Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons^™

Thrills, Spills, And Unacknowledgments, Caitlin Aasen

Graduate School of Art Theses

Through the use of stains, resulting from a process of water and pigments, I showcase the metaphorical importance of stains within our lives. Nature, the everyday, and our bodies have always been an inspiration to my process. Instances such as looking through car windows at the colors rushing past, becoming one, as I travel 60 miles per hour. These moments of moving colors that blur the line between object and pigment are where I find inspiration formally and conceptually. These instances of blurs happen constantly in our lives. Not just because we are moving so fast, but because we can …

Full Issue, The Anthology

The Anthology

This is the entirety of the 2015 Winthrop Anthology issue.

Fragmentality, Elena Volkova

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary art is dedicated to the conversation between the past and the present, the established and the experimental; it becomes more and more trans-border, as life itself. Nowadays, people live in the world, where their beliefs, ideas, politics, and religion are constantly colliding. The more people expand boundaries and develop connections, the more complex and tangled our society becomes as a system.

FRAGmentality presents a set of mixed media pieces incorporating painting, weaving, embroidery and three-dimensional elements dedicated to these contradictions in the modern society. It deals with structures within Social relations and human nature.

Being a representative of a …

Dollhouse, Whitney Goller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses the work in DollHouse, her Master of Fine Arts exhibition on display at Tipton Gallery, Johnson City, Tennessee from January 25 to February 5, 2016. The exhibition was an installation consisting of five sets, each containing furniture - both 2D and 3D - and a mask with instructions relating to a room found within a dollhouse.

The sets and supporting thesis explore the ideas of social norms, feminism, and identity, and how submission to ideologies can create emptiness, while engagement can prompt social change. Topics include the process and evolution of the work and the artists who …

Self Portrait In Thread, Emily Furr

The Anthology

Artwork

Historical Corsets Retrospective 1558-1890, Jacquelyn Marks

Honors Theses

Women and men have worn corsets for centuries, primarily in Europe. Throughout the years, the style of the undergarment changed. A corset was an undergarment that served the purpose of adding warmth or coverage, gave support to the wearer’s body, gave structure to outer garments and created visual appeal. As styles transitioned throughout history, undergarments had to accommodate to the changes. Modesty prioritized the garment’s purpose but the late 1800’s encouraged more attractive corsets. After researching an archive of historical patterns, I selected several corsets that I would create and conduct research for a gallery display in Korhman Hall’s Design …

Blanket Statements, Issue 123, Spring 2016

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 123, Spring 2016

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 28:1 — Spring 2016, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Newsletters

Letter from the Editor

Volunteer Opportunity: TSA Is Looking for a New Proceedings Editor

Letter from the President

Textiles Close Up Report: Art of the Zo: Textiles from Myanmar, India, and Bangladesh, Chin Weaving at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

R. L. Shep Ethnic Textile Book Award 2015 Nominees

Ossabaw Island, Indigo, and Sea Island Cotton: Two Ways to See a Georgia Barrier Island

Peer-Review Process Yields Range of Exciting Exhibitions for Biennial Symposium

Book Reviews:
Symbols of Power: Luxury Items from Islamic Lands, 7th–21st Century
Textiles of the Banjara: Cloth and Culture of a Wandering Tribe
The Handbook …

Lara Salmon, Thesis Statement, Lara Salmon

CGU MFA Theses

My art brings together materials and ideas inspired by personal experience that do not usually exist side by side. My body is the primary mechanism with which I make work, incidentally making me the subject matter of the work. I use my physical self as an instrument to coalesce and transform other materiality. Through live performance and photographic installations I create tension and balance between crude biology and bright, polished formalism. This body of work focuses on Millennial Feminism and the Middle East.

