Surface Design Journal - Fall 2013 - Sample Issue

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Surface Design Association

P.O. Box 20430 Albuquerque, NM 87154 info@surfacedesign.org www.surfacedesign.org Executive Director

Diane Sandlin 512.394.5477 executivedirector@surfacedesign.org Assistant Executive Director

Susannah Fedorowich 707.829.3110 administration@surfacedesign.org Advertising Manager

Karen Crisp 909.939.0289 advertising@surfacedesign.org Surface Design Journal Editor

Marci Rae McDade 503.477.7015 journaleditor@surfacedesign.org SDA Digital Publications Editor (Website, NewsBlog, eNews)

Leesa Hubbell newslettereditor@surfacedesign.org Surface Design Journal Art Director

Dale E. Moyer dale@moyerdesign.com Web Site Manager

LM Wood lmnopwood@gmail.com Printed in Hanover, Pennsylvania

The Sheridan Press www.sheridan.com Executive Board:

President . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jane Dunnewold Vice President . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jeanne Raffer Beck Secretary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Ann Graham Treasurer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Melinda Lowy

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Surface Design Journal is a quarterly publication

of the Surface Design Association, a non-profit educational organization.

SURFACE DESIGN ASSOCIATION Our Vision: To inspire creativity, encourage innovation

and advocate for artistic excellence as the global leader in textile-inspired art and design.

Our Mission: To promote awareness and appreciation of

textile-inspired art and design through member-supported benefits, including publications, exhibitions and conferences.

Our Objectives:

• To provide opportunities for learning, collaboration and meaningful affiliations • To mentor and support emerging artists, designers, and students • To inform members about the latest developments and innovations in the field • To recognize the accomplishments of our members • To encourage critical dialogue about our field • To inspire new directions in fiber and textiles • To raise the visibility of textiles in the contemporary art world SUBSCRIPTION / MEMBERSHIP The Surface Design Association membership: $60 a year ($35 for student with ID). $30 ($20 student) of each member’s dues shall be for a year’s subscription to Surface Design Journal. Subscriptions are available only to members. Outside USA: add $12 for Canada and $20 for all other countries. US funds only.

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Representative of Representatives . . . . . Astrid Bennett Member . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Susan Taber Avila Member . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Karen Hampton Member . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Deborah Kruger Member . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Vivian Mahlab Member . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jeanette Thompson

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Surface Design Journal (ISSN: 0197-4483) is published quarterly by the Surface Design Association, Inc., a non-profit educational organization. Publications Office: 2127 Vermont Street NE, Albuquerque, NM 87110. Periodicals Postage Paid at Albuquerque, NM, and additional mailing offices.

President Emeritus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jason Pollen

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Surface Design Journal: Subscriptions, P.O. Box 20430 Albuquerque, NM 87154.

Surface Design Journal

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A Taste of Latin America One of the most rewarding aspects of my job is researching material culture. The trove of textile art treasures and traditions I discovered for the theme of Latin American Fibers is as diverse as the region itself. With dozens of countries spanning two continents, each story in this issue offers a taste of fascinating work by contemporary artists who either hale from or are inspired by this complex part of the world.

A potent trend throughout Latin America is the transformation of traditional textile techniques into contemporary art forms, beautifully illustrated by the stitched detail on our cover. Mexican artist Natividad Amador achieves this stunning surface design with hooktambour embroidery commonly used to embellish women's blouses. The finished piece (shown here) is Amador's reinterpretation of a painting by her mentor Alejandro Santiago. A special exhibition of these fiber homages was presented in 2011 at the Museo Textil de Oaxaca, Mexico. Museum Director Héctor Manuel Meneses Lozano discusses their dynamic curatorial programming in a related Q&A article.

Betsabeé Romero's softening of macho car culture treads new ground through the streets of Mexico City and abroad. In the highlands of Peru, the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco fosters global appreciation of ancient craft practices to preserve them and open new markets. Fiber workshops taught by American artists in Guatemala strive toward similar goals, with the help of the fair trade organization Mayan Hands.

