Art and Design Commons^™

Invisible No More: The Embellished Abaya In Qatar, Christina Lindholm

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Shari’a law and local custom dictate that Muslim women in Qatar wear the abaya, an all-encompassing black garment. Supposedly a deterrent to unwanted male attention and a device to protect men from lascivious thoughts, the abaya has rendered women anonymous when in public, silently moving through society as unidentified and all but invisible beings. Increased Western employment, tourism, and media in the forms of magazines, radio, television and the Internet have brought images of Euro-American lifestyles into Arab homes. Higher education for women has resulted in increased female opportunity and independence. Many women travel abroad and every year more complete …

Tradition Embraces “The New”: Depictions Of Modernity On Japanese Kurume E-Gasuri Futon-Ji, Ann Marie Moeller

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Kurume is a city on Kyushu Island in Japan known for producing dramatic hand-woven e-gasuri (picture ikat) futon-ji (bedding covers). The most famous have a single picture which runs across four or five panels. Both the warp and weft threads were resist dyed using indigo before being woven into a single long and narrow length of fabric. This cloth was then cut into the panel sections and sewn together. Extraordinary skill was required to both accurately tie the areas of thread to be resisted and to maintain a consistent tension when weaving the fabric. This precision produced complex designs with …

Sustaining The Magnificent Craft Of Songket Weaving In Malaysia, June Ngo Siok Kheng

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Mass-production of songket utilising jacquard looms can swiftly diminish the songket weaving cottage industry. Investing in a jacquard or dobby loom can be expensive and thus may not be affordable for practical use in the cottage songket industry as traditional weavers tend to operate on a small scale basis in villages. This paper highlights the production of contemporary Malaysian handwoven songket which is currently being funded by Yayasan Tuanku Nur Zahirah (YTNZ). The YTNZ is a foundation founded under the royal patronage of her Majesty Tuanku Nur Zahirah, the reigning Queen of Malaysia. YTNZ aims to help under-privileged communities in …

Shipibo Textile Practices 1952-2010, Claire Odland, Nancy Feldman

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

indigenous Shipibo communities. In Part One, we will describe our work with a 1952 film on the Shipibo by Harry Tschopik, Jr., Associate Curator of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History. In 2007, one of the presenters compiled this footage into a DVD, called El Pueblo Shipibo: Men of the Montaña. This silent film is unique; no other historic film of these people and their heritage has been found to exist. Shipibo communities at preliminary screenings in 2008 reacted with delight as they saw images validating their ancestral knowledge. Men of the Montaña provides authentic visual images and …

Cutting Through The Surface: The Use Of Laser Cutting Technology With Traditional Textile Process, Jessica Payne

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Laser cutting technology is now widely associated with textiles, but prior to the research of designers such as Janet Stoyel, in the early 1990s, it was regarded as a non textile specific technology. Over the past ten years many contemporary designers have used laser technology in conjunction with textiles; leading to the widely seen ‘cut through’ design aesthetic, as exemplified by the work of product designer, Tord Boontje. The technology, however, has not been vigorously exploited and tested in conjunction with traditional textile processes such as flocking, foiling, and print. This paper discusses and discloses my recent research which investigates …

What’S Old Is New Again: Carved Board Clamped Resist Dyeing, Jay Rich, Ana Lisa Hedstrom, Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, Elin Noble

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This panel of textile artists comes together to discuss current replication studies and design application of an ancient resist dyeing technique that involves carved board clamped resist dyeing on fabric. The inspiration pushing the panelists comes from 6-7th century jia xie in China and kyokechi in Japan and work from the Calico Museum in India as well as the important work of contemporary researchers, Tomoko Torimaru and Masanoa Arai.

The idea of creating patterns by tightly clamping folded fabric between mirrored carved board pairs is simple. The contemporary artistry is in finessing and manipulating dye penetration, choice of contemporary fabrics …

Urban Textiles: From Yarn Bombing To Crochet Ivy Chains, Ruth Scheuing

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Small hand-knitted little cozies appear in my local neighborhood; overgrown weeds in an urban community garden become a source for materials and inspiration.

These new approaches to textiles by emerging artists explore new aesthetics and explode relationships between process and material and ideas about the use for handmade objects. These artists question the use of galleries as exhibition venues, curators, and juries as judges, and commerce/consumerism around finished objects. Instead they use the street as exhibition space and blogs or flickr sites as venues to create local and global communities.

KnitGirl’s work consists of knitted patches attached to telephone poles, …

From Traditional To Digital Tools, Grethe Sorensen

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

By the invention of digital thread control and digital subject processing programs, quite new possibilities for creating woven textiles have come into existence.

