canyon in Arizona offer an amazing
variety and beauty that I strive to capture in my creations. Along the same lines,
I also use the minute details found in naturally occurring things like plants,
leaves, and flowers.
Jacket—Rock Garden, Jacket—Stratification , and
Jacket—Foliage (left to right), 2009; wool prefelt, yarn, silk and
cotton lining. Photo: Laurel Schultz.
Jacket—Stratification, 2009; wool prefelt, yarn, silk
and cotton lining. Photo: Alison Braun.
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Young Cho, MFA Fiber &
Material Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The struggle for power, the relationship between perpetrator and victim, and
the perspective of the observer are all recurring themes in my work. I empathize
with the observer as a passive participant in the events depicted and create an
event compressed into a purely psychological framework. I use bright colors and
glossy materials in creating a tone that simultaneously seduces the viewer and
disguises the subject matter. My process incorporates the use of repetition and
patterns that develop organically, while suggesting a systematic approach. The
pieces are labor intensive and the struggle to complete the process becomes a
visible element within the piece.
Peer Series (with detail), 2009; gouache on paper, displayed
with silicon nipple, magnifier, chain; 2" x 18" each. Shown on display
at the SAIC Graduate Exhibition. Photo by the artist.
Young Cho examines a selection from her Peer Series
(2009; gouache on paper, displayed with silicon nipple, magnifier, and chain;
2" x 18" each). Appearing at right, Cho’s Cross Section,
(2009; assorted strands of yarn, individually glued by artist, acrylic gouache,
grommets, nails, cotton balls, balloons stuffed with polyfil. 79" x 79"
inches) at the SAIC Graduate Exhibition. Photo: Josh Converse.
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Whitney
Crutchfield, MFA Fibers, Colorado State University, Fort Collins.
The transformation of space, whether personal, domestic, or public, is the
founding principle in my work. The spaces that we experience influence the ways
in which we think about our interpersonal and intrapersonal interactions and our
physical relationships to spaces around us. Considering the lengthy historical
and current relationship between cloth and space, particularly interior space,
I find that cloth and elements of cloth serve as convenient and fitting materials
for transforming space. In these two installations, You Should Sit Down For
This (A Study of Insides) and Clot, I explored the transformative possibilities
of the domestic space and the imaginary space, respectively.
Clot (with detail), 2009; cotton, polyester thread; screen
printing, immersion dyeing, machine embroidery; 8' x 10' x 5'. Photo: Ryan White.
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Rosemary
Dardick, MFA Fibers, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills.
“We live in the cities. The cities live in us.” Wim Wenders
Cities have character, they have personality. They reflect the times and places
in which they are built, just as they come to represent the people who live and
work within their borders. My work seeks to build a bridge between textiles and
the built environment. Through different lacemaking techniques, I explore concepts
within architecture and urban planning, investigating ideas of span and space,
form and pattern, and social construction, gently stepping between the natural
and the built world. We change our cities, but our cities also change us.
Montréal Island Lace Collar with Major Transportation
Routes and Metro System (with detail), 2009; cotton thread, tombolo bobbin
lace on cotton lace ground; 35" x 25". Photos: Travis Roozee.
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Andrea Donnelly,
MFA Fibers, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond.
My work seeks to capture the foggy terrains and silent spirits that float through
the most private landscapes of our hearts and minds. In starkest form and subtlest
palette, I reveal the vastness and vulnerability of an internalized moment and
give substance to the subtle shapes of a mental space.
Weaving by hand allows me to create the feel of these fragile spaces through
manipulation of scale and structural density in the cloth. The slow build of thread
upon thread leaves its evidence of meditation and time, submerging image within
environment and process within concept.
Quietly, Quietly (with detail), 2008; cotton, pigment, thread;
handwoven panels with discontinuous weft, pigment-painted warp; 4' x 7'x 6".
Photos: Abigail Volkman (full view) and the artist (detail).
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Carla
Duarte, Amber Ginsburg, Lia Rousset, MFA Fiber & Material Studies (Duarte),
Ceramics (Ginsburg), and Sculpture (Rousset), School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
This was our first collaborative work. Eight bicycle wheels are dressed with
yarn. The wool from unraveled sweaters becomes re-knit, activating a system of
doing, undoing, and redoing. Stringing the gallery like a machine, the labor from
harvesting secondhand sweaters threads the room, while knitting translates the
space into a sustained function. Redress is a performative durational work marked
in word, sound, and length. Timecards mark the people’s time together, for
everyone becomes a “worker” to the greater system. With each tug of
the yarn, the sound of the wheel turning creates a public announcement that a
work is in progress. As the knitting grows, our combined efforts are marked in
stitches, tension, and a new material forms an open-ended document.
redress [ree-dres] (with detail), 2009; discarded sweaters,
eight bicycle wheels, pallets, knitting needles. Sullivan Gallery, SAIC. Images
courtesy of the artists.
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Ilene Godofsky,
BFA Textiles, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.
My work is about exploring the connection between the human experience and
craft. I am fascinated by the precise nature of craftsmanship and the sense of
exact decisiveness in every step of the process. My weavings attempt to evoke
a quiet moment for the viewer, where subtle shifts are picked up in the details,
and the beauty of things that are created over time is recognized. By combining
alternative photography with handweaving, I attempt to create works that speak
to the innate human aesthetic and necessity to create, which has universally revealed
itself in every culture.
Marta (with detail), 2009; Vandyke Brown photograph developed
on handwoven rayon and synthetic fabric; 15" x 17". Photos by the artist.
Self-Portrait (detail), 2008; Jacquard woven; 54" x
60". Photo by the artist.
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Wyatt Grant, BFA Fiber
and Material Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
In making work, I am constantly focused on information. I organize information
in the form of layers, which are printed. As I print each layer on the fabric,
the information is charged in a different direction. In some cases, my work is
left unsettled, especially in pieces like Keeper. This has led me to feel my way
through my work in the form of landscapes, such as in Fireworked. Whether each
scenario seems more or less resolved, each piece is left in a raw form—available
to the viewer.
Erosion, 2008; screenprinted discharge and pigment on hand-dyed
muslin; 34" x 44". Photo by the artist.
Keeper, 2009; screenprinted pigment on stitched-together
muslin;
50" x 59". Photo by the artist.
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Alissa Kloet, BFA
Interdisciplinary, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Canada.
I love looking through old albums with faded covers and creaky bindings filled
with photographs that transport me to an idealized past. I try to understand the
people in these photographs through my work and decipher what legacy will immortalize
them after they pass. My work is primarily in fiber, but my interest in painting
and drawing shapes how the textile techniques are used in art pieces, garments,
and accessories. My current body of work combines knit, stitch, appliqué,
and print to explore themes of nostalgia, family, and a lifestyle of constant
learning and discovery.
Snapshot Series—No. 5 (with detail), 2009; Mylar,
found fabric, pigment, yarn, paper, thread; screenprinted, appliquéd, knit,
paper dipping.
6" x 6". Photos by the artist.
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Julia Krantz, BA, textiles,
HDK, School of Design and Crafts, Gothenburg, Sweden.
In my final project I have deviated from the physical paper and sketched directly
on the body with the material. I have let myself be inspired by anatomical elements,
inner organs, and physical symmetry, as well as different body-related objects,
such as protective equipment, masks, and different appliances. I have worked in
two layers in which I have built metal constructions together with outer transparent
garments. I have enlarged and deformed but also created new forms where weight,
direction, and silhouette have been my starting points. By adding light, I enhance
the three-dimensional experience and the physical body.
Shell, 2009; silk organza, cotton; machine- and hand-sewn.
Model: Angelica Klüft. Photos: Katrin Kirojood.
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Heather
Macali, MFA Textiles, University of Wisconsin—Madison.
Warped is an immersive environment that was created to enclose the viewer
with distorted pattern and bright colors to create a sensory overload. It is made
up of eighty handwoven weavings on five walls. Each weaving consists of vibrant
colors, visual movement, pattern, distortion, and line to produce larger patterns
on each wall. Ultimately, I have created fabric that carries ideas of color and
pattern that I have had in my imagination for as long as I can remember. Warped
is my personal expression of all the influences that have made me the artist I
am today.
Warped (installation shot) from left to right: Glitterbots
(red wall), Star Sprinkles (yellow wall), Spectra (blue wall),
2009; Tencel, cotton, metallic yarns; handwoven Jacquard doubleweave. Each weaving
is 22" x 22" (eighty weavings total, sixteen per wall). Photo: Tyler
Robbins.
Warped (installation shot) from left to right: Moonglow
(pink), Glitterbots (red), Star Sprinkles (yellow wall), 2009, Tencel,
cotton, metallic yarns; handwoven Jacquard doubleweave. Each weaving is 22"
x 22" (eighty weavings total, sixteen per wall). Photo: Lori Ushman.
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Rubi McGrory, MFA
Fibers, Savannah College of Art and Design.
We are inundated with advertising, not just through the media, but within our
personal sphere as well. By re-creating contemporary consumer symbols through
the traditional technique of hand embroidery, I facilitate a dialogue between
the maker or viewer and the handmade object. The proliferation and repetition
of manual stitches belies the mass-production and lack of human authorship attributed
to these symbols, this secret code of consumerism. I ask the viewer to visit their
relationship to logos and branding, to examine the power of this visual language
in their own private and domestic space.
QUILT™ (with detail), 2009 cotton, silk, metallic floss
on cotton and acrylic fabric; hand-dyed silk, bamboo batting; hand-embroidered,
machine-quilted; 48" x 62". Photo courtesy of Savannah College of Art
and Design.
BARCODE™, 2009; evenweave linen, cotton floss; blackwork
hand-embroidered; 10" x 12". Photo by the artist.
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Aaron McIntosh,
MFA Fibers, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond.
I critically question larger social constructions of pleasure and disturbance
and high and low culture, as they pertain to heteronormative ideas of love, romance,
sex, and sexuality. Seeking charged items from popular culture, I find potent
material in the pages and culture of romance novels. In my work, text, image,
and material are heaped upon one another, representing the many layers that must
be mined to fully understand identity. Within these saturated layers, notions
of secrecy, voyeurism and subversion, typically associated with male homosexuality,
are offset by billboard-size amplifications of charged text, larger-than-life
men, and diaristic notations.
Captive Heart Boyfriend, 2009; straight romance-novel pages
fused to canvas, pen, highlighter, colored pencil, marker, gouache; 49" x
82". Photo by the artist.
Notes for Future Romance (with detail), 2009; straight romance
novel pages fused to muslin, pen, highlighter, colored pencil, marker, gouache.
90" x 174”. Photos by the artist.
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Joseph
Aaron Segal, MFA Textiles, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.
I create specialty knitted textiles, which inform and inspire clothing forms
I make. Through observation and experimentation, my work adapts to the characteristics
of elements inside cabinets of curiosity and acquires an undomesticated and disruptive
nature.
I design industrially knitted fabrics and combine them with hand-machine-knit
techniques to describe the assortment of unusual and fascinating qualities of
my inspiration. I use a wide range of materials in my work and each one has a
specific property that contributes to the diversity of textures in the collection.
When my textiles become form, they create an extraordinary landscape for the body.
Knit Sweater-dress, 2009; wool, nylon; industrially knitted.
Photo by the artist.
Men’s Cardigan with Rib Detail (2009; hand-machine-knit
baby llama with merino wool ribbing), Brush Stroke Top (2009; digitally
printed silk habutai), and Mesh Pants (2009; silk mesh pieced with hand-machine-knit
wool, mohair and nylon). Model: Nora MacLoed. Photo by the artist.
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Bridget
Miranda Sidden, BFA Knitwear Design, Academy of Art University, San Francisco.
The reason I went into fashion is because I have dreams about clothes. In my
dreams I can feel the texture and see the garments growing in front of me. My
work is the expression of those dreams and of how I envision the world around
me, in a physical, living, breathing form.
The canvas of fashion is the human body and, on a larger scale, the earth
itself. Because of this, my goal is to bring back a connection with nature in
the garments that we wear. I want them to invoke the feelings and imaginings of
a walk through the forest, portray the intricacies of a leaf, and become alive
and symbiotic with the woman who is wearing them.
My ultimate desire is to create beauty, and nature is the master of beauty.
I want my art to bring personal joy to the woman wearing it on an instinctual
level, in the way we are drawn to laying in a field of grass or revelling in a
sunrise.
River Bed Vest, 2009; mohair, merino wool, silk, ostrich
feathers. The base of the vest is knit with chocolate mohair and merino wool.
As the base was being knit, strips of silk were handknit into it with single stitches
to create the texture. Then, ostrich feathers were handsewn into it. Photo: Randy
Brooke.
Garden Coat, 2009; merino wool, silk chiffon, silk lining.
The base of this coat was knit on a single-bed knitting machine with peach merino
wool. It is fully lined with silk lining. The flower effect was created by hand
gathering thin strips of silk chiffon with a running stitch and then attaching
them by hand to the coat base. Photos: Randy Brooke.
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Tricia A. Stackle and Andrew Kline, MFA Fibers (Stackle) and MA Architecture
(Kline), Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
I make work that functions close to the skin. Simultaneously, skin operates
as shelter, armor, and facilitates tactile experiences, allowing for greater knowledge
and deeper understanding through the sense of touch.
Security and vulnerability are ideas I evoke through my work. The handfelted
Nests are intimate spaces that facilitate transformative experiences, understood
through the participants’ full-body interaction. The woolen sacks emulate
a “womb-like” experience with their glowing interior, hugging their
bodies and giving a sense of security, yet once inside, there is an awareness
of exposure and dependence on the strength of the branches and cords to hold their
weight.
Pink Pita, 2009; handmade wool felt, silk, bungee cords,
acid-dyed wool and wet felting using a plastic resist; size varies upon installation.
Photo: Tricia A. Stackle.
Tricia A. Stackle, RolloRollo (adjustable lounge chair),
2009; industrial wool felt, waxed linen thread; 30" x 65" x 30".
Photo by the artist.
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Jodi Stevens, MFA
Artisanry/Fibers, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.
My work and process of making manifests a kind of ritualistic behavior and
involves the unconventional use of numerous elements and ordinary materials. I
believe that ritual process is a component of how humans come to understand the
larger context of the world in which we operate. I often explore contrasting elements
and attempt to create the coexistence of the familiar and the unexpected through
the use of object or atmosphere. Perplexity or ambiguity can play a very specific
role in the relationship between my work and the viewer. Experiencing an unanticipated
moment can instantly change one’s perception of the present and one may
feel temporarily displaced, yet undoubtedly absorbed by such an occurrence.
Collective (with details), 2009; yarn; dimensions variable.
Photos by the artist.
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