The political and creative interactions of so many Spanish-speaking countries is discussed in the in-depth article “Latin American Textile Art...in process” by Costa Rican artist/educator Paulina Ortiz, President of the IberoAmerican Textile Network (Redtextilia). Joanne Mattera offers a first-hand assessment of fiber-based art included in the growing array of international art fairs that take place each December in Miami, Florida, home to one of the largest Latin American communities in the US. I hope you enjoy this initial overview of Latin American textile artists and their stories. We look forward to featuring many more in future issues of the Journal!

Marci Rae McDade journaleditor@surfacedesign.org

C o r r e c t i o n SDJ Summer 2013, Vol. 37, No. 4 In the Exposure section on page 54, we listed the technique for Gary Schmitt’s piece Five Tools (2012) as “beedle” felting.

You may have guessed, but the term is “needle” felting! We apologize for any confusion this may have caused and look forward to seeing new works in wool from this talented artist.

COVER CREDIT: NATIVIDAD AMADOR Untitled Detail, traditional hook-tambour embroidery on fabric, 27.6" x 20.9", 2010.

Drawing by ALEJANDRO SANTIAGO. Featured in the 2011 Museo Textil de Oaxaca (MTO) exhibition Pinthila Bordados de Natividad Amador en relación a otros artistas. Shown courtesy of MTO, Oaxaca, Mexico. Photo: Jaime Ruíz Martínez. The complete piece is shown ABOVE.

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Velocity and Memory B e t s a b e ĂŠ b y

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Surface Design Journal

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In 1997, Betsabeé Romero covered a 1955 Ford Crown Victoria with cloth and painted it with flowers in a popular nineteenthcentury style. According to the artist, “This is a textile,” like the famous mantle on which the Virgin of Guadalupe revealed her true presence to the peasant Juan Diego on December 9, 1531, as miraculous proof to Roman Catholic Church officials. Ten thousand red roses filled the auto’s interior.

Car/Ayate was parked at the U.S.Mexican border in Colonia Libertad, Tijuana—the birthplace of the Low Rider in the 1950s. Like the Zoot Suit a decade earlier, the outrageous appearance of classic cars jacked up on enormous tires caught on among Chicanos in California and forced an invisible population into the national spotlight. Nearby this site, a thousand people a day passed through an illegal tunnel.

The piece won first prize in Insight ’97, which included an exhibition at the Monterrey Museum of Art in Monterrey, Mexico. Thus, Romero established herself as a mediator of popular culture, using vernacular objects to bring the street into the museum (real cars along with photographs of their installation), and vice versa. She belongs to a generation of loners, which includes the conceptual artists Gabriel Orozco and Frances Alys. They change our perception of common-place things and situations, while engaging in a critique of social and political realities like consumer culture, racism, undocumented immigration, and the smug complicity of both governments.

From that first flamboyant gesture, Romero’s work emerged on the international art scene as a transgressive feminist presence. Early support from Ramis Barquet Gallery in Monterrey and New York promoted her image at art fairs and biennials. There followed a whole series of decorated autos rescued from junkyards. One, tightly sewn into woven-reed sleeping mats (petates) like a pre-Hispanic burial or turtle in its shell, suggested the dangers faced by desperately

poor migrants bedding down in doorways and fields like packages in transit.

A Volkswagen Bug encased in crocheted baby blanket reminded Romero of her own grandmother. At street level, a strip of pastel-colored yarn trailed from the car into the Carrillo Gil Museum of Art in Mexico City and up a ramp to the top floor, where a seated guard continued hooking loops.

Romero makes the analogy to a giant umbilical cord tying alpha males to mamas who won’t let go. A third piece, shown at the 2006 Cairo biennial, inverted one fabric-covered car on top of another, like victims in plaster casts after a collision.

An everyday person may not be able to tell you the style or period of the building he or she lives in, but that same person probably can tell you the make, model, and year of any car. The mass media are saturated with car crashes and car bombings that epitomize random violence today. Some images, for example the convertible 1961 Lincoln stretch limousine in which John F. Kennedy was shot, have become historic icons. Like Warhol, Romero exploits tabloid imagery to inject irony, new meaning, and popular appeal.

