ISSUE NO. VIII
THE PROCESS ISSUE
SPRING / SUMMER 2016
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THREAD
The Thread Magazine, an independent student organization located at Cornell University, produced and is responsible for the content of this publication. This publication was not reviewed or approved by, nor does it necessarily express or reflect the policies or opinions of, Cornell University or its designated representatives. Funded in part by the Student Assembly Funding Commission.
Daniel Preston Editor-in-Chief Sisi Peng President
Claire Bowie Creative Director
Kelly Guo Vice President
Katie Roscoe Technical Director
Creative Ben Abeles Emily Keenan Joyce Bao Charles Kowalczyk Jessy Harthun Perry Lawson Art Director Charlene Luo Kieran Haruta Charlotte Slaughter Grace Lawson George Tsourounakis Weihong Rong
Beauty Director Libby Brothers Elena Jiao Dikshing Lama Nelson Kim Okoli Charlene Pires
Diane Tsang Carly Steckel Kendra Sober Handan Xu Jane Yoon
Photography Director Omar Abdul-Rahim Ben Abeles Lily Croskey-Englert Dante Dahabreh Tina He Alex Hernandez
Cameron Pollack Emily Keenan Tiffany Li Jerry Liu Katie Roscoe Sisi Yu
Styling Director Amarachi Abakporo Quincy Blair Nadine Fuller Lucrezia Giovannini Jyoti Goel
Brenna Louie Christina Nastos Kate Rabin Ravenna Stafford Adriana Veliz
Editorial Associate Editor-in-Chief Olivia Friedman Avidan Grossman Alex Hernandez Hansika Iyer Elena Jiao
Alexandra Clement Victoria Lopez Kim Okoli Isabelle Phillippe Kathleen Won
Marketing & Finance Finance Director Marketing Director Michelle Dan Nadine Fuller Ellen Ghong Tina He Charlotte Hersh
Hannah Babb Kristina Linares John Payne Mauricio Quispe Kendra Sober Emily Wan
Special thanks to: Cornell Fashion Collective The Cornell Store Medium Design Collective Ports of New York Student Assembly Funding Commission & other non-members who have contributed to Thread in any way Models Mariko Azis Vanshika Bansal Sofia Boucher McKenzie Caldwell Ali Jenkins Evan Kharrazi
Pandora Dance Troupe (Lauren Bergelson, Hannah Fuller, Mai-Lee Picard) Alice (Alfie) Rayner Chan Seth Daniel Toretsky Andres Vaamonde
Advisor Prof. Denise Green dng22@cornell.edu
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letter from the
editor
If this issue could sport an Aston Michael bodysuit, leather military jacket, and Louboutins, perhaps it too might slay the Super Bowl Halftime. Let me tell you, it can’t — or rather, it would look ridiculous. And while we could never live up to the Queen, we nonetheless strive to create a lasting impression on our readers, for the better or the worse (but hopefully the former), to redefine their conceptions of the three pillars that uphold each and every issue: fashion, art, and lifestyle. It’s not often that a single publication can redefine the intersection between design, art, and fashion. Very rarely is there a successful platform for social dialogue but, with the fundamental shift of Thread from a fashion publication to one that grasps all design disciplines, this has been achieved. We have made a monumental shift to explore design through broader, more relevant social trends. I began to see our publication as a way to facilitate the dialogue between two principal players: our readers and our society — how does art and design act as the mediator between the two? Sitting around a table just a few months ago, we dawned on a conversation around the creative disciplines. Quickly that conversation spurred a dialogue around the inherent differences and similarities between the creative processes of different artists. Thus, this issue was born. We felt a need to highlight the design process. After all, quite often the process that an artist follows is more interesting, more provocative, and more inspiring than the object d’art and very often this particular
window is never opened to the public. Without delving too deeply into this issue it is important to recognize this relationship between artist, process, and art.
Thread has been an inspiration for me. Over the past three years, I have had the pleasure to see the creative efforts of so many talented individuals culminate into a remarkable publication. It is truly incredible. I believe the talents of this publication express themselves through not just our print magazine, but also our presence on campus as the only mediator of fashion, art and lifestyle. I need to extend my heartfelt gratitude to those who helped bring our creative vision to life, particularly: Allie, Claire, Katie, Brenna, Hannah, Kristina, Cameron, Diane, Charlene, and last, the two who maintain the well oiled machine, president and vice president Sisi and Kelly. If our readers walk away from this magazine with only one take away, I could only hope that they have absorbed the issue’s interdisciplinary dialogue. How might the exchange of the design process embarked upon by different artists affect the way you engage with your work? With that, I wish you farewell.
