Chiodi's Textiles Blog

Over the course of this first module we have been producing work that is related to the theme of Africa. I start my journey off by researching African masks as i thought that the shapes that were incorporated within them would be a good starting point for my project. However i found this limiting so i them began doing some research into the different tribes in Africa. I discovered that all of there shapes and patterns that they wear have a meaning and tell a story. I liked this idea and wanted to use those shapes in my work to give it depth and meaning.

We began by making collages which i felt helped me chose my colour theme as i used lots of bright colours. Through the imagery that i was looking at i saw that they wear elaborate colours and bold patterns.

I began to draw and create different stencils that i wanted to take into the print room to then screen print. I sent a lot of time in the print room as i wanted to layer up stencils and add foils and flocking to certain designs. This process takes time as you have to wait for things to be dry properly to get the best results so i had to learn how to be patient. I also coated up a screen with uv to allow me to do multiple prints of the same design. You can add more detail with a uv screen rather than a stencil. However the drawings i put on my screen were a rushed decision. If i had the opportunity to go back and change them i would as i found they were awkward designs to work with.

I feel that i have come a long way and made good progress with the stitch workshop as before starting university i had only ever used a sewing machine once. I have achieved a lot in the last 9 weeks and find myself enjoying stitch rather than avoiding it. I can set up my own machine and use it in multiple different way. I have learnt such things as a pintuck, felting, how to do free embroidery and how to use disolvables. In the begin of stitch i couldn’t work out how i was going to link what i was creating back to an African theme but then i realised that it didn’t have to be a perfect picture that i was creating it could just be simple pattern ideas. I also then began to work on top of some of my screen prints that i had created to add more texture and depth. I found myself being nervous to do this at the start as i knew that i wasn’t as confident as others using a sewing machine but i took my time and i am happy with the outcome.

I feel that over the course of this project i have learnt that what i create doesn’t need to necessarily be a thing. What i create can just be a mix of shapes and lines put together as a group to then come together and form a pattern. As the weeks went on i understood the expectations and how the course work a little more.

Over the past couple of weeks we have been in and out of both the stitch and print room.

I went in to stitch in the first week knowing absolutely nothing about how to use and operate the machines to a good quality standard. But I feel that as time goes on I am learning and progressing well. We got to use different machines and try out new techniques of how to add texture in to your work. I learnt a few of these new techniques such as felting, pintucks and how to use the electric machine. I took what I had learnt and then applied it to my screenprints that I had previously made.

In the print workshop we have been learning lots of new things. I had previously done print in my foundation year so I already knew how to expose a screen but it was good to see how other people do things. We had the opportunity to use the heat press to do foils and flocking which I loved doing as the result as great. This process makes your work more interesting and added texture.

We also learnt about Devore printing which is a process where the paste corrodes the fabric so it turns it transparent. I unfortunately haven’t finished my samples for this process.

Here are some of my favourite samples which I have printed and stitched.

Michelangelo

Michelangelo, in full Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, (born March 6, 1475, Caprese, Republic of Florance —died February 18, 1564, Rome, Papal States)  He was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet. Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime.

Michelangelo worked in marble sculpture all his life and in the other arts only during certain periods.

Dave 1501

Dave was created through simplified geometry suitable to the huge scale  yet with a mild assertion of organic life in its asymmetry.  David would be installed in front of the entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio as a symbol of the Florentine Republic.

Michelangelo’s style of life drawing is very detailed. Every mark is made with precision. The way he builds up lines and layers to create to tone and lights and darks is impressive. As you can see in the picture he has over lapped drawings by taking a certain section and drawing it larger or in more detail.

Julie Cochrane

I couldn’t find as much information on this artist Julie Cochrane however I still wanted to included her as her collage technique is incredible. The way she has used newspaper to create the body through ripping and finding lights and darks in the paper and then gluing them down must have taken time and precision in selecting what goes where. I really appreciate the fact that she hasn’t used white paper, allowing her to use the back round colour as a mid-tone.