On a conceptual level, Romero’s decorated cars oppose speed and macho NASCAR culture. They are feminized and given stories, a history. They also are dressed up, like the paper doll clothes she invented in sets as a child. For velocity, she substitutes memory. Memory, like the fabrication of textiles, is a slow accumulative process. Her own process is equally generative.

From cars, she went on to car parts (doors, windshields, rearview mirrors) and tires. An insatiable curiosity to categorize, research, and explore objects from a variety of different facets stems from early training

LEFT: BETSABEÉ ROMERO Car/Ayate (at U.S.-Mexico border) Cloth-covered auto painted with roses 169.3" x 82.7" x 55.1",1997. InSite Biennial, Tijuana, Mexico. Daros Collection, Switzerland.

ABOVE: BETSABEÉ ROMERO Law-abiding Mat/Petate justiciero Auto covered with woven reed matting, 2000. Absolut L.A. International Biennial Art Invitational, Iturralde Gallery, Los Angeles, California. Collection of the artist.

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Surface Design Journal

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ABOVE: BETSABEÉ ROMERO Altar for Chavela Vargas and Carlos Fuentes Tissue paper hot-air balloons, silkscreened with floral motifs, hand-decorated sugar skulls, breads representing souls, carved forklift tire, 2012.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri. Collection of the artist.

LEFT: BETSABEÉ ROMERO Caught in Flight/Atrapadas al vuelo Five tires, carved and printed on jerga, variable dimensions, 2010. Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. Collection of the artist.

in semiotics during undergraduate studies in communication at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City and a master’s degree in art history in Paris. Her work is saturated with references to ancient Mexican art, colonial motifs rendered by native craftsmen, and typical images that are contemporary pop icons—an art movement dubbed neomexicanidad. She also plays directly with the manipulation of materials.

Tires are symbols of mobility, the cosmos, and the eternal female principle. Tires sliced like an orange peel spiral to the ceiling. Instead of white walls, Romero’s tires are ornamented like precious ceremonial objects. She uses chicle (think Chiclets), a substance once harvested under slave conditions from sapodilla trees in tropical zones along the east coast of Mexico, that was fashioned into decorative objects and chewed to abate hunger. Tire treads are carved into cylinder seals, an ancient form of Aztec writing and printing, some as big as tractor wheels.

Inking and rolling her own designs, Romero has printed everything from fabric to gallery floors and walls, and even city pavement.

Meetings at the Intersection/Encuentros

en el cruce (2011), shown last spring in the 8th International Fiber Biennial at Snyderman-Works Galleries in Philadelphia, reveals Romero’s continuing embrace of Mexican textile traditions and her ability to position this work within diverse contexts of installation, fiber art, and printmaking. In the piece, two pure white cotton shawls from Tenancingo (a rebozo-making center) are crisscrossed at right angles with two tires placed vertically astride the center point. The textiles are printed with positive and negative patterns in parallel stripes like the security wall running between the two countries.

In Mexico, the all-purpose rebozo is used not only as outer protection, but also to swaddle babies and carry bundles (firewood, produce, etc.), freeing the hands. It is a vehicle for Romero, a symbol of mobility, of migration, of the eternal quest for a better life. At the same time, her rebozos connect to the female body, to nurturing, and spanning the earth. She associates warps stretched in the act of weaving on a backstrap loom with horizon lines and flat landscapes.

A whole range of domestic cloths—thick striped twill for scrubbing (jerga), flannel for pol-

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BETSABEÉ ROMERO Birds’ Scream/Aves en un grito Three colors of cut tissue paper silkscreened with birds, PET frame, 41.7" diameter each, 2010. Installation view at Museum of San Ildelfonso, Mexico City, Mexico; featured in the artist's retrospective exhibition Black Tears/Lágrimas Negras. Collection of the artist. Detail INSET.

ishing, dish towels and bath towels that absorb odors of cooking and the body—has been incorporated into recent installations or community workshops associated with her exhibitions. For example, Romero’s use of jerga (made into the long-sleeved pullover shirts called Baja Hoodies sold in America) is emblematic of how she transforms homely cloth into art. Cities That Go Away/ Ciudades que se van (2004) consists of four yellow-striped spans of jerga rising from carved tires spaced apart on the floor. These converged at the ceiling of the Havana Biennial, while local Cubans were invited to bring a household cloth to be printed as a souvenir.