— Dan Preston
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letter from the At the start of each new issue we find ourselves gathered in a noiseless auditorium; an intimate sprinkling of creative minds squeeze into the front desks as we begin our Think Tank. One question rings through our minds as we stare at a blank board, waiting, wondering: “What’s next?” What new creations will transform the minds around us and open eyes? How can we push the limits further than they’ve already been pushed? What masterpieces will win the prize of these pages, and how will we get them there? From the start I knew this issue would not be the same as previous years. The talented Ariel Hsu’s festooned reign delivered to us an investigation of emotion and culture throughout the world. Instead, this year we’re hitting home harder than January in Ithaca hits us in the face. “Any person any study” right? With eighty majors at our fingertips we wanted to dig deep into the hermits, the creators, the innovators of art. But this isn’t any old biography, this is an homage to the gritty, eye bagged, hair tearing nights of ceaseless dedication. This is for the hundreds
creative director
of sketches, disheartening critiques, the haters, the believers, all for the triumphant beam of a final submission: a punched and sculpted piece of our soul. This is The Process Issue. I began my journey as Creative Director in the shadow of giants, a lineage of expectation-defying, limit-pushing renegades who tore up the structure of trend fashion magazines and laid down an exquisite goddess of unseen depth and artistic profoundness. As I wrestled with my vision for this issue I tapped into my humble summer art school beginnings that led me to the Fiber Science and Apparel Design major here at Cornell. While I moved away from strictly design, the sharp memory of the constant dedication to craft and the countless garments that often went unseen and unappreciated never faded. But these hours are an artist’s true Christian Louboutin’s, their masterpiece Yeezy Boosts. While this is not their legacy to their audience, it is the imprint left on themselves, the fervor that keeps them ravenous and ready to do it all over again. Thus the search for our artists began. We
rounded up innovators within the major art fields of Cornell, from the architect’s studio to the poet’s cafe, and examined the source of their fire for an issue that is sure to make you want to crack open that old sketchbook. But this search for process could not have come to fruition if I didn’t have my beyond talented Executive Board by my side and every team member of Thread. From our Marketing, Finance, Beauty, Styling, Creative, Photography and Editorial teams to the stunning models and artists that crawled out of bed early weekend mornings to help execute our vision, thank you and get ready for next season.
— Claire Bowie
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table of
contents
On Inspiration The Painter The Architect The Poet Design Devlopment: Decrypted The Artist The Dancer Peregrination The Fashion Designer Through the Lens
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Kim Okoli
Inspiration. When seeking this elusive idea, there are many avenues which designers can explore. Some look outward while others inward, a crowded coffee shop or home studio. It is important to recognize that every creative has a different method of exploration that reflects the origin of their thoughts. Many artists seek inspiration in bustling public places where they can be surrounded by sights, sounds, smells, and other sorts of multifaceted stimuli, which all have the potential to strike a mental match. This type of passive inspiration requires the artist to succumb to all chaos and let it wash over them. Hopefully, somewhere in the cacophony, a chain reaction occurs. This method of inspiration can be described as absorptive, allowing the environment to overstimulate the senses in order for one of hundreds of triggers to spark a thought or memory that can be used as a foundation for design. The trigger can be something common seen from a different point of view, such as a sunset that emotes feelings of loneliness rather than warmth, or a mountain viewed upside down. While there are artists who find inspiration in the normalities of every day, other artists seek an altered reality. Hallucinogens, dreams and visions containing things one might not see in real life serve as the foundation for many creatives. Mary Shelley and Friedrich August Kekulé, notable author and chemist, respectively, found the inspiration for their work in dreams. Shelley wrote Frankenstein after being inspired by a childhood nightmare, as represented in her horrific descriptions and use of remote settings and overpowering emotions. Kekulé envisioned the benzene ring after dreaming of a snake biting its own tail. Contrasted with the stimulation-seeking artist, those who seek inspiration in isolation subscribe to a different modus operandi: active inspiration, when an artist depends only on internal stimuli.
Active artists often seek silence and an environment free from distraction, turning their mind inwards for reflection. This form of inspiration is said to be “creative” in the sense that the idea is essentially formed from nothing discernable. An artist could attempt to use this method of inspiration when struggling to develop an already established idea. Completely internal, this method requires meaningful self-reflection. Once the glimmer of an idea is found, it is possible to extrapolate upon personal hypotheses and provoke meaningful theories. Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach based his eponymous ink blot test on his experience at a poetry group, where attendees composed poems inspired by what they saw in indiscriminate ink stains. Channeling strong emotions can actively inspire an artist, regardless of their connotation. True love and deep loss have equally inspired artists and musicians throughout the years. Reflections on death, the feelings of falling in and out of love, and the torment of rejected or unrequited love have inspired movements. Look closely enough at any piece of work and the emotion that inspired it shines through. Musician Guy Garvey wrote alternative rock album Build A Rocket Boys! after spending his childhood Sundays lost in his own thoughts; director Rupert Goold slept in short intervals before directing his theater performances to facilitate shallow-sleep dreams. These polar origins of inspiration produced varied yet critically acclaimed works of art, perhaps waiting to serve themselves as inspiration for others.
