Art Practice Commons^™

Alloys And Architecture: Periodic And Quasiperiodic Patterns In Sinan's Selimiye In Edirne, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

The marble minbar of the Selimiye mosque in Edirne that was designed by the Ottoman architect, Sinan, and completed in 1575, bears a circular medallion of carved and pierced openwork in each of its triangular framing walls. The carved circular patterns are unusual in having radial symmetry with local five-fold and ten-fold rotations, but no periodic repeat. This contribution explores the relationship of this late 16th-century design to a similar array generated by X-ray diffraction of aluminum alloys, identified as a quasiperiodic pattern, which garnered the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The 16th-century appearance of this pattern in an architectural …

Tapestry, Alana Medina

CGU MFA Theses

The wall pieces are intentionally left to be crude, unrefined, and raw. A look at the world with a border, walking backwards to a beginning, what it was like before the traffic of the mind. Itinerant qualities along with an objective dissidence bring about an experience of tribal nomadic earthy hues. The paintings stay close to my interpretation of the earth, similar to the sculptures. Like twins born in the same embrace with contemporaneous qualities they exist together with a connection in materiality. There is a relationship between my paintings and sculptures; a mutual dependence seen and experienced together that …

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

Blanket Statements, Issue 125, Fall 2016

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 125, Fall 2016

Symposium Program Outline For Crosscurrents: Land, Labor, And The Port. Textile Society Of America’S 15th Biennial Symposium. Savannah, Ga, October 19-23, 2016.

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Conference program: times, locations, speakers, events.

Wednesday, October 19th 2016, through Sunday, October 23rd 2016.

10 pages

[Tsa Web Pages For] Symposium 2016 -- Crosscurrents: Land, Labor, And The Port Textile Society Of America’S 15th Biennial Symposium

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The web pages for the 2016 Savannah Symposium (archived in pdf).

The 2016 Textile Society of America Symposium will take place in Savannah, Georgia on the campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. To maximize scholarly interchange, the Symposium will consist of multiple, concurrent sessions, plenary and keynote speakers, a poster session and curated exhibitions that will intersect with the scholarly program. In addition to the symposium sessions and exhibitions, there will be a series of dynamic pre- and post-conference workshops and study tours to local and regional art institutions and …

The Intercontinental Reflections Of An Eighteenth-Century Mexican Rebozo, Eleanor A. Laughlin

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The eighteenth-century Mexican rebozo (scarf) is an excellent example of a garment type that crossed not only ocean currents, but also boundaries of race and class. Initially, the rebozo was associated with indigenous culture in Mexico. Evidence suggests that the rebozo existed during the pre-Columbian period,1 but it has been most commonly remembered as an article of clothing used by the Spaniards to cover the exposed bodies of indigenous women in the church setting. Aspects of the scarf’s decorative elements, such as fringe and dying methods, are thought to have been inspired by Asian styles that arrived in Mexico via …

Northwest Coast Native American Art: The Relationship Between Museums, Native Americans And Artists, Karrie E. Myers

Museum Studies Theses

Museums today have many responsibilities, including protecting and understanding objects in their care. Many also have relationships with groups of people whose items or artworks are housed within their institutions. This paper explores the relationship between museums and Northwest Coast Native Americans and their artists. Participating museums include those in and out of the Northwest Coast region, such as the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, the Burke Museum, the Royal British Columbia Museum, the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Museum. Museum professionals who conducted research for some of these museums included Franz Boas, …

Blanket Statements, Issue 124, Summer 2016

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 124, Summer 2016

Blanket Statements, Issue 123, Spring 2016

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 123, Spring 2016

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 …

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 …

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 …

"Knit A Bit For Our First Line Of Defense": Emotional Labor, Knitters, And Comforts For Soldiers During The First World War, Rebecca Keyel

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the First World War, American women were encouraged to support national defense by conserving food, sewing clothes for refugees, and knitting comforts for servicemen sent abroad to fight. Groups like the Navy League and the Red Cross promoted knitting for the troops as a necessity for the security of the home front, and for the comfort of servicemen abroad. By the end of the war, knitters had hand-knit millions of garments to send to servicemen, an act of compliance that supported an overseas war--one that had aroused bitter resistance only a few years before. Defense knitters knit in private, …

The Story And The Stitch., Alice Kettle

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper explores my work and the connection between stories and stitching. It seeks to find meaningfulness and purpose in these narratives and activities and see how they are a reflection of everyday encounters. It asks if there are mnemonic properties to stitching and stories that can offer ways to understand and transform actual experience and to represent the past by making it physical and continuous. Tim Ingold uses this textile vocabulary to present its close connection with story telling; “To tell a story then, is to relate, in narrative the occurrences of the past, retracing a path through the …