A more elaborate variation, Caught in Flight/Atrapados en el vuelo (2012) features six 60meter lengths of jerga printed with stylized birds suspended from an atrium in the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The strips, gradated in red, orange, and yellow like the sun, give the impression of the bars of a cage, the flight path of migrating birds, and the underside of a warped loom. Romero believes that although immigrants cover lots of ground in their ambition for a better 10

life, they are likely to end up in the same low strata. They carry their culture along with them.

Last November, volunteers from the Mattie Rhodes Center, a social service organization, helped Romero create two altarpieces for the annual Day of the Dead celebration at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. One was dedicated to Mexican novelist and essayist Carlos Fuentes; the other, to the popular folk singer Chavela Vargas. Hand-painted sugar skulls, bread “souls,” and other offerings were arranged on three-tiered and suspended tables. Silkscreened tissue paper fashioned into hot air balloons (globos de Cantoya) illuminated this sacred space. According to tradition, dead souls return and feast on the essences of food, drink, flowers, candles, clothing, and smokes offered on altars. Museum goers responded overwhelmingly to an invitation to attach messages and objects to a series of ribbons hanging from massive columns. Such public engagement in general, and outreach to Latin community members, especially youth, has become an integral part of Romero’s art.

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Another workshop with papel picado (the craft of cut tissue paper, usually made into tiny flags or strung as colorful banners in the street) was taught in conjunction with Black Tears/Lágrimas negras, Romero’s 10-year retrospective of 83 pieces presented at the prestigious Ancient College of San Ildefonso in Mexico City in 2010. The exhibit included Remembered Ogives (circular arches)/Ojivas de la memoria (2010), a symphony of tissuepaper circles, riffing on color admixtures and shadow, real and painted on the wall, as well as patterns of silkscreened sailing ships. Birds’ Scream/Aves en un grito (2010) contrasts stunning beauty with a disquieting note of alarm referred to in the title. Seven tissue-paper forms float parallel to the ceiling. Silkscreened on each surface is a shower of leaves and petals, like drops of blood, superimposed on a random pattern of gold Aztecs in full regalia.

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As a woman and a Mexican, Betsabeé Romero is adamant that her artwork be accessible through a multiplicity of textures and meanings.

Her low-tech recycling of materials and central themes of the border, migration, memory, religious faith, and constant transformation impact audiences from Guatemala and Honduras to Slovenia and Germany.

Refashioned cars, tires, and cloth printed with tracks or traces of cities left behind hold universal appeal and a strong relevance today.

Romero’s website is www.betsabeeromero.com.

Her next solo exhibition will be at Juan Ruiz Gallery in Miami, Florida, (www.juanruizgaleria.com) November 26, 2013–January 31, 2014 during the Miami Art Fairs.

—Pamela Scheinman is a photographer, writer, scholar and educator who divides her time between New Jersey and Mexico City.

BETSABEÉ ROMERO Remembered Ogives (circular arches)/Ojivas de la memoria Cut tissue paper, silkscreened, paint on wall, dimensions variable, 2010. Installation view at Art Museum of Sonora, Sonora, Hermosillo, Mexico; featured in the exhibit Almost Touching the Sky/Al ras del cielo. TOP: Artist BETSABEÉ ROMERO. Fall2013

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E POSURE SILVIA PIZA-TANDLICH San Rafael de Heredia, Costa Rica Still In Time (double-sided, both shown) Microfiber, handmade batik, handmade beads, hand-dyed and commercial yarns, cotton chains, hand appliqué, couching, batik, embroidery, crochet, hand quilting, 69″ x 24″ with extension, 2011.

This piece was included in the 14th International Triennial of Tapestry Łodź 2013 in Poland.

Galería Octágono www.galeriaoctagono.com.

EVELISE ANICET RÜTHSCHILLING Porto Alegre, Brazil Textured Sunset Black cotton tulle, yarn residue from industrial knitting manufacture (made in southern Brazil), textile collage processed in a pneumatic heat press, size medium, 2013.