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On Inspiration
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cosmogenesis
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cosmogenesis Victoria Lopez
The connection between body and mind lends itself to the realization of freedom. Free from the constraints and rules of the world, a balanced sense of self allows for a natural flow of creativity. A tranquil presence, videographer Mariko Azis embodies a true yogi. Conjuring the spiritual element of impermanence, apparent in the image of a mandala being blown away, Azis plays with the idea of an art piece not being an object; im-
ages in her video are momentary flashes, quickly replaced by other images. Objectification, a notion inherent in Western ideology, guides a certain way of thought. Inspired by the Greek myth of Pygmalion (a sculptor who becomes obsessed with the image of his sculpted perfect woman), Azis thinks about the role of an artist in terms of control, translated into her thinking about “sexuality as a mode of creation or procreation� in
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the “sensibilities of tantric Buddhism and Hinduism.” She questions the idea of art being the “property of the artist,” parallel to the idea of a woman being the property, or creation, of man. Based on such a line of thought, Azis is working on her latest project, using green screen technology to sculpt her own image, combining the artist and product as one. Mariko goes on to describe the fluidity in her process. Giving up control, she allows her work to develop naturally. Focusing more on the individual experiences of the “moving paintings,” she lets her videos be dictated by technology. In her color palette, an element she gives herself no credit for, Mariko runs her pho-
tos through certain algorithms allowing the colors to edit themselves and run their course without doing much intervening, giving each “piece a little more of its own integrity”, reflecting a sort of cosmological approach. True to form she leaves us with, “Remember that the only thing that you possibly have control over is yourself, no matter what crazy shit happens to you, you get to control how you react to that, what you do with it.”
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Drawing Boundaries
to Break Them Kathleen Won Olivia Friedman
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Unraveling an eight-foot drawing of Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, Daniel Toretsky reveals an anomaly of a neighborhood in which three different communities, African American, West Indian Caribbean, and Lubavitch, live separate but adjacent lives. Fifth year architecture student Toretsky focused on this community for his thesis, the culmination of Cornell’s architecture program. After four days of interviewing members of Crown Heights, Toretsky incorporated both historical and contemporary issues that inundate and define this area of Brooklyn to tell a profound story. Inspection of the individual components of Toretsky’s project reveal the detailed depictions of the aforementioned communities, created through both hand-drawings and computer-aided design programs, that collectively compose Crown Heights. Moreover, quotes from interviewees are weaved throughout his work, drawing viewers into this living and breathing narrative. Reflecting on his conversations with interviewees, Toretsky recalls repeatedly
hearing of the tension that historically and presently burdens Crown Heights. The stark religious contrast that exists between the groups — Lubavitch is defined by its strict Jewish traditionalism and fervent outreach, while the African American and Caribbean communities often attend the same Christian churches — is made apparent in Toretsky’s work. This juxtaposition is included through two religious metaphors. The perimeter of the piece is adorned with drawings of overlapping hands and feet. The feet reference Reverend Al Sharpton’s ‘Christian Walk,’ and the geographic scope of his aid. Meanwhile, the hands symbolize the Crown Heights Rebbe’s ‘Daled Amos,’ a phrase that means ‘personal space’ in Jewish law. “Lubavitchers believe the whole neighborhood is the Rebbe’s personal space; you’re in his care when you’re in this place,” Toretsky explains. The overlap of the hands and feet represent the crossover of the Lubavitch and Christian religious groups within this particularly segregated community.
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Toretsky’s interest in such a specific community was influenced by Cornell Professor Jonathan Boyarin, Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies. Professor Boyarin led Toretsky to Crown Heights, as he had interest in “finding a place where there were tensions between a very active Jewish community and sometimes marginalized members of other groups.” Toretsky remarks upon the influence of actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith’s 1993 play Fires in the Mirror. She recounts stories of community members in an attempt to understand the conflicts in Crown Heights after the 1991 riots, a three-day dilemma in which violence broke loose amongst the black and Lubavitch groups. Her influence comes from the reality that “understanding complexity and understanding difference is something that can be difficult and can be uncomfortable but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t [try and understand] or accept incomprehensibility,” says Toretsky. Toretsky believes that architects should “relate to and see people as valid partic-
ipants in the process of design” — a belief that is evident in the meticulous inclusivity of his final thesis. Post graduation, Toretsky plans to embark on a career that will “balance academia and practice,” while assuming social and environmental responsibility. “I want to learn how to make a really good building first,” he says, “and then be capable of actually helping.” These goals reflect a social consciousness already apparent in his study of Crown Heights, an all too common urbanistic conflict.
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22 thread Hansika Iyer Poet William Carlos Williams once said, “Forget all rules, forget all restrictions, as to taste, as to what ought to be said, write for the pleasure of it — whether slowly or fast — every form of resistance to a complete release should be abandoned.” For writer Andrés Vaamonde, writing started out as an interest and quickly took over his life. After reading poems by Langston Hughes, Vaamonde realized poets can “say a third thing by only using the first and second ways of saying it.” Through omission, Hughes is communicating the omitted message itself. Vaamonde instantly began reading, memorizing, writing, and submitting poetry before deciding to major in English. Writing is now a permanent fixture in Vaamonde’s life, a part of him that is rewarding but also frustrating. Though prose is Vaamonde’s forte, poetry has
been taking up his time recently. Poetry is autobiographical, personal, and can be terrifying to publish. In his poem Submitting, Vaamonde emphasizes the drama associated with submitting artwork to journals only to be rejected: Submitting is largely about making things too big and too small and once I’ve done that, sending them all to the wrong places anyway. It was out of a moment of whimsy as well because it was liberating to say regardless of this thing, I still wrote the poem. And guess what? I’m still publishing right now. The irony is not lost on me for sure.
