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October 31, 2007
observations: october 31, 07
I have been really terrible at writing things down here, instead saving them all up in my head until inevitably some fall so far back into the dusty places that they're irretrievable. Combatting this was one of the main reasons I began keeping this record in the first place. It's much easier just to put up a few photos each day and leave it at that. So, then, here are some of my thoughts on this past month of my project:
In the midterm critique with the print grads the subject of my apron came up; specifically the relationship between the dresses and work, the reason I chose to use a style of dress that appears utilitarian and references aprons with the bib bodice, shoulder straps and large pockets. My colleague Jessica said, "you're still wearing an apron?" and I realized that I hadn't really considered the fact that I was wearing a dress that stands in for an apron (working clothes) and then still putting an apron on over it when actually working (printing, and also teaching since I'm often giving printing demos in class). Wearing the apron is a part of my working ritual that hadn't entered my mind. Since then I haven't been wearing my apron, instead letting the evidence of my working life show itself on the dresses as I splash solvents, accidentally lean against the inking slab or brush my hand on my skirt. It makes much more sense this way.
I've begun to notice differences in the effects certain inks and additives have on the way the print holds up on the dresses; the studio provides Graphic Chemical etching inks, which seem to fade more quickly in the wash. I've begun to use Faust inks (which I prefer) for some colours, and those colours (and the colours in which I've mixed Faust and Graphic Chemical inks together) seem to hold up a little better. But on October 19th I printed a number of dresses with a layer of a pale gray (which looks white in the photographs) using Faust Mixing White and a tiny amount of Graphic Chemical Graphite. This ink didn't hold up to washing at all and disappeared almost entirely from one dress (#4), even though the Graphic Chemical Graphite colour usually holds up better than any other GC inks. I have yet to print using just Graphic Chemical white to see if it holds up better than the Faust.
I'm trying to only wash the dresses once every two weeks now, which means I will print them twice and wear them twice between washings. This is in part due to our current water shortage, which has become somewhat of an emergency situation due to drought in the region that's the worst on record (this is where necessity comes into the mix again). I'm hoping that as a result the ink will get crustier on the dresses, since I'm now building up two layers before it gets softened by washing. So far there's no real difference, which leads me to wonder if this fabric is just going to keep accepting ink forever without ever getting stiff. Perhaps I should try not washing them at all, but that's not really practical as I still have to maintain a professional life and still have to teach class twice a week, and the smell of fresh ink on the dresses is bad enough without adding in the smell of unwashed clothing. What seems to be happening instead is that each subsequent layer is adhering less permanently to the fabric. Now that I think of it, this may have more to do with the white Faust ink sloughing off of dress #4 in the wash, as this dress is one of the ones most thickly encrusted with ink. I'll be able to tell for sure after a few more weeks and will try to keep more careful track of what's going on with dresses #3 and #4, which are the oldest. Dress #3 is cotton and dress #4 is a cotton/polyester blend, which probably affects how the ink feels; dress #3 is definitely much softer.
Last week I travelled to Gainsville State College to give a visiting artist lecture about my work to two art appreciation classes (taught by a friend and former fellow grad student). The students are not fine art majors and are required to take the class as one of their arts electives. I found that while talking about the wardrobe project in conceptual terms I was met with a lot of blank stares, and the students seemed most engaged when they had a chance to look through my little sketchbooks. This worries me a little, because I've been operating under the assumption that this current work is pretty accessible to people outside the artworld. Am I wrong? Most of the feedback I've had from non-artworld people has been from fibre people, people who are interested in clothing and people who knit, so there's a chance my perception of how an audience perceives this work is a bit skewed. Oddly enough, one student approached me and the instructor at the end of my talk and said that his wife is an artist too, then showed us a series of photos on his cell phone of her work, beautiful tiered cakes with amazingly complex and ornate embellishments and little sculptures made of cake and sugar. So it's not a narrow perception of what "art" is that held the students back, at least not all of them. Perhaps I'm just not as engaging a speaker as I think I am.
Posted by jodi at October 31, 2007 09:21 AM | categories: the rules
Comments
Interesting that the guy who approached you is also recognizing as art another creation that is integrally designed to be consumed and destroyed!
re. what we were talking about last visit, you may be up against a failure to understand the importance of destruction and limitation in the work even more than a definition of "art" -- lots of non-artists don't _expect_ to "get the point" of a lot of art nowadays, but our entire culture is so accustomed to having enormous resources of easy to acquire and disposable items, maybe people have trouble recognizing that aspect of the project?
Posted by: kelly at November 3, 2007 01:37 PM
I used to think the blank stares I was getting while teaching were indicative of "WTF is she talking about?" but then I came to realize that the blank stare is what thinking looks like on the faces of most students.
So don't despair! If they are looking right at you, blankly, you've actually got them captivated! Then it takes about two days for them to formulate a question, but that's cool.
Posted by: deirdre at November 9, 2007 04:23 PM
ps I was looking at a blog today; someone was posting pictures of her child's room that she decorated (it was on craftster, actually) and I thought "damn, that's so beautiful and in a couple of years it will be painted over."
Consumable art. It's all around us. Walls are reusable canvases. I always wondered why the paint didn't get really thick, like inches thick, on walls in older homes that have been repainted a bunch of times. Where does the paint go?
Posted by: deirdre at November 9, 2007 04:26 PM