Studio Contextura www.contextura.art.br

CLAUDIA E. DOMINGUEZ Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (Born in Mexico City, Mexico) Hysteria Amate paper backed with cotton, silk, cotton and gold threads, hand embroidery, 24″ x 36″, 2012. www.claudiaedominguez.com

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MÁRCIA BERGMANN AND BIA LETTIÉRE (Designers) Rio De Janeiro, Brazil Turury (from the Tree of Life Rug Collection) Detail, 100% continuous filament of polyamide, hand-tufting, dimensions variable, 2009. Manufatured by Avanti Carpets & Rugs, Brazil. www.marciabergmann.com

GABRIELA NIRINO Buenos Aires, Argentina Spinner II Linen, cotton, wool, handwoven on computerized jacquard loom, 60.5" x 42.5", 2012. This piece is included in Fiberart International 2013, reviewed on page 54.

LAURA FERNÁNDEZ San Juan, Puerto Rico Todos Juntos Installation view, discharged textiles, paint and applications, embroidery, 65" x 45", 2012.

Artists represented on the “Exposure” pages are members of the Surface Design Association (SDA).

This issue features the work of members who have populated their SDA profile pages with images and information about themselves and their work. This free and easy online service adds to the SDA Image Library and Member Directory; both are valuable research tools for curators, writers, collectors, and artists from all over the world. To learn more, log into your member account and follow the prompts, or visit the gallery at www.surfacedesign.org.

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i nr eview Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Reviewed by Petra Fallaux

Fiberart International 2013: Exhibition of Contemporary Fiber Art Pittsburgh Center for the Arts The Society for Contemporary Craft Fiberart International 2013, a triennial exhibition organized by the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh, opened at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and the Society for Contemporary Craft (April 19–August 18, 2013) with simultaneous evening receptions and an International Fiberart Forum the following day. Jurors culled 79 pieces by 63 artists from 10 countries, which were selected from 1,259 proposals by 525 artists from 36 countries. Fifty-two artists are first-time inclusions in this prestigious show. This year’s selection was made by jurors Kai Chan, fiber artist from Toronto; Paulina Ortiz, textile artist from Costa Rica; and Joyce J. Scott, an internationally active Baltimore-based artist.

Over the course of its 21 presentations,

STEPHEN SIDELINGER (US) Big Yellow Embroidery on cotton, 25” x 20”, 2011. Detail TOP LEFT.

Fiberart International has matured. The exhibition was established to celebrate innovative work rooted in traditional fiber materials, processes, and history and interdisciplinary arts that explore their boundaries. These tenets are still examined with great enthusiasm but perhaps with less of an evangelical zeal. Over the years, the exhibit— and other fiber survey shows like it—has succeeded in raising the profile of fiber arts. Should we continue to advance the field in form-specific survey exhibitions, or is it time to start thinking about different formats?

Surveys like Fiberart International can be problematic and challenging. As collections of individual artists’ works, some shows hold together better than others. Many artists included in the 2013 exhibit were represented by two works, which helped its cohesion. Several exceptional pieces stood out.

Embroidery, the au courant hip and “happening” technique, was hard to miss in this overview. Whether machine embroidered or by hand, many pieces pushed fancy stitching to the edge of innovative experimentation. While fabric is hard to manipulate into exacting figurative art, embroidery lends itself more readily to drawing and painting. The best examples not only imitate these traditional representative media, but also SANDY SHELENBERGER (US) Textures 3 Encaustic, Japanese rice paper on cradled boards, encaustic medium, 32” x 24” x 1.5”, 2012.

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N EW from Ann Johnston: remain true to what makes fiber an art form with a character and language all its own.

A work that intends to blur the line between painting and embroidery is Elodie Sabardeil’s Palpatations. The vulnerability of the naked figure and loose ends of thread dance in unison, beautifully expressing form and figuration in one idea.

Stephen Sidelinger’s Big Yellow, an embroidered reinterpretation of one of his existing paintings, won the award for excellence in needlework. By staying true to the strong mark-making and layered qualities of his expressive original, the stitching seems entirely fresh in its voice: gestural and decisive.