The poem may be filled with hyperboles but many of the emotions depicted are real. At a younger age, Vaamonde was more affected by acceptances and rejections. Every acceptance was destiny pushing him in the right direction while every rejection was a sign that he should quit. His own ability to persist upholds his
motivation to write: “if I didn’t write the poem, that would be the affirmation of the death of poetry.” Vaamonde sees the final product as proof of his artistic stamina. Poetry is all about turning emotion into artwork, which is exactly what Vaamonde does and continues to do. It is with hesitation that Vaamonde invites the critical eye of the public. “It’s an invitation to analyze my work [and therefore] analyze me and, from that, judge me” he says, “and that’s all very scary.” While daunting, Vaamonde embraces William Carlos Williams’s philosophy and is abandoning all forms of resistance.
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Submitting Andres Vaamonde
The poems I sent to Mars Have not yet returned. I combust with worry. Evidence of their explorations Were due back two nights past But nothing has come home. I wish This was unusual. Time appears To be repeating itself again. Last year I shot a few snippets to the moon But they burned up before they reached the stratosphere. I did the opposite as well, Shrunk some prose down to microscopic ships And sent them in search of a main blood stream Though the vessels could not find the vein. I even tried tying some musings to a pigeon’s toe And sent him in pursuit toward Paris and New York. I knew he must have muffed the whole affair When he washed ashore months later With only a subscription sheet wrapped around his wings. I filled it out anyway. How sensitive I have become! How raw and sad! Yesterday I heard a beep and leapt But it was just my phone and As always The message did not matter. And now I scan my hands for answers, Wondering how they keep making things — For whom, for what and why — and I Plead with the palms to respond But not even these, My own wrinkly universes, Have any words for me
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Photographs courtesy of vogue.com
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Design Development: Decrypted Alexandra Clement
At his Spring 2015 presentation in September of 2014, Elie Tahari unveiled a dress adorned with fifty functioning iPhones. This look, and other costume-esque pieces of the same genre, kicked off a global discussion about the role of technology in fashion. But as is the case in most works of art, the physical representation of a design is a statement, an interpretation of a much larger phenomenon or idea. Putting technology on display as part of a garment merely symbolizes the function of underlying mechanics and processes and foreshadows the evolution of the role that science will play in the fashion industry. The darting eyes of the ever-watchful media have settled upon the most relevant influence on the future of fashion — the only other industry that evolves at such a rapid pace: technology. From sketching designs on digital tablets to laser cutting
fabric; three dimensional scanning measurements to 3D printing shoes; technology is no longer a stylistic choice for the more daring of designers but a constant that permeates the entirety of the design, production, marketing and consumer process. Methods such as laser cutting have become common at all tiers of brands. This process draws upon mathematics and computational strategy to eliminate human error in precision cutting and pattern making. Greta Ohaus, senior Fiber Science and Apparel Design major, has used laser cutting in her own work, for two main purposes: functional and decorative. Beyond the basic cutting of pattern pieces, says Ohaus, “You can add extravagant cut-outs to a fabric, you can emboss, you can make thousands of layers of fringe,” all using laser technology. This technique is only
one of many in the design process operating upon technological foundations. Two fields distinctly separate — art and science — blur together via the common thread of innovation. Andrew Bolton, head curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, wanted to emphasize the entire designing process for this year’s Met Gala. The exhibit recognizes the fundamental role of technology in fashion and society in the theme of the first Monday in May’s event: Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology. The exhibit is organized in such a way that focuses on the chronological stages of design. As one walks the material layout of the exhibition, they follow a path through history, into the current era of innovation, and toward the future of fashion. According to a recent Vogue article,
28 thread Bolton’s inspiration was actually a realization that fashion has been inseparable from technology since the dawn of the sewing machine. Once that particular piece of machinery was perfected, haute couture was born. Viewed objectively, the common descriptor of couture, “handmade”, is a misnomer, as technology in the form of a foot pedal and automated needle and thread is always involved. Just as fashions fade out, are replaced, and come back into style, so will couture and unique pieces come full circle. Fast fashion, the mass production and disposability on the shelves of H&M, ASOS, and the like, will soon make way to “slow fashion.” This is according to Nancy Tilbury, co-founder and director of Studio XO, a London company operating “at the intersection of science, technology, fashion and music”, as seen in the documentary film The Next Black. Slow fashion is a result of consumers investing in their clothing and keeping it for longer periods of time. Tilbury sees a future in which clothing can be edited post production, like “tumblr for the body,” to quell the desire of “generation digital” to constantly change their wardrobe, as a remix culture emerges. Sophie Mather, former head of innovation at Nike Asia, sees possibilities not yet possible: garments that preserve dyes and materials by using light reflection to portray color and pattern, like a butterfly’s intricate wing pattern. This focus on sustainability is not uncommon in today’s pioneers. “We’re not happy with ‘x’ percent less,” says Mather. “We want zero.” Another field of research combining fashion and science strays from the mechanical and focuses on a topic much more basic: biology. Using only green tea, sugar, vinegar and a starting culture, Suzanne Lee started “brewing” fabric-like material in her bathroom. This material takes on the shape of its container and can be dyed, laser cut and sewed. Lee, fashion designer turned biological experimenter, aims to reduce the waste of “old world practices” and one day grow clothes directly into their final form. The possibilities of this kind of production are limitless — the bacteria can be manipulated to be waterproof or contain certain nutrition that can be absorbed into the skin. Bio materials may one day replace the plastics used in
3D printing, creating fully biodegradable garments. Lee says there is “no time for [research and development] in fashion,” but she and visionaries like her understand that you have to look beyond what’s fashionable, even fifty years so, to prepare for the next big idea. The consumer themselves also use technology in their fashion pursuits. Surfing the web is now passé, and there is more onus on the producer to market directly to each shopper. This practice is manifested in the use of Instagram. Sponsored posts, a term attempting to dissociate from “advertisement”, are not even the most prominent form of social media influence brands utilize. The real marketing happens in interaction with other Instagram users, tagged posts of popular accounts and reception of customer feedback and ideas.