I will describe my way from the traditional to the digital tools. A development that over the last ten years has lead me to new expressions in woven textiles—elusive optical phenomena, color gradations and a new weave-construction based on digital technology.

It was the absorption in digital subject processing that inspired me to explore the possibilities of developing new methods for creating weave-constructions.

The similarity between pixelated pictures and the graphic expression for a weave-construction gave the …

Traversing Locality/Navigating Borders, Kelly Thompson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

What is it to be located? What are the markers of communication that travel with us, or that we seek locally? Recent art practices that address notions of geography, migration, settlement and travel in an increasingly ‘globalized’ and mediatized world are presented in this paper. With Montreal, Canada as the site of location, this research explores ways in which experience intermingles in the poetics of visual translation of ‘real world’ imagery into textile-based responses. Travel and ‘the local’ suggests a map, a rhizome, consisting of multiple entry points “entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real”, as Deleuze …

Performing The Quilt: The Block To The Blog And Back Again, Sarah E. Tucker

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper will examine the work of three contemporary Australian quiltmakers in terms of a Deleuzian ‘smooth space’. It will be argued that the patchwork quilt represents a material manifestation of a concept which marks out networked, relational and transversal thought and, has the potential to link both the most similar and the most disparate of ideas. A weblog (hhtp://quilted-out-ofspace.blogspot.com) will document the process and in turn be analysed to explore parallels with the processes of making a quilt— including the potential for alternative social networks such as ‘cybermovements’, ‘submerged networks’, and ‘counterpublics’.

The quilts of Emma Rowden, Judy McDermott, …

Zaher Va Baten: Outer Form And Inner Meaning In Iranian Textile Designs, James Turner

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The distinction between zaher and baten, outer and inner, is a fundamental duality encountered in the philosophical, psychological, religious and mystical aspects of Iranian thought. The metaphysical desire to go beyond sensory apprehension of transient external forms to intellectual comprehension of their lasting inner significance may be considered the central theme of Iranian visual art including textile designs. A close examination of four textiles from the modern period reveals some of the concealed personal motivations and cultural meanings embodied in their patterns. Beyond all practical concerns, these weavings have in common the aim of unifying the duality of ordinary sight …

Woven Blooms Of Nationalism: Russian Handwoven Tapestry-Technique Shawls 1825-1855, Tanya Wetenhall

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Russian handwoven, tapestry-technique shawls of the nineteenth century form an understudied group of textile art, especially when compared to Russia’s widely-known printed shawl industry. Often considered by Western textile and fashion historians to be a parallel industry to the production of woven shawls of the Kashmir style in France and Britain, further investigation suggests the contrary. The manufacture of Russian tapestry-technique shawls developed as a distinctly separate industry, addressing nineteenth-century Russia’s established shawl trade and shifting geopolitics. The Russians continued the production of these extravagant shawls long after the Kashmir shawl’s fall from fashion grace in the West due to …

The Grid, Weaving, Body And Mind, Syniva Whitney

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The modernist grid continues to influence contemporary art. The grid and the evolution of this visual idea, the matrix, have become essential in understanding the conceptual relevance of work that explores the connection between the hand and the digital and the seen and invisible. The structured simplicity of the floor loom weavings of Ruth Laskey, the Internet based work of Eduardo Navasse, the industrially produced weavings and digital sound installations of Christy Matson and the digital installation work of Julius Popp are used as examples to trace the influence of the ideas that Rosalind Krauss and other art theorists began …

Capturing The Landscape : Textiles For The Australian Fashion Industry, Liz Williamson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Textiles are intricately interlaced with fashion, giving texture, drape, feel, detail and color to garments. In Australia, tracing the place of textiles in the fashion industry presents a complex story of materials, individual designers, studio practices, commercial production, textiles, art, craft and design. Overwhelmingly, makers of textiles for fashion have shown a desire to represent Australia, its character and spirit in cloth.