Sandy Shelenburger embroidered a square cloth with four squares, leaving an open diagonal cross pattern. Her encaustic Textures 1 and Textures 3 each use 12 repetitive black and white images of this square cloth organized in a quilt-like patchwork. With no actual stitches being present, the pieces raise awareness of how our experiences are most often mediated—real tactile experience versus its mere representation. Following Magritte’s 1928 painting of a pipe accompanied by the text ceci n’est pas une pipe (this is not a pipe), Shelenburger could have added the text “this is not embroidery.�

Liz Aston also manipulates photographs of her own textile work in Exploding Lace View. She pushes perceptions of her lace as she digitizes, scales up, and abstracts the original in hand-cut, starched, and dyed linen, taking it out of a traditional size and context and into the realm of contemporary art. A similar transformation occurs when Carol Milne kiln-casts her knitted wax socks with lead crystal glass and lost-wax casting technique to reveal socks that are fine art objects first and transformed textiles second.

These inspired and compelling works actively probe the boundaries of textile art and challenge preconceived notions. As in any survey, these works are juxtaposed with more straightforward fiber pieces: weaving, felting, knitting, crocheting, knotting, beading,

A complete dye workshop on DVD!

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the techniques Ann introduced in her ground-breaking book, Color by Accident: Low-Water Immersion Dyeing. With over 250 samples of fabric and 17 live demonstrations, Ann teaches how and when to vary her basic method, including how to U mix colors without exact recipes U create value blends several ways U create many different textures U explore dyeing on your own

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To order, please visit: CAROL MILNE (US) Fire & Brimstone Knitted wax (stockinette stitch), kiln-cast lead crystal (glass), lost wax casting technique, 7� x 5� x 12� each, 2011.

www.AnnJohnston.net or phone 800.247.6553

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i nr eview Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

(continued from page 55) lace, and paper. While Fiberart International 2013 felt complete and well-rounded, many pieces remain in the comfort zone of traditional materiality and techniques. Audiences may contemplate and admire their technical prowess, but the real excitement comes from the art that explodes our expectations.

In conjunction with Fiberart International 2013, social media’s darling event of the summer was Knit the Bridge. The “yarn-bombing” of Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol/7th Street Bridge basked in glorious blankets made through accessible crafts (August 10-September 6, 2013). The colorful textiles were appealing to many constituents from the passerby to the participating folks from all walks of life. The Herculean effort to organize the project (conceived by Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh members and led by artist Amanda Gross) took over a year of preparation, gathering much momentum and support along the way. It was clearly a huge success when measured as a community-led and based art project,

claiming to be the largest yarn-bombing to date.

Aesthetically, it was also a sight to behold. The dressing of the bridge was cleverly thought out: the 580 blanket-size panels left lots of room for participants’ individual contributions.

Black sleeves that encased the railings and pillars unified and anchored the diversity. Machine knits dressed the towers. There were so many fantastic vantage points: from your car or bus on the bridge or from underneath in a boat or kayak.

Observing people interact on the bridge was another treat. They very animatedly pointed, discussed and investigated. There is no doubt that the Summer of 2013 will be forever known as the Summer of Knit the Bridge.

Fiberart International 2013 will travel to the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles in San Jose, California (November 6, 2013–January 19, 2014), www.sjquilt museum.org; and the Franklin G. Burroughs - Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (January 19–April 24, 2014), www.myrtlebeachart museum.org; www.fiberartinternational.org; www.knitthebridge.wordpress.com.

—Dutch native Petra Fallaux is a writer, curator, quilt maker, and creative director at Springboard Design, based in Pittsburgh, PA. www.petrafallaux.com

Knit the Bridge Andy Warhol/7th Street Bridge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “yarn-bombed” by dozens of participants with handknit and crocheted panels (August 10 - September 6, 2013). Photo: John Polyak. Detail TOP LEFT. 56

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i np rint Reviewed by Patricia Malarcher Indigo: The Color that Changed the World

By Catherine Legrand Thames & Hudson, London and New York, 2012 ISBN: 978-0-500-57660-7 Long before Levi Strauss stitched up his first pair of jeans in the 19th century, blue dye was among the world’s most coveted commodities. While other sources of the color, including woad, became well known in the West, India is believed to have first developed the processes that yield a deep vibrant blue from the indigofera plant. Since its green leaves contain no hint of the dye that for centuries played a historic role in international commerce, its development is close to a miracle wrought by human ingenuity.