Business of Fashion writer Vikram Alexei Kansara sums up the importance of social media: “Today, success is less about paying for ad pages in a magazine and more about earning attention by nurturing the dominant media-technology platforms where consumers spend time.” Kansara spoke to Eva Chen, Instagram’s head of fashion partnerships, who identified the new principles of online marketing. “It’s not a number game” anymore, she says. More important factors include engagement, brand identity, authenticity, community, and collaboration with “natives,” or laypersons on Instagram. These guidelines focus on connecting with consumers on a real level, versus using reputations of popular Instagram users to increase fashion brands’ followers. The success of such strategies is apparent. Following New York Fashion Week and until the Paris events, between February 10th and March 9th, ten percent of Instagram users — 42 million people — had almost 300 million interactions related to the last round of women’s fashion shows. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” says Chen, “and now a picture can speak to millions of people.” As noted in The Future of Fashion, a film by fashion magazine i-D, ten years ago, a model at a go-see waited four minutes for her Polaroid to develop. Today, in that same amount of time, Gigi Hadid can take a photograph, edit it, post to Instagram,
and have it shared globally. One day, perhaps not that far off, a garment can be photographed, shared, viewed, and reproduced ten thousand miles away: all in those four minutes. The fashion industry is not known for following societal trends, but for starting them. As innovators prioritize social responsibility and design for a future of health and environmental initiatives, for once, it’s the tech world that needs to keep up.
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Photographs courtesy of AEG
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ETHEREAL ARTISTE
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In a world of art, there isn’t always an artist and to focus on complete self-expression is the true manifestation of the creative.
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Breaking Routine
38 thread Alex Hernandez The remnants of over a decade of gritty classical ballet training shine through Mai-Lee Picard’s physical frame and stance. With one dancer flanking either side, Picard, College Scholar and Philosophy senior, flows through a series of dance steps engineered by her own creative devices. Picard admits that the art of independent choreography can be a frustrating one to pursue. Learning a piece requires instruction and memorization; choreographing is the telling of a story: everything needs to be intricately worked out. Throughout the unfamiliar challenges Picard has faced at Cornell, dance choreography has been a unique one for her, an undertaking fueled by her fellow dancers in the Pandora Dance Troupe. As a result, she has developed a succinct approach for bringing visually coherent routines to life. Initially, Picard chooses a song to work with solely based on the melody and her personal emotional response. She uses certain songs “because when I hear them I immediately want to move to them… It’s less about the steps, but more about the idea. The steps follow naturally.” Once inspired, Picard studies the lexicon of the lyrics in search of ideas to further inform explorable choreographic avenues. Equipped with melody and lyric, Picard begins to mobilize her vision of the physical dance. “The chorus of the song
speaks to me: I start there,” she says. Working through each stage of the choreography, Picard tightens up her final product by fine tuning the sequence of steps. In this way, Picard strategically composes the movement of her dancers on stage as if they were paintbrush bristles being pushed against canvas. Picard’s signature choreographic style has evolved alongside her calculated approach to dance. Revealing her motif, Picard explains, “All of the songs I pick are along a similar range. Slow, sometimes a bit sad.” Many of her song choices, such as A Great Big World and Christina Aguilera’s “Say Something”, are about loss. “I don’t want everyone to have the same response,” she says, but she does want the performance itself to elicit genuine feelings from viewers. For Picard, it is important that songs permit different types of movement: “flowing movement” and “big movement.” Observers of Picard’s dance can quickly identify the stylistic motions that are unique to her because as they come into focus they are expressive and emotionally gripping. With a knack for translating melody into differential movement, Mai-Lee Picard has developed a natural intuition for analyzing and interpreting the patterns that coalesce before her, both musically and informally.