Akemi Nakano Cohn Interview, Allisan Tate

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio:

Akemi Nakano Cohn studied traditional Japanese dyeing/printing techniques for ten years under the master Haru Izumi in Yokohama, Japan. She received an MFA in Fiber Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield, MI) and a BFA from Tama Art University, Tokyo, Japan. Cohn has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Int'l Surface Design Conference, Haystack, and others. She was visiting artist at the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Nebraska, Zijdelings (Netherlands), and artist-in-residence at Anderson Ranch and Ragdale Foundation. She has been in many exhibits, including solo exhibits; Urban …

Aram Han-Sifuentes Interview, Yanessa Rodriguez

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio:
Aram Han Sifuentes learned how to sew when she was 6 years old from her seamstress mother. Han Sifuentes was born in Seoul, South Korea and immigrated to Modesto, California as a child. She mines from her family’s immigration experience to address issues of labor and explores identity as a first generation immigrant.

Han Sifuentes’s work has been shown in national and international exhibitions. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum in Seoul, South Korea; Wing Luke Museum of Asian Pacific American Experience in Seattle, WA; Center for Craft, Creativity and …

Design Of Barrier Coatings On Kink-Resistant Peripheral Nerve Conduits., Basak Acan Clements, Jared Bushman, N. Sanjeeva Murthy, Mindy Ezra, Christopher M. Pastore, Joachim Kohn

Kanbar College Faculty Papers

Here, we report on the design of braided peripheral nerve conduits with barrier coatings. Braiding of extruded polymer fibers generates nerve conduits with excellent mechanical properties, high flexibility, and significant kink-resistance. However, braiding also results in variable levels of porosity in the conduit wall, which can lead to the infiltration of fibrous tissue into the interior of the conduit. This problem can be controlled by the application of secondary barrier coatings. Using a critical size defect in a rat sciatic nerve model, the importance of controlling the porosity of the nerve conduit walls was explored. Braided conduits without barrier coatings …

Sabba Syal Elahi Interview (2 Of 2), Derek Hamilton

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Sabba Syal Elahi is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural worker and focuses her art practice in fibers and drawing/painting. She grew up in a traditional Pakistani household in the Midwest. Her art explores political violence, historical representation, memory, and it’s impact on the South Asian Diaspora and Muslim American communities. Recently, Sabba was a 2013-2014 Resident Artist in Chicago Artist Coalition’s Bolt Program and exhibited her work at Woman Made Gallery. For the past 6 years Sabba has provided college and career counseling and portfolio development with an emphasis on the visual arts for high school students at …

Review Of Designing Identity: The Power Of Textiles In Late Antiquity. Edited By Thelma K. Thomas, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity. Edited by Thelma K. Thomas, with contributions by Jennifer L. Ball, Edward Bleiberg, Kathrin Colburn, Helen C. Evans, Christine Kondoleon, Brandie Ratliff, Thelma K. Thomas, Elizabeth D. Williams. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press and Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, 2016. 152 p. ISBN: 978-0691169422

This beautifully illustrated book, edited by textile historian Thelma K. Thomas, Associate Professor at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, advances scholarship on textiles of Late Antiquity with interpretive essays by curators, conservators, and historians. As a scholarly contribution offering …

Sabba Syal Elahi Interview (1 Of 2), Simi Mathew

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Sabba Syal Elahi received her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her art has been featured nationally at ArtWallah, internationally in Spain and Pakistan, and in the Chicagoland area. Sabba’s artwork is rooted in her bicultural experience and explores issues of cultural and historical representation, identity, and gender through personal, family, and community narratives. From 2011-2009 Sabba curated the visual art for an annual Chicago event called Voices of Resistance, which showcased the work of Chicago and Midwest based South Asian artists. Sabba has served four years as Coordinator of College and Career Programs …

The Godey Quilt: One Woman’S Dream Becomes A Reality, Sandra L. Staebell

SCL Faculty and Staff Publications

The Godey Quilt is a 1930s appliqué quilt composed of fifteen fabric portraits of men and women clothed in fashionable mid-nineteenth century attire. The dream of Mildred Potter Lissauer (1897−1998) of Louisville, Kentucky, this textile is a largely original design that is not representative of the majority of American quilts made during the early 1930s. Notable for the beauty and quality of its workmanship, the quilt’s crafting was, in part, a response to the competitive spirit that reigned in quiltmaking at the time. Significantly, the survival of the materials that document its conception, design, and construction enhances its significance and …

Author Guidelines: Biennial Symposium 2016 Proceedings

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Instructions for submission to the biennial symposium proceedings

Lasting Impressions: Indian Block-Prints And Global Trade, Eiluned Edwards

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

"Above the proficiency in making cotton textiles, India’s crowning textile accomplishment was the patterning of this cloth with brilliant fast dyes."