This paper documents research into how textiles have been designed and made for fashion over the last six decades, focusing on designers whose practice specializes in fashion fabrics. Many of these artists and designers gained experience overseas, returning …

Woven Color In China/ The Five Colors In Chinese Culture And Polychrome Woven Textiles, Zhao Feng

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

There existed the yin-yang theory and the five color system, including red, blue, yellow, black and white, in ancient Chinese culture. Each color refers to one of the five directions, east, west, north, south and middle, also one of the five planets, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and Saturn, as well as one of the five materials, metal, wood, water, fire and earth. This idea was also widely used in the Chinese polychrome woven textiles from the Han dynasty (2c. BC-2c. AD), to the Ming dynasty (14-17c). Based on the analysis of all available samples of polychrome woven silks with cloud …

Jacquard: A Loom Of Opportunity Workshop, Julie Holyoke

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Workshop 2: Jacquard: A Loom of Opportunity
Teacher: Julie Holyoke
Place: New Media Center Computer Lab, Architecture Hall,
University of Nebraska, City Campus
Workshop fee: $125, pre-registration required
One Teitelbaum Family Support award
Maximum students: 15

Workshop Description: This Jacquard design workshop for educators, artists, and designers will be a fun and stimulating day during which many weave and design ideas for figured textiles will be presented and the medium’s potential explored. Using Jacquard design software, participants will follow a series of exercises on how to create, modify, and evaluate weave structures and graphics for visual and textural effect. Samples …

Cloth Settlers: Fine Art Dolls Populating The Textile Art Landscape, Shelley Thornton

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This presentation will offer a view of the work of a group of renowned world-class artists who have chosen dollmaking as their mode of expression and textiles as their medium. Art-quality images will portray work by contemporary artists creating cutting-edge textile dolls today as well as some earlier artists active as far back as the nineteen forties who, working in a more traditional vein, helped set high standards for doll artistry and built the foundation for the current state of the art form. Dolls of this caliber have found their way into the collections of the Smithsonian Institution and the …

View From The Shoulders Of Thar Masters: New Space For Ply-Split Braiding, David W. Fraser

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Men of the Thar Desert in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Gujarat and the Pakistan state of Sindh have been the traditional masters of ply-split braiding. They have focused on trappings for camels, including elaborately decorated girths, bridles and other accoutrement, made of goat hair or cotton. Particularly since the 1998 publication of Collingwood’s The Techniques of Ply-split Braiding, fiber artists have explored other possibilities for using ply-split braiding to create vessels and other three-dimensional structures. Most of those innovations have been done in what Collingwood calls single-course oblique twining (SCOT), which allows great freedom in color patterning because …

Needlepoint By Stephen Beal, Concurrent Exhibitions, Gallery 9

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

A small exhibition held in conjuntion with the Textile Society of Americas 12th Biennial Symposium, From Plains Space to Cyberspace, displaying needlepoint work of the late Stephen Beal, the 2008 Lillian Elliott Awardee.

The Sacred Yellow, Bina Rao

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In India, the color yellow has many symbolic associations. My presentation on the subject will be a visual journey through the historic and religious significance of yellow in Asian countries. This will include Royal Yellow used in the court garments in Malaysia and Spiritual Yellow as part of the Buddhist monks’ attire in Japan and Thailand. Indonesians, Indians, Bangladeshis, and Sri Lankans also know that this color is both auspicious and medicinal. At my natural dye farm in southern India, outside of Hyderabad, we have derived varying shades of yellow from many natural ingredients and we have successfully incorporated them …

Color And Pattern: Tribal And Contemporary Ikats Of India And Laos, Concurrent Exhibitions, Lentz Center For Asian Culture

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Lentz Center for Asian Culture
www.unl.edu/lentz/
1155 Q St.
(402) 472-5841

Color and Pattern: Tribal and Contemporary Ikats of India and Laos
September 20 - October 15, 2010

Jill Heppenheimer and Joanna Smith have curated this exhibition of contemporary and traditional Lao tribal apparel, drawing upon centuries-old motifs.

Wendy Weiss and Anjali Karolia have curated a presentation of dazzling single and double ikat from India, including documentation of warp and weft ikat preparation.

Mr. Vaghelu G. Vitthalbhai of Somasar, Surrendranagar, Gujarat will demonstrate weft binding in October.

12th Biennial Symposium Program, Part 1, Textiles And Settlement: From Plains Space To Cyber Space

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

As President of TSA, I am delighted to welcome you to the 12th Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America. This gathering brings together an impressive number of scholars, artists, museum and gallery professionals, educators, and textile enthusiasts from around the world.