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Set Free Alex Hernandez
For Evan Kharrazi, dance is all about the audience. Seeking to genuinely connect with the people for whom he performs, Kharrazi, Hotel Administration senior, “looks to impact the people around” him through dance. Kharrazi’s physical movement is constructed alongside his tactical approach for “adapting” to the space, sound, and groups of people that interact with his dance. While performing, Kharrazi expressively “steps in with [him]self” in order to deliver a rhythmic sway which moves his spectators in a manner that can “take them
away from their current pain.” Kharrazi’s desire to induce a poignant yet positive stirring within audience members originates from his own experience with painful “closed off space.” When his mother was diagnosed with cancer, dance evolved into an emotional therapy for Kharrazi because he realized that dance as an art form had the ability to diffuse new emotions within a person: positive emotions that could carry an individual through dark times, even if just for a moment. Evidence of this awakening radiates throughout Kharrazi’s artistry and stylistic choice of movement, which can be collectively de-
scribed as “segmented,” “fluid,” and emotionally captivating in nature.
Above all, Kharrazi desires to bring beauty, an ornate and multiverse construct, to life when he performs. While his physique articulates visual beauty in movement, his choreography symbolizes an ephemeral “soul” dancing. Externally stripped down and armed with nothing but his soul, Evan Kharrazi dances to bridge the gap between worthy emotions and the observer’s self.
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Peregrination A New Perspective on Process Avidan Grossman
Earlier this past March, Kendrick Lamar, the multi-platinum rapper and recording artist, released untitled unmastered., a collection of eight tracks chiefly compiled from the unfinished demos of To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar’s latest Grammy-winning album. On “untitled 07 | 2014 – 2016”, the longest song on the album at just over eight minutes, Lamar meditates on the vices and virtues of success, singing softly about fame and fortune and rapping for a little under half the song. In the final few minutes, Lamar is heard instructing a guitarist in the background to adjust the tempo of the music, and calls out to
his band to help him with the vocals. It’s casual studio chatter, but for Lamar, whose albums are often as polished as they are passionate, it’s a conscious thematic choice to let the listener in on the complex intricacies of the creative process. On an album that often feels intentionally fragmented and unfinished, that casual studio chatter, the sounds of songs being made, impresses upon the listener a sense of careful intimacy and actively involves the audience in the construction of the album. In an essay entitled “Anti-Form” published in April of 1968, Robert Morris, the
American artist and author, presents a pioneering manifesto for what would eventually become known as the Process Art movement. Writing for Artforum in anticipation of the opening of an exhibit on the same subject later that year, Morris describes in detail the differences between what he refers to as “objecttype art”, and art in which the process of “making itself” is just as important, if not more so, than what is actually being made. “In object-type art, process is not visible,” Morris maintains. “Materials often are. When they are, their reasonableness is usually apparent. Rigid industrial materials
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go together at right angles with great ease…Materials themselves have been limited to those which efficiently make the general object form.” Though Morris traces the conceptual roots of process art all the way back to 16th century Italy, with the “saving of sketches and unfinished work in the High Renaissance,” he begrudgingly acknowledges that many of the movement’s influences are more contemporary in nature, citing extensively the work of abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock, who Morris credits with the ability “to recover process and hold on to it as part of the end form of the work.” In early 1994, The Guggenheim Museum organized Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem, a comprehensive retrospective of over 150 pieces of the artist’s work, spanning across his three decades’ worth of output from the mid 1900s. In an accompanying monograph published by Morris in conjunction with the exhibit, Peter Lawson-Johnston, the grandson of Solomon R. Guggenheim and at the time the President of the museum, described the Guggenheim as “devoted to nonobjective painting” since its founding in 1937. The museum, which houses a sizeable collection of pieces by Morris and many of the other artists associated with the process art movement, including Lynda Benglis, Bruce Nauman, Keith Sonnier, and Richard Serra, defines process art in a small blurb on its website as emphasizing “concepts of change and transience” that, as Morris mentions, have precedent in the “Abstract Expressionists’ use of unconventional methods such as dripping and staining.” The museum cites the “Anti-Form” essay as a “basis for making art works in terms of process and time rather than as static and enduring icons, which [Morris] associated with ‘object-type’ art.”
Photograph courtesy of guggenheim.org
In a review of the retrospective published in The New York Times later that year,
Roberta Smith, the American art critic, describes Morris’s art as “overly didactic and cerebral and weirdly unconnected… an artist more involved with problem solving than art making who often reduces the viewer to the role of guinea pig.” However, Smith concedes: In the end, the most engaging works at the two Guggenheim sites are the most ad hoc and least cerebral, primarily the Process works involving loose, unstructured expanses of felt and thread. Also in this category is a series of unusual drawings from the early 70’s in which the artist, dipping his hands in powdered graphite, attempted to make certain shapes or patterns while blindfolded. In one way, these works are deliberately artless exercises and reflect the cynicism that plagues so much of Mr. Morris’s work. But the inadvertent expressiveness of their raw and fumbling marks still counts, communicating a degree of spontaneity, vulnerability and inevitability that is too frequently lacking elsewhere.