Raluca Vulcan

Born in Romania in 1967, Raluca Vulcan has a passion for drawing since a young age. From the age of 5 she had already began creating life like drawings. She started working as a graphic designer and the later becoming a digital designer in the video game. There a few years ago she decided to devote herself entirely to art and especially naked. Through her work as a life drawer she captures the expression of the body through her use of atmospheric colour harmony. The painting have a sort feel about them. Raluca captures the expression of the moment, allowing you to understand more about each piece.

Tracey Emin

Emin’s nudes have that sense of real observation. They are self-portraits she’s looking in the mirror and striking a pose, She just happens to be naked.

‘These nudes are eerie, poetic and beautiful’, I would agree with this statement. I feel that due to Emin’s colour choice and marks is why you get the impression of eerie. I believe you get the sense of beauty from the shapes and positions she paints herself in.

Faces are left blank or blotched out. I believe that she has done this on purpose so the viewer can place their own expression on the face. Sometimes from looking at the face you can tell everything about the painting, emotions. So by having no face it then leaves it down to you to imagine the expression. There rough style gives the impression that her paintings are unfinished. Her style suggests pain and suffering from the colour choice and shapes.

Egon Schiele

Meet the radical artist who used a distinctive drawing style to create intimate and unapologetic portraits.

Egons style shows that he enjoyed drawing elongated bodies, used expressive lines and injected bright colour into sketches.

Art historian Albert Elsen, suggests that Egon  used continuous line drawing technique to create his loose, fluid figurative sketches. It required constant eye contact with the life model, making Schiele’s process of drawing an intimate experience between him and his subject. His models often included people he knew, for example his wife, sister and lovers, but also occasionally featured young prostitutes from the streets of Vienna.

Fred Hatt

Fred’s work shows lots of movement, rhythm and energy. The use of different colours adds to this energy created in his marks. The marks he has made are fluid and scribbly. Through using scribbly lines it adds a sense of movement. Also the colours that he has chosen gives the affect of warmth which also indicates movement. The style is very loose but detailed in areas.

LINEN

Flax is the plant that is used to produce linen, it is one of the oldest fibres known to mankind. Linen fibres are tricky to work with but I’m hotter countries they were more tactile as they are loose and lighter.

Howard Carter the finder of Tutankhamen found early traces of linen as the Egyptian pharaoh was wrapped tightly in huge quantities of the fabric. Linen plates a huge part in death as it was seen as very valuable. The more linen you had wrapped around you during mummification the more important and wealthy you were. It was seen to transform the body into something pure and god like.

Egypt was the leading producer of linen up until the 19th century. There are many very old paintings of the flax fields which are paint in blue bloom.

In the 1920s there were 24 wooden statues found which showed such luxuries of bread beer and linen. The sculptures show women spinning and piling up the silvery gold Linen. They were creating robes for the richest people around. The women would often have rough hands from rolling the fibres.

I have learnt that such basic fabric that we come in contact with daily such as linen was a huge part of culture many years ago. It gave you status and meaning. However the workers who looted in hours of hard labour were forgotten about even though they slaved over the fabric for many hours creating its beauty.

SILK

The tale of silk all began with a cup of tea, queen Xi Ling Shi was sat when a cocoon fell into her cup. She noticed that it dissolved and left this shimmery mist and then the silk industry grew from that moment of time.

The bombyx mori silk moth lives by the yellow river in China, they typically eat white mulberries. The silk moth is a very difficult and delicate animal to raise.

However domesticated silk worms like in stacked ventilated trays. It is estimated that 12000 silk worms can eat 20sacks of leaves everyday. Some say that the sound of them eating can be compared to a storm in a rainforest.

The actual making and producing of the silk was seen as a women’s job as they compared to to raising children. Men would say that there appropriate place in society was to weave and weave only. The silk industry got so big in Asia that they had laws put in place for if you were caught smuggling silk worm cocoons or eggs you would be executed.

Silk was also a sign of wealth just like linen. In Western Asia they have this tradition where they would re-weave the silk to embellish, this was called damasks.

Eventually silk was introduced to England, James the 1st attempted to grow and create silk however the conditions weren’t quite the same as they were in Asia and his plan was unsuccessful.