Textiles are among India’s most successful exports and the enduring popularity of block printed cloth has sustained a centuries-old craft that survives and even thrives in the digital age. Block prints have been integral to the dress codes of the subcontinent as well as serving domestic and ritual functions. (figs. 1-2) They were also embedded in the material culture of diverse nations through centuries of international trade. So what has enabled their longevity and global reach? This paper explores …

Exploring Color Interactions Illuminated In Goldwork Embroidery, Katherine Diuguid

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Unexpected things happen when you mix colored threads with metal threads in embroidery--the metals cast their reflections onto the threads, changing the perception of the colors to the viewer. The expectation is for the metal to reflect the light. The excitement lies in the unpredictable nature of how the reflections affect the perception of the surrounding colors and how these perceived colors change as the metals age. Color theory principles are seen in their extremes when mixed with the metal threads. The natural reaction when approaching gold is to assume it is a yellow, making purple its complement according to …

Sacred Currency: The Value Of Textile In Colonial Andean Painting, Gaby Greenlee

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In this 18th century colonial Andean image painted in the former Inka capital of Cuzco, Peru, a wreath of flowers encircles a small female figure sitting upon a richly textured seat (Figure 1). She wears clothing that connotes distinction; her features and gestures are as delicate as her garments yet her eyes are fixed and discerning. Our eyes are drawn to her eyes. What does she see? What is her role? We also turn these questions on ourselves: what do we know about this figure that gives the painting meaning? We tend to interpret the work through her identity.

However, …

On Textile Fragments Found At Karadong, A 3rd To Early 4th Century Oasis In The Taklamakan Desert (Xinjiang, China), Sophie Desrosiers, Corinne Debaine-Francfort

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In 1993 and 1994, the Sino-French archeological mission in Xinjiang led by Abdurassul Idriss and Corinne Debaine-Francfort,1 excavated the site at Karadong in the heart of the Takalamakan desert, on a former delta of the Keriya River, whose headwaters are in the Kunlun Mountains at the Tibetan border, and which vanishes in the desert sands. At one time, it continued north all the way to the Tarim River, thus forming a communication link with the Kucha region. Older deltas visible on satellite images have been explored and two related archeological sites have been consecutively excavated to the northwest of Karadong: …

Mexican Ikat And Transatlantic Trade, Alejandro B. De Avila

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The earliest text known so far in the Americas was engraved on a potsherd found in Chiapa de Corzo in southern Mexico that has been dated to around 300 years before our era. The script appears to represent a language in the Mixe-Zoquean family (which developed historically along the Isthmus of Tehuantepec), and it has been proposed that the inscription on the clay reads as follows: “The pleated cloth got dyed. The thing that is made of pleated cloth has been cut.”1 If this interpretation holds true, the text must refer to a textile that was patterned by means of …

America’S Indigo Obsession: From Colonial Plantations To Contemporary Diy Ethos, Sonja Dahl

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This research project is, as the title implies, quite broad. It has grown from stories shared generously with me by many of indigo’s proponents today, as well as the stories compiled in the historical and ethnographic research of scholars such as Andrea Feeser1 and Jenny Balfour Paul.2 This paper was originally written for oration, and what I offer here is a transcript of this talk as performed at the Textile Society of America’s 2016 symposium, Land, Labor and the Port in Savannah, GA, October 2016. It is an open reflection on some of the stories and broader themes I’ve encountered …

New Tools In The Box: Traditional Methods, Contemporary Materials And New Techniques On The Atlantic Coast A Round Table Discussion, Memory Holloway, Laurie Carlson Steger