Smith’s scathing criticisms speak to the relative sense of skepticism shared by many of the early critics of the Process Art movement. Today, most pieces produced during the peak of the Process Art movement don’t sell for nearly as much as, say, their abstract expressionist counterparts, likely because the artists associated with the movement never quite achieved the same level of widespread recognition as their contemporaries. Rothko and Rauschenberg are household names. Sonnier and Serra are not. Many of the pieces attributed to the Process Art movement are understood to be, in their fluidity and flexibility, a powerful pushback to the careful composure of the predominantly minimalist paintings produced during the early 1960s. So much so, in fact, that the philosophy of the Process Art movement would indelibly influence the work of a cohort of important creatives within the fashion industry, and catalyze a crucial shift in how the process of design is perceived today. In
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Photographs courtesy of vogue.com
its annual style issue from the week of July 4th, 2005, The New Yorker published a lengthy profile on the Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo titled “The Misfit”. In the opening line, Kawakubo, who is described as an “avant-gardist of few words”, is credited with changing the entire look of women’s fashion by offering a clear alternative to the clean lines and crisp tailoring distinctive to the designs of many of her contemporaries, including Donna Karan and Calvin Klein. Judith Thurman, a staff writer for the magazine since 2000, describes Kawakubo’s polarizing entrance onto the fashion scene in 1981, and the manner in which the revolutionary spirit of her first European collection, shown in Paris, has continued to define her work today. The collection was “modeled by a cadre of disheveled vestals in livid war paint who stomped down the catwalk to the beating of a drum, wearing the bleak and ragged uniforms of a new order”, and has since proved its place among the
pantheon of pivotal moments in fashion, immediately catapulting Kawakubo and her brand, Comme des Garçons, to the top of the fashion industry food chain. After the collection, which Thurman calls a “piece of shock theatre”, Kawakubo went on to establish herself as one of the most influential, and oft imitated, designers of the 20th century, in part because what she was doing, and how she did it, was just so different. Kawakubo’s clothes have “the rigor, if not the logic, of modernist architecture, but loose flaps, queer trains, and other sometimes perplexing extrusions encouraged a client of the house to improvise her own style of wearing them,” Thurman comments, and through this irreverence she has “changed the way one thinks about what dress is.” Since the Destroy collection first debuted in the early 1980’s, Kawakubo has become famous for constantly and consistently pushing the boundaries of women’s clothing. In her seminal spring 1997
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collection Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body, Kawakubo featured jackets with three armholes, jackets with detachable misshapen lumps all over the torso, and jackets with no armholes at all, forcing the consumers of her particular form of fashion to reconsider their preconceived notions about the design process and aiding them in appreciating not just what is being made, but, as Morris might put it, the “making itself.” Months before the official release of untitled unmastered., Kendrick Lamar appeared as a musical guest on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where he debuted “Untitled 2”, a sequel of sorts to a song he first performed over two years ago, with a powerful and poignant performance backed only by a live band and an appreciative audience. The paired-down performance was the perfect platform for Lamar’s particular form of lyrical legerdemain; the song was
both slow and spastic, filled with twists and turns and clever changes of cadence that left the habitually hyperactive Fallon in a sort of shocked speechlessness. Almost two months after the debut of “Untitled 2” on The Tonight Show, bits and pieces of Lamar’s performance would appear on untitled unmastered., sloweddown and sexed-up so significantly the songs hardly seemed the same. In a tweet from March 4th announcing the release of the album, Lamar referred to untitled unmastered. as “unfinished” and in its “raw form”, allowing for what Roberta Smith, the art critic, might describe as a certain “inadvertent expressiveness” that communicates a “degree of spontaneity, vulnerability and inevitability that is too frequently lacking elsewhere.” For Lamar, the final product doesn’t seem so much the primary focus as the process itself; the casual studio chatter and the various different versions of the songs included on the album all indications of an artist
constantly rethinking, readjusting, and reworking, all the while letting the listener in on every part of the process. A little over a month after it was first tweeted, the message announcing the release of untitled unmastered. has been liked over 75,000 times. The response from Lamar’s Twitter fan base, a sizeable, albeit biased, following, has been overwhelmingly positive. Most users have taken to expressing their appreciation for the album with two simple words well under the 140-character limit imposed by the social networking service: thank you.
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The Boyz are Back and they’re making noise Elena Jiao Aidan Shiller, the lifelong fashion addict, David Wild and Mark Colbran, the more recent converts, compose what we know today as the renowned FSAD Boyz. As a male minority in a female majority — the gender makeup of the Cornell fashion program is representatively the inverse of the international fashion industry — the squad FSAD Boyz came about in a mix of solidarity and humor. This segregation spontaneously brought about many difficulties, including homosexual stereotyping and gender norms, but particularly in properly expressing ideas. Shiller explains the challenges: “It’s difficult [to be in] clubs that are related to the department, but also to the course load. Everything has female fashion in mind.” Shiller explains when the department is working on projects, “it’s hard to connect your personal interest in menswear, when you’re having to do female clothing.” The Boyz found their outlet in this year’s collection. In SZN 2, the Boyz collaboratively
designed over 150 sketches, ultimately narrowing down to the six designs in this collection. Rather than making minor adjustments throughout the creative process, such as changing a color or a stitch, each design is concrete and thoroughly thought-out in advance. The painstaking critiques and meticulous crafting bring us the SZN 2 collection showcased at the Cornell Fashion Collective 32nd Annual Fashion show. Consisting of four looks in menswear and two in womenswear, this year’s FSAD Boyz collection focuses on exploring the lines between mass-produced apparel and couture. This is manifested in the approach of purchasing apparel items from second hand stores, deconstructing and reconstructing them to create something more. Colbran remarks, “The whole process was just freedom and fun, and not being limited to a garment-shape that should fit in a certain box or category. Using materials we’ve never used, imagining things, and the struggles of figur[ing] out how to make them
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happen — this experimentation was what drove the physical creation of the collection.” The ‘Shoekini’, favored by Colbran and Wild, exemplifies the struggles and adaptation in trial and error. Converting rigid men’s shoe leather to match the form-fitting stretch of conventional swimsuits required the trio to be innovative in their material manipulation. Whether they used a car to run over the shoes to flatten, soaked them in boiling water to soften, or experimented with different machines that could handle thick leather, the Boyz exhausted every idea imaginable. This exploration of eccentric methods brought about the beautifully crafted, well-fitted leather bikini exhibited this year.