Silk was that valuable that other countries would exchange it for items such as gold, coral, glass, wool, and grain. Although there is always a black lash to this wealth and people got to carried away. Emperors spent 10% of the country’s money on silk to empress the females and to show themselves off. This soon got stopped when men were band from wearing silk in Roma as it was to revelling.

There is a 12th century artist that painted 3 groups of women on a scroll. These women were producing silk, 4 were pounding the material, 2 women sewed the silk and the the others were stretching the fabric. The pounding of the cloth was used as an euphemism for a women’s desire. Glamorous canvas meant that these women were working out there frustrations for the painter.

I have learnt that even though the women put in all of the effort and time into creating these beautiful silks that they never really got any recognition for the work that they made. It seemed like hard strenuous work creating all these fibres and doing everything else expected of them.

COTTEN

‘Would any sane nation make war on Cotten…Cotten is king’ was a quote from James Henry Hammond from the USA. 4 years after he made that speech they had made 20million pounds. 1 out of every 65th person living were working with Cotten. It was revolutionary, it had taken over the world there were 1 million works in Britain work in the industry as well. The smog that was pumped out if the factories was referred to as pure gold.

Cotten was discovered in the same time as the slave trade. Rich people were trading slaves for the material as they thought it was so valuable. The slaves that worked on the Cotten would have to work long tedious hours on very little food. This was cruelty to the labours in my eyes.

Denim was also discovered, it was seen as the cowboy style a rugged individualists that speaks hard work, democracy and freedom. It was the American dream.

The first pair of Levi’s were made in America and became a huge success in the 1920s the robust design allowed them to be more sturdy. People would do anything for a pair.

I’m 1940s jeans became subversive rough young men wore them or they were topped with leathers attempting a bad boy look.

It was said that 1958 90% of youths would wear jeans everywhere apart from church and bed, this shows how revolutionary they would and what impact they had on society. I would say that that number may still be around the same in today’s society as probably nearly everyone on earth owns a pair of denim jeans.

VISCOSE

Viscose is article silk, it made from rayon fibres which is a wood pulp then treated with sulphuric acid ready to be woven and spun in to the silk.

Viscose is a dangerous silk as the process many years ago wasn’t safe at all. It saw to many women being badly burnt by the sulphur, going blind from the dust and also chocking on the fibres and fumes that it gives off. People who were being punished were often sent to work in the factories as it was dirty harming strenuous work.

It is mind baffling how they would force people to work in these horrendous conditions and get treated so badly and paid barely nothing.

DuPont was a new firm that arose in New York which began making stocking for women out of nylon instead of silk. This aloud the price to go down as they were synthetic. In 1939 the realised sales of 4000 stockings and with in hours they were sold out. Nylon was the next big thing it was the most profitable. This then happened again when they went on general sale the following year they sold 4million this time in 48hours.

In 1940 alone nylon had earned the company 9million. This was an insane amount of money to be earning back then, considering the work force behind the sales where being put through so much pain.

When the attack happened on pearl harbour the nylon factories had to turn there attention to making parachutes, shoe laces, mosquito nets and so on this meant that the making of stockings was out on pause and the women would have to go with out.

In today’s fashion we rely on synthetic fabric, it makes up 60% of global fashion market.

However this is not a great thing as polyester on of the cheapest fabrics to produce and buy is essentially a plastic derived from crude oil. Not only do they end up in landfill but they also shed plastic filaments in to the air which is also not great for the planet. Baring that in mind would you change what you are buying and wearing?

After learning the process and how bad it is for the environment why do we still produce and consume these products everyday. Maybe if more awareness was shown we could change this.

In society now we are producing these dangerous fabric is countries where laws and lax and labour is cheap meaning that they can get away woth damaging people’s bodies from the process and over working them for no where near the amount of money they deserve.

Factories have even been caught dumping waste products in to such as carbon sulphide in to rivers at night causing pollution and poisoning the water.

Research is now being carried out to change these bad fibres and creat fabric that can be biodegradable and good for the environment. They are looking into using fungi.

SPACE TRAVEL

The day of the Apollo every last inch of every item the men were wearing was checked and check again to see if there was any loose threads or snags. The company that made these very important suits was Playtex the makers of women underwater. You wouldn’t of expected that would you! They created the A7L omega suit. Each suit was sewn by hand on a floor of entirely women. Not many people know this as the women never seem to get the recognition they deserve. This seems to be a reacquiring in every process so far!

The ladies were used to using liquid latex to make bras and but that soon changed when they were asked to make pressure bladders instead.

The only male to ever give the ladies some recognition was Micheal Collins one of the astronauts he quoted ‘when you look at this suit you see a confident male exploiting the most advanced technology it what i see is the little old ladies hunched over there glue pots’

POLYURETHANE

4 days before some of the biggest swimming races began the competitive swimming governing body band the use of the main material that was used in swim suits. Competitors would have to find a new textile. Speedo then partnered with nasa to create the ultimate swim suit that would have less drag and allow the athletes to be slick and quick in the water.

This new swim suit felt like paper on the skin and was to be worn so tight to trap air bubbles in between the material and skin to create bouncy and the correct position in the water.

Polyurethane was invented in 1937, it was a type of plastic. You can find it in your everyday items such as a kitchen sponge

Just after 2 months of this new fabric being released swimmers had Broken 22 world records.

There is an argument that swimming should be won by the best swimmer not the person with the best technical advantage. Which I can see there point but surely all swimmers these days do have the best swim suits do no one is at an advantage?

Colour is something that I thought I knew all about, it turns out I knew nothing. I didn’t realise how much there was to learn about how colours are made.

The colour wheel is something you get taught from a young age, but when being asked to create the colour wheel only using the primary colours i has to stop for a minute and actually think about how I was going to create it. Its easy to forget when colours are just handed to you already mixed.

We learnt so many different ways of how to create lighter colours and darker colours, what colours compliment each other, and which colours harmonies with each other. These are all things that I had never really thought about when picking and choosing colours in my own work. I usually just go for colours that I like but after learning all these new techniques of how to get the best out of a colour I am definitely going to be using that to my advantage.

I also really enjoyed discovering how to create colours only using a small colour plate. I was creating shades of purple that I would have usually of just hoped that it was already mixed.

Colour theory also allowed me to expand my vocabulary with word such as

Hue meaning colour

Chroma meaning purity or intensity of the colour

Discord meaning reversing the colour wheel.

From learning these new words I can start putting them in to my sketch book when describing or annotating piece.

I was a really useful task to be set as I now know and have the knowledge to be able to create any colour in the world with only my primary colours black and white.

Lino printing is something that I have previously experimented with but never really used that much.

This time that I tried it I looked at the process from a different angle and instead of trying to create an image full of detail on the Lino I created simple shapes which could be repeated.

I find getting my drawings accurate and neat with Lino is difficult as with the cutting process you have to have the right pressure and technique. Perhaps this should suggest to me that I need to be more free flowing with my work.

I printed on to photocopies of my previous work to create more layers and depth. I also printed on to tissue paper to see if that would make a difference. I found that with the tissue paper the print was even and neat, however on paper sometimes you were left with gaps where you might not of pressed hard enough.

When I experiment further with Lino printing I want to achieve an even press I am going to try rolling over the print or sandwiching it between something heavy to get the coverage even.

This process could be really useful in the future when you can’t decide if backgrounds and things as you can make lots of different samples of layers.

It’s also very interesting way to add texture to pieces as the rollers and Lino both create this. Adding texture is something that I find important as I always like to touch things. No matter what I am doing I like to be able to feel different things so I try to add texture in to my work. Sometimes from touching something I can get a better understanding of it from rather just looking at it.

The formative assessment for me was really useful. I throughly enjoyed looking at others work and seeing how they interpreted the theme and what take they have on thing.

As I flicked through my book and spoke about my work others asked questions which was useful to me as I then had to think why have I done this or made these marks. You then start looking at your work from different perspectives and noticing different things that you may not have before.

From others comments about my work I realised that I am hands on and like to use different textures. They also said that I use lots of different colours.

The feedback that I got was to work on my research and create more links to the title Abstract Africa. I am going to take this on board and get books from the library and find more images and artists to get inspiration from.