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported on the new interest in fiber arts, with the claim that this interest has seen a revival in the hands of contemporary artists exploring bold new forms. “The emergence of fiber art,” states Glenn Adamson, director of New York’s Museum of Art and Design, “is not just the reappraisal of an historic textile movement, rather a much more broad-based interest.”1 The fiber artists on this roundtable addressed two topics related to this broad-based interest, one on formal experimentation, the other on their geographic placement as artists on the Atlantic coast, particularly in and around …

Field To Bag, Bag To Field: Feedbag Production And Distribution In Rural America, Heather R. Buechler

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

sack- noun a large bag made of a strong material such as burlap, thick paper, or plastic, used for storing and carrying goods.[English Oxford Living Dictionaries.com,]

A popular object among collectors of agricultural ephemera, the printed agricultural sack—both textile and paper—used for the distribution of agricultural goods, is an object with a rich history. Previous research published on these ephemeral objects has typically examined their use and reuse in American households as clothing, quilts, and other domestic goods, or their significance in the World War I Belgian War Relief under the Herbert Hoover administration. This paper poses approaches to the …

Bombay To Bauhaus: Design Influences In Churchill Weavers Textiles From 1922-1949, Sarah Stopenhagen Broomfield

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Churchill Weavers, a nationally known handweaving center founded in 1922 in the Cumberland foothills in Berea, Kentucky, created a marketing niche by promoting the Modernist look in its textile products. Modernist textiles focused on woven structure, texture, yarn and fabric properties as the major design elements. Bauhaus artists codified and disseminated a theory of modern textiles as Europe rebuilt in the interwar period, while in America Modernist textiles were commodified as a marketing trend in early 20th century consumerism. Eleanor Churchill, co-owner and the company’s first designer was influenced by textile designs from India, from Modernist textiles, and from Swedish …

Transnational Influences On Louisiana Samplers: Traditions, Teachers, Techniques, And Text, Lynne Anderson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Louisiana’s early history is colored with multinational interests and domination by a succession of nations speaking diverse languages. Although “discovered” by the Spanish in the 1600s, the French were the first to colonize the area, founding New Orleans in 1718 with financial support (and administrative control) from the Company of the Indies. New Orleans became Louisiana’s colonial capital in 1721. Most of the earliest immigrants to Louisiana were either French military personnel or French Canadian adventurers and traders. Their number was augmented by the forced immigration of criminals, prostitutes, and those incarcerated in French workhouses. By all accounts this made …

“The British Are Coming! A Contraband Cloth Tsunami Flows Over Maya Handicrafts And Homespun In The Kingdom Of Guatemala, 1760-1820”, Heather J. Chiero

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Latin America today has a lower perceived place on the global scale of development in comparison to other Western regions, however incorrect that assumption may be. And, Central American nations, in particular, seemingly fulfill that notion. One might ask, why did the nations of Middle America not become industrialized at an earlier point in their histories? If those nations had at their disposal adequate land, natural resources, and labor, as well as ports for exit for their products, why did they not advance in the 18th and 19th centuries alongside other northern hemispheric nations? This research paper investigates the thriving …

The Legacy Of Yarn Dyed Cotton Lungis Of Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu: A Case Study, Vasantha M. Dr.

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Woven cotton textiles of India are ancient, diverse, and steeped in tradition, an amalgam of different ethnic influences, much like reflection of the country itself. Having had the advantage of possessing a unique raw material for more than 5000 years of recorded history, she has been a benefactress of her rich cotton textile heritage to the entire world. In a world where the trends are dictated by the mass producers and the consumers no longer make out the difference between the hand crafted and the machine made, it is a miracle that these textile traditions have been persistently passed on …

Drawloom Velvet: Exploring A Centuries Old Tradition, Wendy Landry

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Since 1986, I have been pursuing my passionate interest in handwoven velvet, both practically and academically. By velvet, I mean extra-warp pile, rather than weft-woven types of pile, such as weft-looping or knotting. Simple, monochrome plain velvets have been woven since the early Coptic period, requiring only simple looms and two simple warp tensioning systems, one for the foundation cloth and another for the pile warp.1 (On the basis of such a simple set-up, early velvet figuration could be created through the following colour effects using: (a) striped pile warp; (b) ikat/chiné (spaced dyed) pile warp; (c) painted or printed …