The installation is almost complete!
Cultural Tech-Fusion Fabrics
This week Rick Lee has been installing his creation for the TECHstyleSoftWEAR: Surface & Shape installation. I will see it today in person. Wow! It is so cool to see the idea take real form in the real space! He and his assistants really engineered the pieces in an elegant way...they created stitch like perforations in the aluminum so that the pieces bend along these fold lines. So elegant! I cannot wait to see Colleen's garments installed in the space. She is bringing the garments down today.
First section goes up.
These pieces are suspended by cables which extend up throgh the ceiling tiles to load beams 11 feet about the dropped ceiling.
This is an intersesting shot to look at carefully. It really gives scale to the work and you can see four ladders and a hydrolic lift were involved to ge the pieces up!! So much goes into an installation behind the scenes.
Rick's installation is up!
Rick Lee and his assistants work on prototype of the hanging installation.
Reflection of Rick Lee and assistants in form
Folded structure. The mirror surface will create interesting views of Colleen's garments.
Folding the piece along its perforations.
Folding the piece. There will be 20 or so of these forms which will form the environment.
YToday J.R. Campbell, Director and Professor of the Fashion School at Kent State, and Susan Taber Avila, artist and professor at The University of California Davis , visited the studios of Colleen Quen and Rick Lee.
J.R. Campbell's digital textile department printed the silks for the Surface and Shape collaborative project Colleen, Rick and I are working on. He was in town to see a show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and he had an hour window of time that matched Colleen's window of time to meet. I almost was not able to make the meeting but am so glad that I did! It was an extra bonus to meet Susan.
J.R. Campbell's digital textile department printed the silks for the Surface and Shape collaborative project Colleen, Rick and I are working on. He was in town to see a show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and he had an hour window of time that matched Colleen's window of time to meet. I almost was not able to make the meeting but am so glad that I did! It was an extra bonus to meet Susan.
Colleen shows the scale of the skirt portion of the topography garment.
Emotion mapping textile print incorporated into forms.
Colleen's long time seamstress works on one of the sleeves of the topography garment.
Intern Elena works on the lantern like forms for the emotion garment.
Intern Barbie works on the garments.
J.R. Campbell and Rick Lee discuss project.
The textiles.
Colleen shows us her many pattern pieces.
Last week the Surface and Shape design team had a meeting at Rick Lee and Colleen Quen's studio. It was so inspiring to see the models and sketches. Rick Lee had refined his design to be a reflective structure reminiscent of cloud computing.
Wonderful scale model of environment installation. The metal will have perferations to enable it to bend easier. These stitch-like punctures will allude nicely to the hand stitchwork of Colleen's gowns.
Top View of Rick Lee's installation model. It reminds me of cloud computing. The different colors show different sections of model.
Original paper pattern sketch.
Digital pattern sketch.
Rick explaining materials.
Earlier model
aluminum material sample.
Hanging wire and attachements for suspension. Piece will weigh betwen 300-500 pounds.
This morning I had a meeting with Colleen Quen and Rick Lee to review textile designs, color, fabrics and scale. We also decided on a name for the installation: Suface & Shape: Reflections on Silicon Valley. The museum wished to modify the name to fit the grant application, so the final name is:
TECHstyle SoftWEAR: Surface & Shape
TECHstyle SoftWEAR: Surface & Shape
Below: I was amazed by how quickly Colleen honed in on the patterns she was draw to for each garment. She will be making one for a woman and one for a man. She selected three fabrics for each.
Below are the revisions to colors and scaling of designs after Colleen's feedback. The top row is for the woman's garment. The bottom textile row is for the man's garment. I ordered silk test swatches from Kent State University's School of Fashion's TechStyleLAB and cotton lawn swatches from Spoonflower .
Rick shared some great concept sketches for the installation. I am so very excited for this collaboration!
Rick shared some great concept sketches for the installation. I am so very excited for this collaboration!
Drawing inspiration from an image submission of solar panels by Kathleen Peters, I created this textile design. Silicon Valley is a leader in solar technology and Kathleen's image submissions to the fusionwear sv image pool highlighted this important local industry.
In creating this textile, I learned that it was best to create the shapes in organic forms. At first I had use straight lines and grids, but it felt sterile. When I re rendered the design freehand (using a Wacom stylus) it felt right. I felt the shapes were more organic and echoed traditional textile work such as batik in the way the lines break and swell in places; it reminds me of Japantown restaurant norin curtains which often use this dying technique.
I created this in Illustrator and then took it into Photoshop. This image will remain black and white for the fabric printing. Colleen Quen, Rick Lee and I discussed color palettes today and we agreed that we wanted at least one Black and White design.
A few days ago we were notified that we have additional grant funding to bring in designer Rick Lee to create the environment for the installation. I am so very excited to be working with these two very talented and professional artists. I know that I will be learning a lot from both in the process of bringing this project to life.
Rick Lee's website is http://www.rickleedesign.com/
and Colleen Quen's website is: http://www.colleenquencouture.com/
In creating this textile, I learned that it was best to create the shapes in organic forms. At first I had use straight lines and grids, but it felt sterile. When I re rendered the design freehand (using a Wacom stylus) it felt right. I felt the shapes were more organic and echoed traditional textile work such as batik in the way the lines break and swell in places; it reminds me of Japantown restaurant norin curtains which often use this dying technique.
I created this in Illustrator and then took it into Photoshop. This image will remain black and white for the fabric printing. Colleen Quen, Rick Lee and I discussed color palettes today and we agreed that we wanted at least one Black and White design.
A few days ago we were notified that we have additional grant funding to bring in designer Rick Lee to create the environment for the installation. I am so very excited to be working with these two very talented and professional artists. I know that I will be learning a lot from both in the process of bringing this project to life.
Rick Lee's website is http://www.rickleedesign.com/
and Colleen Quen's website is: http://www.colleenquencouture.com/
Colleen, Rick and I celebrating our collaboration today. This is the morning after their Bamboo and Silk exhibition. I wish that Jane Przybysz, Director of The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, could have been there to celebrate with us. She wrote the grants!