As an organization, TSA selects Symposium venues which through their unique site specific offerings broaden our understanding of diverse museum collections and institutions in different geographic settings, encouraging new and old members to discover what yet another location holds of serious interest to specialists. Each gathering has its own flavor and distinct sense of place. For this …

Head Coverings In The Virtual Umma: The Case Of Niqab, Heather Marie Akou

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

A growing body of literature points to the Internet as a place where Muslims are re-imagining themselves as part of a global, interconnected, religious culture—a new virtual umma. Along with issues such as politics, Islamic law, the interpretation of text, and procedures for rituals, hijab (modest dress) is a frequent topic of conversation. Compared to the physical world, where debates are heavily framed by time, place, and the habits of daily life, on the World Wide Web ideas and products flow much more easily. A new convert in Canada, for example, could use the Internet to read translated passages from …

Of Gods And Gangs: Indigo As A New Educational Model, Jenny Balfour Paul

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In late August 2009, a multi-year educational initiative called Silk Road Connect was launched in five pilot schools in underserved neighbourhoods of New York City as part of its Department of Education’s Campaign for Middle School Success. The brainchild of cellist Yo Yo Ma and his Silk Road Project, Silk Road Connect ‘inspires passion-driven learning by empowering students and educators to seek connections across all areas of study and to follow their interests from the familiar to the foreign. In a spirit of playfulness and investigation, collaboration and creativity, this program invites students to experience learning as a continual process …

Choreographed Cartography: Translation, Feminized Labor, And Digital Literacy In Half/Angel’S The Knitting Map, Deborah Barkun, Jools Gilson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The Knitting Map was a large-scale, durational textile installation by the Irish-based performance production company half/angel that took place during Cork’s year as European Capital of Culture (2005). Bringing a decade of experience with emergent technologies and art practice, half/angel developed technologies to connect the physical busy-ness of Cork City (captured via a series of CCTV cameras) with correspondingly complex knitting stitches (stitches became more complex when the city was busy), and Cork weather (captured by a weather station) to yarn color. The resulting textile was an abstract documentation of a year in the life of an Irish city, in …

The History And Analysis Of Pre-Aniline Native American Quillwork Dyes, Christina Cole, Susan Heald

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Before beadwork, Native Americans used brightly-colored porcupine quills to decorate objects from moccasins to bags to wall hangings. Though the know-how of folding quills to create floral and abstract designs has survived, very little is known about the materials used to color the quills, particularly on the pre-aniline dyes used by communities east of the Mississippi, as historical recipes tend to be more reflective of Plains and Pacific Northwest quillwork traditions. Additionally, Native American artisans have expressed interest in having museum collections analyzed to further their knowledge of traditional materials. To address the literature gap and answer community questions, a …

Trousseaux: From Weaving Handwoven Textiles To Collecting Mass Commodities, Kimberly Hart

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In rural Turkey, trousseaux are a personal and socially representative collection of textile practices, economies, and desires. This paper addresses the questions of how, when, why and in what forms handweaving gave way to the collection of mass-produced commodities and handmade goods reflecting urban styles in trousseaux. It considers how local communities abandon cultural heritage production for their own consumption and make the transition to desiring, making and buying decorative goods, which reflect current fashions in both local and national terms. The paper is based on long-term ethnographic research in rural villages in western Anatolia, where handweaving once demonstrated cultural …

Morphological Differences Between Ramie And Hemp: How These Characteristics Developed Different Procedures In Bast Fiber Producing Industry, Min Sun Hwang

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Ramie and hemp fiber are two major fibers among the four traditional fibers (cotton, wool, hemp, and ramie) of Korea. They have a very long history going back to as early as the first century AD Ramie fabric, as summer clothing, was enjoyed by upper class/royal families and scholars. On the other hand, hemp fabric was worn by the lower class, such as people who worked in labor intensive fields. Hemp fabrics were also used for funerary costumes and shrouds; this tradition continues to the present time.

After four years of on-site research, I presented two papers on two distinct …

Mapping Textile Space: Stitched And Woven Terrains, Elizabeth Ingraham

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Mapping is a fundamental way of converting personal knowledge to transmittable knowledge and maps are unique in the way they use space to represent space. Maps are selective in what they choose to represent, seductive in their contours and calligraphic marks and powerful in their ability to locate, describe, demarcate and ground.

I will present a visually rich journey through the work of contemporary artists who use stitching and weaving to map both literal and metaphorical terrains in a textile space. Among the artists we will look at are:
• Linda Gass, whose stitched topographic reliefs are at once descriptive …

Artisanal Textile Manufacturing, Bethanne Knudson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Two entrepreneurs from North Carolina went to the International Textile Machinery Association exposition in Paris, in 1999. Opening their own mill was a possibility. However, the “state of the art” in industrial textile machinery was not to make interesting fabric, but to make a lot of it, and fast. Of course the machine manufacturers would cater to the demands of the textile manufacturers, but those manufacturers had begun failing in “western” countries—North America and Europe.

By mid-2000 the American textile industry would be unrecognizable. The two went to the next exhibit, in Birmingham, England, in 2003, and saw more of …