SZN 2 comprises the conventional play between material and fashion. Rather than a specific idea for the audience to leave with, the floor is instead left open for thought. The collection focuses on the positive energy of
experimentation and enjoyment, as well as grasping the attention of the audience and, as a result, exchanging feedback and ideas. “Fashion is serious, but there’s time to have fun,” explains Wild. “The point of the collection was to have fun; we didn’t want our models to be stern about everything, we wanted them to have fun too — a fun for everybody.” Although the Boyz are pursuing their own independent projects and design works, there is no doubt a SZN3 to look forward to. While Colbran and Wild will be designing abroad from Paris and London, respectively, Shiller will be studying in Ithaca, making it work. “While it’s important to be able to take critique from others”, advise the Boyz, “never let anyone stop you until you get arrested — make as much noise as you can.” We hear them loud and clear.
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THROUGH THE LENS: DAVID SPECTOR Isabelle Phillippe
“It’s not doing something that makes you super rich, but doing something that puts your heart at ease.” Such are the words of nineteen year old, Dallas, Texas native David Spector. These words seem to be the forefront of Spector’s creative vision, art process, and final composition. His various collections and photo essays reveal a deliberate yet almost carefree manner, formed not through the pressures of formal art, but through the appreciation of one’s own art. Bright, bold, and strikingly brazen, Spector’s prominent and compelling collection Color Palettes uniquely draws upon the idea of combining the real of photography and the human form with the illustrative of paint and colors. The idea first dawned upon him when a friend stood in front of a painting in the Dallas Museum of Art: “I had this weird little epiphany where at first I thought about painting on her; instead, we did an editorial shoot utilizing flash photography,” said Spector. Separately, he photographed acrylic paint on glass surfaces and superimposed the images onto the editorial photographs of his subject. “While, and after, I was doing it, I realized it was a metaphor for a physical medium. It was the mix of the two,” he said of the blending of the real versus the illustrative through paint. Similarly to Color Palettes, Stacks also features a range of color and creatively compelling visuals. The project was shot with double exposure, both mystifying and colorfully brilliant. Stacks takes on a new approach to film and how images are created. As seen in these works, Spector mostly captures fashion and portraiture photography, focusing on color. Bright colors that scream pop art are a main component of his work. Despite this loud, beauteous art form, Spector’s continued foundation and inspiration lie in a much simpler yet equally stunning form of encapsulation, entitled Expression. Notably an earlier project, Expression captures the
portraits of European homeless individuals. This album was what moved Spector into portraiture. There was a mass display of emotion depicted on the faces of these individuals, which resonated deeply within him. He said of the act of taking one’s portrait, “When you’re photographing a person, them looking through the lens at you is a more intimate look then you can ever get while talking to them. Their guard is down and they’re allowing you to capture their photograph. It’s an intimate moment.” For Spector, photographing is about being able to evoke emotion from both himself and his work and project this emotion to his audience. From looking at the homeless individuals in Europe, “a person to person glance that some people don’t value,” said Spector, “I get an immense feeling of closeness. People have told me that when they look at my photographs they feel they’re disarming. I think that’s my strong suit.” In seeking and obtaining this emotional desire, Spector looks towards nature and landscape photography for influence. The photographer sees color evoked from a natural landscape as a component that feeds into the beauty of portraiture. The unconventional medium between the two styles of photography form a nonpareil beauty that resonates with any audience that comes across one of his works. Although a cliché in the world of photography, there is something to say about a picture being worth a thousand words. There are ideas that encapsulate and embody the spirit of hidden beauty that lay behind the many simplicities of life. Such simplicities, such beauty, and such passion can be found within the work of a nineteen year old photographer, able to capture and formulate his own beauties. Visually stunning and uniquely created, his work embeds the true passion and vision of what it means be a photographer, but, more importantly, to be an artist; what it truly means to look and find oneself and the beauty in others, through the lens.
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Images courtesy of David Spector
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Thread is an independent student publication and the only fashion, lifestyle and art magazine at Cornell. Thread is a conglomeration of student-made fashion, art, photography, styling, and design. It is published semesterly, and aims to showcase the interdisciplinary talents of individuals within the Cornell community through its attention to compelling visual and written storytelling. Thread encourages students of all disciplines to join our team. If you are interested in working on Thread, please contact us. Web thethreadmagazine.com Email thethreadmagazine@gmail.com Facebook facebook.com/thethreadmagazine Instagram @threadmag
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