Gradually, it found its way around the world and was adapted to serve the specific needs of particular cultures. Although the majority of blue dyes today are synthetic colors produced by industry, there are pockets on the planet where people still produce indigo as in past ages.

Catherine Legrand, proprietor of an ethnic clothing store in Paris, circled the globe in search of people working with indigo in traditional ways and who remain conversant with the lore and rituals surrounding its production. She records that journey in a visually seductive volume, Indigo: The Color That Changed the World. Her high-resolution photographs that make cloth sing 70

should convince the most indifferent browser that the color known as “blue gold” merits whatever it took to obtain it. Among the examples the reader encounters are the richly varied blues of worn fabric in Japanese boro, the contrast of brilliant blue and white in resist-dyed African fabrics, the lacquer-like shine of blue-black clothing worn by the Miao people in China, blues enriched by constellations of tiny patterns in India, and darkest blue as a ground for brilliant embroidery in Guatemala. Diverse images of people at work convey the enormous range of conditions in which indigo dyeing takes place, from women dyeing at home with clay pots scaled for individual use to men working communally in vats that occupy prominent places in their villages.

The book’s 300 pages in a horizontal format could strain muscles accustomed to e-readers. Still, Lagrand correctly describes her approach as modest, not exhaustive. She provides a brief introduction to indigo’s history and the complex sequence of processes that extract the dye from the plant, leaving other technical aspects for chapters on particular geographical areas. There are references to dyeing processes, such as ikat and shibori, but no detailed information on those or on the looms that are mentioned in passing.

However, there is a full explanation of calendaring, a method of beating fabric to make it shiny and water-resistant, that is used by the Miao.

Occasionally supplementing the copious photographs are painted images of garments, but these seem incidental. The author’s voice comes through most authoritatively in her reports on personal encounters. I was disappointed that, in the section on Horiyuki Shindo, his rectangular dyeing tub is depicted but not one of his contemporary indigo sculptures. That omission, I assume, was to keep the focus on traditional artifacts.

This is not a book to read from cover to cover but to take in a piece at a time. Moving through the chapters, I kept thinking of a National Geographic special in which a subject is covered by selective anecdotes that send one elsewhere for the whole story. For that, one can start with the extensive bibliography on the final pages. An index would have been helpful. I wanted to crossreference information in different chapters, but that meant flipping back and forth through the book. I tended to lose my way and surrender to blueness. www.thamesandhudson.com —Patricia Malarcher, a studio artist and writer, was formerly Editor of the Surface Design Journal.

Surface Design Journal

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Membership Order Form

Surface Design Association History Founded in 1977, the Surface Design Association is an international not-for-profit organization with an office in Sebastopol, California. SDA seeks to raise the level of excellence in textile surface design by inspiring creativity and encouraging innovation through all its undertakings. Our current membership of nearly 4000 national and international members includes independent artists, designers, educators, curators and gallery directors, scientists, industrial technicians, entrepreneurs, and students.

Publications and Website Surface Design Journal, the Association’s quarterly magazine, offers in-depth articles on subjects of interest to contemporary textile artists, designers, and other professionals in the field. Each issue is designed around a theme relevant to surface design and offers perceptive commentary unequaled by any other peer publication. Accompanying each article are full-color reproductions of work by leading-edge artists.

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The website includes ongoing updates on SDA conferences; a gallery featuring members’ artwork; an international calendar of textile-related events; and a bulletin board listing opportunities for exhibitions, grants and employment.

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The Surface Design Association sponsors major biennial international conferences as well as smaller regional and international conferences. Programs feature distinguished speakers offering perspectives on surface design, workshops and demonstrations covering a wide range of contemporary and historical techniques, exhibitions, fashion shows, vendor expos, and other events. Conferences have been held at different US and international locations.

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• Opportunity to submit images of work to the “Exposure” section of the Journal • Image Library for promotion of members’ artwork

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© Surface Design Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited.