Cultural Landscape by Bridget Thompson

CULTURAL LANDSCAPE BRIDGET THOMPSON

Special thanks to Deborah First, MA Final Project professor, as well as the graduate Fibers faculty at SCAD for guiding me through this project. Thank you to my fellow Fibers colleagues, and to my family for all your support.

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S Home ....................................................................2 Ideation.................................................................4 Photography Inspiration.....................................6 Material Process...................................................8 Fabric Collages....................................................10 Fabric Collage Field Guide................................12 Prints.....................................................................14 Print Sketches.......................................................16 Digital Sketches...................................................18 Printed Fabric.......................................................20 Bibliography ........................................................24

HOME

“On the Pacific Coast there are fewer shackles on tradition. There is an unslackening development of new thought. There is a decided willingness to take a chance on new ideas.” Henry Dreyfuss 1976 Cultural Landscape is a print and fabric collage collection inspired by the cultural and environmental landscape of my hometown in the Bay Area, California. The tradition of art and design on the West Coast evokes an unshackling of convention, an optimistic approach to color, and an innovative approach to materiality. My fabric collage and print collection reflect a willingness to experiment with unusual material and reflects an aspirational perspective on West Coast lifestyle and culture. My collection includes two distinctive components: a series of fabric collages as well as a print collection. In the spirit of experimentation with process and a strong desire to create original content, I devised a strategy of making fabric collages as a starting point for a print collection based off the interplay between the digital and material.

My collages and the prints that accompany them describe geometric shapes, nostalgic colors, and the eclectic nature of the West Coast design culture that is my own. In this project, I explore themes of playfulness, spontaneity, and color exploration. Revered textile artist Anni Albers emphasized play as fundamental to the creative process. “She believed that a spontaneous and experimental approach to hues, patterns, and materials inspired meaningful work,” (Gotthardt, 2019). Albers suggested that artists begin their work with “a playful beginning, unresponsive to any demand of usefulness, an enjoyment of colors, forms, surface contrasts and harmonies—a tactile sensuousness,’” (Gotthardt, 2019). Cultural Landscape is a testament to my own formal research about these embodied qualities, and a personal journey towards experimentation in my work.

In the modern era, the conceptual and aesthetic design sensibilities native to California are defined by the use of new technology, a highly saturated and bright color palette, and accessible and refined modes of production. It’s the overarching visions that typify California design which inspire me: a predisposition to an outdoor lifestyle, the use of innovative materials and focus on materiality, emphasis on modern architecture, and clean geometry. “Fluidity, openness, experimentation, and the abolition of boundaries: the same qualities that characterized the modern California home equally applied to the modern California designer.” (Kaplan, 2011). I see California design and its history as a mix between the practical and the beautiful, the innovative and the heart-warming, the productive and the pleasure-filled. “While embracing new technology, innovative materials, and a language of reductive geometry, California modernists still retained the individuality of the arts and crafts movement, of being particular to a place, of being joined to nature,” (Kaplan, 2011).

The mid-century modern era, from which these design characteristics stem, in California was pivotal in establishing California as a hub of artists and designers. Richard Diebenkorn is one of these artists, whose abstract expressionist paintings became prolific in the 1960s. Diebenkorn’s abstract, geometric paintings celebrating light and color in the Bay Area and California are a source of inspiration for my collection. In my work, I explore the relationship of scale with architecturally inspired shapes and work within modernist abstraction of landscapes. I have also drawn architectural sketches of Joseph Eichler’s buildings. Eichler was known for his distinctly mid-century modern style and for transitioning this aesthetic from residential homes to public and corporate buildings. Eichler’s buildings are seen throughout Marin County, CA, where I grew up.

Richard Diebenkorn Window, 1967 Oil and graphite on canvas

Eichler homes in Marin County

I D E AT I O N My textile design process is multi-faceted and spontaneous. I approach design much like a collage, by using various mediums of differentiating importance and weight to create a composition. Digital tools help to create mixed media digital prints for fabric, and textile collages serve as a way of conceiving new color ways and shapes. Drawing and painting are the main components of my studio practice. Using source imagery such as photography, or research about modern California architecture, I sketch out geometric, and organic shapes, which are both representational and abstract. Intuitive drawing informs the design process, and many of my drawings refer to a nostalgic West Coast way of life. Deriving color palettes from my own experience growing up on the West Coast, as well as design inspiration from the principles of uniquely Californian mid-century modernism, I aim to contextualize my work in this experimental, bright environment.

The intangibles of this framework are what excites me: the feeling of openness exhibited by mid-century architecture, the bright and natural hues which reflect the California landscape, and the nonchalant design culture which emphasizes personal freedom (Design Museum, 2019). Other aspects of mid-century modern design within architecture include the use of pre-fabricated parts, blending the barriers of indoor and outdoor spaces, and open floor plans. During my design process, I came across Richard Tuttleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fabric assemblage work. The shapes, colors, and materials he uses are evocative of the shapes I have aimed to create through my architectural research. He also leaves the edges of his fabrics unfinished, exposing the materiality of the different fibers he is working with. The language of Tuttleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fabric assemblage work, The Critical Edge, reads like a painting in his use of graphic shapes and flat colors.

San Francisco Houses sketch, pen and ink, paper collage 2019

Richard Tuttle, The Critical Edge, 2015

Tuttleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s collages make use of a variety of fabric. I sourced the fabric for my collection from SCRAP, a non-profit organization located in World War II era warehouse in San Franciscoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bayview District. SCRAP diverts over 200 tons of landfill each year by providing a space and service for people to donate recycled materials ranging from arts and crafts to home improvement (SCRAP, 2019). The choice to source from SCRAP reflects the environment in which the fabric are situated: San Francisco. Both my material and my digital practices embody a sense of endless possibility. At SCRAP, there are mountains of fabrics and materials to choose from, and digitally within Photoshop, anything is possible when it comes to designing in terms of color and visual effects. The material aspect of creating a fabric collage activates creative cognition via decision making around compositions and deciding what fabrics to use. Within digital craft, creative cognition is activated thorough the act of assimilating visual stimuli and print ideation. Both my material and digital practice are accessible due to the fact that recycled, donated materials are available to purchase by weight at SCRAP, and creating digital patterns only requires access to a computer.

SCRAP, San Francisco, CA 2019

P H O T O G R A P H Y I N S P I R AT I O N Source photography for the collages. San Francisco, CA. 2016-2017.

M AT E R I A L P R O C E S S There was a huge variety in the materials I worked with. I used plastic, cotton, naturally dyed, synthetic, wool, linen, canvas fabrics, yarns, and threads. The collage process involved a lot of layering and utilizing aspects such as transparency, and cutting out shapes to reveal hidden layers. In each composition, I used a least four to five different types of fabric to create an interesting, varied texture. In re-purposing raw material, I aim to describe the landscape of San Francisco. Through the abstract and representational city architecture imagery created by my shapes in the collages, as well my choice to use used fabrics from my home city, a dialogue around cultural landscape is provoked. An important aspect of this dialogue is the quickly changing cultural landscape of San Francisco specifically. Though I intend for my work to be evocative of the sensibilities of uniquely Californian design in general, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s critical to address the fact that gentrification and the rise of tech businesses in The Bay Area have drastically altered the culture of my hometown greatly. In a sense, I hope my work preserves some of what has been lost due to displacement through the celebration of used fabric.

These fabric collages and the studies that follow speak to my concern of combining materiality and my digital craft of creating print and pattern designs. My work is motivated by an enthusiasm for color. Combining fabrics together which are different in weight, texture, and color creates an endless assortment of surfaces. Recycled fabric are a generous source of raw material. Textile art made from recycled or reclaimed goods is testament to the versatility offered by making use of stuff that has had already had a life. By sewing this fabric into a different context, I gave it a new life and purpose. My fabric collages speak to this removal of fabric from its previous life. Sourcing from SCRAP helped me create original ideas for prints. Textile and fabric collage artist Ruth Issett says of her work, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The process and order of coloring is fascinating and leads to endless possibilities,â&#x20AC;? (textileartist.org). Though I was limited by the choices I made in terms of what fabric I bought and decided to use, there were seemingly endless possibilities with how I could choose to create new work. 8

Artist inspiration: Laura Owens, collage, 2018 The notion of limitless in my material choices reflects my digital practice as well. Because I make digital art, I wanted to represent the interaction between materiality and digital, as well as the the quality of the hand when I went to create my print designs. Prolific painter and artist Laura Owens’ work has been an inspiration to my process as well. Owens is an Los Angeles based multi-media artist whose work consists of prints, drawings, and paintings. Owens creates her ideas through sketching, but also through Photoshop. She says, “I take pictures of the paintings that I’m working on and bring them back in the computer to paint on top,” (Stech, 2013). Owens heavily researches her ideas through studies before finalizing a painting. She plays around with paintings in photoshop, utilizing and back and forth approach between the material and digital, and creates collages. She says, “[e]ven the multiplicity of techniques I’m working with comes out of ideas inherent in collage...The idea of collage is that you have the accumulation of these different

ways of seeing all converging in one space to make this third type of seeing,” (Stech, 2013). Owen’s approach to creating art resonates with me in the way that she is making a new type of space through collage and layering. I am drawn to creating a new type of space through collage, and also through my compositional drawings. Restructuring geometry and architectural shapes within a composition is likened to devising a hypothetical third space which doesn’t exist in any one particular medium. I create new space by making the viewer look at compositions through that architectural, hyper-real lens. Owens takes the act of play very seriously in her studio. She considers studies, collages, and the method of putting mixed media pieces together as integral to creating work. She also says of her process, ”it’s always experiment, experiment,” (Stech, 2013). There is a very freeing and spontaneous character to her process.

FA BR I C CO L L AGE S

FA BR I C CO L L AGE FIEL D GU I DE

Naturally dyed linen, cotton, recycled synthetic fabric, silk organza, stitched 12” x 15” 12

PRINTS

PRINT SKETCHES

I began ideation for my print designs with painting and drawing the collages to develop a color palette and understand the shapes and motifs I would be working with. I scanned my drawings onto the computer, but rather than making prints out of these initial drawings, quickly realized I would use them as inspiration rather than for actual print motifs. I was much more interested in the materiality of the collages and how I could incorporate that into my digital designs. Thus, I scanned in my fabric collages and used the materiality of the fabric to develop textures and shapes for the prints. I incorporated the scanned fabric into my final prints, with the effect of creating faux, distorted surfaces. 16

These pages from my sketchbook represent an exploration of the kinds of shapes and colors I was seeing in the collages, and the kinds of imagery I was interested in creating. The drawing and painting process through my sketchbook was helpful in creating the prints and developing a digital color palette. I see the painting and drawing as a way of thinking through and editing ideas. In these drawings, I used acrylic, gouache, and watercolor paints, as well as cut paper collage.

D I G I TA L S K E T C H E S

It is inspiring to think there will be digital tools in the future which will further enable our creativity. Contemporary research about digital craft articulates my design process well and gives meaning to the way I make decisions and create work. In “Digital Crafting and Crafting the Digital,” artist and researcher Cathy Treadaway discusses the role of digital tools in technology in creative cognition and process. Creative cognition is an interesting facet of the discussion around digital tools. With my process, I take notes on my iPhone or create drawings with my notes, there is a lot of digital sketching that goes on as well.

In this technological world that we live in, creative cognition, which I define as the process of learning, discernment, thinking or decision making creatively, at some point involves the digital. In her research Treadaway writes, “…digital technology is able to support the creative process at the generative stage of idea development through to the production,” (Treadaway, 2015). Treadaway also speaks to the use of digital tools in craft practice. Some inquires for further research include developing more effective digital tools for craft practice.

The digital offers us limitless possibilities in creativity, for better or for worse, with the wide range of visual effects and infinite amount of colors you can create. There is something freeing about this. In my design process I look a lot at freedom, spontaneity, idealistic pursuits, and optimistic colors. Moreover, within design production, “practitioners can create digital images in the studio, upload or email them directly to a print bureau and receive the printed and processed fabrics by mail,” (Treadaway, 2015). For my final print collection, I outsourced my fabric printing to a company called Bags of Love, who printed them for me in a matter of days.

The research about process within digital craft resonates with me. In Treadaway’s research, she discusses a case study of an artist whose “digital tools were observed to provide [the artist] with the opportunity to collect, review and assimilate visual stimuli dynamically, assisting her in layering and collating visual material from a variety of sources in ways that would not have occurred in her previous non-digital practice,” (Treadaway, 2015). Finally, repeatedly throughout my research about digital craft, there is an emphasis on playfulness and freedom. Treadaway’s research discusses a “playful exploitation of digital tools and software,” as well as “playfulness and the need for freedom,” (Treadaway, 2015). The qualities of playfulness and freedom remind me of those initial characteristics of uniquely California design. In the “California: Designing Freedom” exhibition at the Design Museum in London during Spring 2018, the ideals of California design were explored in tandem creations that enable individual freedom such as iPhones, surfboards, and even LSD (The Design Museum, 2018). Proponents of this design culture are still very much alive today in California and continue to explore freedom and spontaneity. My final print collection is digitally printed on 100% organic cotton canvas. This fabric reflects my interest in looking at landscape imagery through the lens of painting, as well as my interest in creating hard-wearing textiles for fashion and soft goods. 19

PR I N T E D FA B R I C

Digital print on 100% organic cotton canvas

BIBLIOGR APHY The Design Museum. 2019 https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/touring-exhibitions/ exhibitions-for-hire/california-designing-freedom-touring-exhibition Gotthardt, Alexxa. Anni Albers on How to be an Artist. 3 April 2019. https://www.artsy. net/series/how-to-be-an-artist/artsy-editorial-anni-albers-artist Kaplan, Wendy. “Introduction:’ Living in a Modern Way.’”California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way. MIT Press. 2011-09-16. Lauria, Jo; Baizerman, Suzanne. California Design: The Legacy of West Coast Craft and Style. Chronicle Books. 2005. Stech, Fabian. Laura Owens in Conversation with Fabian Stetch. Kunstforum International. Issue 221. pp 182 - 195 May 2013. TextileArtist.org. Artists Using Recycled Materials. 2016. https://www.textileartist.org/textile-artists-using-recycled-materials Treadaway, Cathy. “Digital Crafting and Crafting the Digital.” The Design Journal, 10:2, 35-48, DOI: 10.2752/146069207789272668.

bridget@clubmuchacha.com