Cultural Tech-Fusion Fabrics

Sashiko stitching has fascinated me since I was a child. I saw it on old plantation work clothes hanging in relatives closest, on patched quilts and on purses and on Christmas ornaments. I knew that the origins of this now decorative stitch was in practicality;  its function stemmed from the need to repair and reinforce cotton and hemp work clothes.

I suspect that the Japanese agricultural workers in Santa Clara also used sashiko stitching in their work clothes. It will be interesting to research this. A few years back I learned that the current San Jose airport was once a cauliflower field. Japanese  Americans were the primary laborers.

In 1940 a bond passed to fund the airport construction. In 1942 Executive Order 9066 let to the removal of Japanese Americans from Santa Clara County. After Internment, many San Jose Japanese Americans returned to Japantown. Today, San Jose's Japantown  is the only California Japantown which returned to its exact prewar location.

In this digital sketch above, the bounding line between the blue and while background represents the this time of transition in 1940 and 1942. The circular shapes on the loop tracking back to the cauliflower represents the Japanese returning to  San Jose to create a Japantown on its original location. I would like to create a sashiko piece reflecting this history. I took images of young cauliflower as reference for this a few years back and have been stewing on this project. Recreating in sashiko stitching the fractal like patterns of the plant would reflect on culture, the past agricultural economy and the technology industries which replaced it.

 I took a sashiko workshop  in the fall on this  technique and then taught a workshop at The San Francisco Asian Art Museum (through Serentripity Learning Vacations) incorporating this stitch work. Some images from these initial studies and projects are on on my artist blog.

 Several decades ago my grandma gave me a signed copy of Barbara Kawakami's book,  Japanese Immigrant Clothing in Hawaii 1885-1941 which documents the work clothes that were improvised from various fabrics and various cultural influences.  Some of these garments used sashiko stitching. Mrs. Kawakami's entire Japanese plantation textile collection is now at The Japanese American History Museum in Los Angeles.

Today I found this 2010 exhibit information online on Japanese Sashiko Textiles at The York Art Gallery. Their online gallery of sashiko work clothes is stunning and I will be reading all the accompanying information at the site. I also found this Japanese sashiko artist, Aya Studios on Flickr. She has documented old sashiko stitch work and has lovely creations of her own.
Below is an image of my sample purse for The Asian Art Museum workshop as well as Illustrator sashiko stitching templates. Using transfer paper, the participants traced the designs onto their fabric (Filipino noodle flour bag).

Today I visited the Euphrat Museum at De Anza College to deliver some art and to photograph my students work. The museum is displaying my first foray into digital textile design. This length of fabric was printed through Spoonflower.

Below is the accompanying plaque. It refers to the textile above as well as to several swatches yet to be installed. It also references student workshop series I designed at several schools.

I have two projects in the works relating to textiles. One is a NEA grant funded project reflecting on the public's views of Silicon Valley identity (ZERO1 Biennial) and the other (Creative Work Fund application in progress) centers around our past and present visual vocabulary through cultural textiles of Santa Clara County.  For this cultural focus I am working on a logo and press release for the image collection days at libraries. I want to be sure people come!
Here are a few studies.  My first public textile documentation event will be through the Cupertino Library for Asian Heritage Month, May 17th, from 6-9 in The Cupertino Community Hall. The library will be handling all the press as they are folding this data collection event into their programming.  People will bring cultural garments and textiles for me to photograph and document in writing what they are. I will also have a white garment upon which I will have a projector projecting images of my preliminary designs...something visually engaging so that they can visualize that all will come together into textiles and garment at a future date.

I met with Rasteriods Design and The San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles and we decided to create an explanatory animation of the public contributing images for textile design. Here is my stab at that Flash animation.

I am trying to learn Flash. I was thinking for the Zero1 textile project I would create an animated logo that represented the coming together of many people's ideas.  This is super rough... the title is not even set yet. The theme of the festival is Build Your World. We are exploring people's ideas of Silicon Valley identity through textile and style. I banged this out for a meeting this morning so, yes, type is over run by the motifs and it is too busy...but I like the general idea of components coming together. I'll be working with the design firm Rasteriods on building the online components of the project. They have build Japantown San Jose's website and beautiful street banners. I look forward to learning from them.

I was reading today's Mercury News and learned that Cupertino will be the first Bay Area city to boast a public cricket pitch built to international standards. This reflects the growth of the Indian population as this is a very popular sport in India. In a 4-1 vote Tuesday night, the City Council approved to partially fund the construction of the pitch next to the library. I look forward to photographing the cricket clothing! I have been seeing more and more cricket players near the library over the years. There will be an international women cricket tournament in June on the newly built pitch. I have never seen women cricket players! Very exciting! The imagery of people dressed in cricket clothing is definitely part of our visual vocabulary in a way it was not 10 years ago.

As I begin to collect textile images of different cultures here in Santa Clara, I will also be collecting images of food wrappers and other packaging to scan and incorporate into the designs.  Sometimes it is the food packaging that enters the broader public visual vocabulary first.  During my de Young Museum Artist Residency I explored their online database of textiles and blended motifs with patterns inspired by the grounds of the de Young and inspired by family stories. Many wrappers made their way into these pieces as well as fabric remnants from designer Colleen Quen.

Having spent a stint as a museum exhibit graphic designer, I felt comfortable creating the museum panels for my residency. I hope be creating similar such panels for this digital textile project. I believe such diagrams help express the meaning and origins of element in my works.

Below: A few days ago, curator and weaver artist, Deborah Corsini, gave me these vintage  Japanese silk thread boards from the 70's.  The colors, pattern, logo and fonts are wonderful.

This evening I have been working on creating Egyptian motifs for a Friday Nights event at the de Young Museum...the closing night of the King Tut exhibit. As I was working I was thinking how lucky it is that I have some experience with Illustrator as I embark on creating digital textile designs.  It will be useful.  On the theme of Egypt and the Middle East, we were at dinner tonight at a sushi restaurant in Santa Clara on El Camino Real.  I happened to look across the street and see sandwiched between a wireless phone shop and as car dealership, a small store called "Al-Huda Bookstore and Hijab Corner".  My mind went spinning on other such store names like "Hijab Hut" .  I could see long white shirts on hangers and a woman's manequin head with a patterned hijab on it.  Being in Silicon Valley, I knew it must have a website and it does.  I hope to go visit the store and get a better look at their rich textiles. The pink patterned fabric on the hijab looked very pretty.

I think this experience is typical of the cultural fusion in Santa Clara County. I loved it that I was eating sushi in the Korean section of El Camino Real and was gazing at a hijab store across the street.

Below are beginnings of the de Young project pattern pieces. I will be approaching the project with a sort of Art Deco Egyptian flavor. Visitors will take these elements, color them, cut them out, and attach them to gold headbands.

A few days ago I was informed that I was selected as a MERIT Scholar at the KCI Center for Innovation. I will be learning digital tools and ways to bring innovative projects into the Title One schools I teach at.  I will use the implementation funding ($1,000) to create a digital fabric workshop for elementary school students. Last night I found this wonderful lesson plan, The Joy of Hex , by Jon Ingrim.  It will help me greatly in designing the lessons leading up to the actual textile tile patterns the students create. The children will reference or scan objects from their daily lives to create textile designs reflecting their visual vocabulary (ie: Mexican De La Rosa candy wrappers, scarps of piñatas, Vietnamese noodle bags, etc.) The project will  make the convergence of art, math, technology and culture tangible and exiting to the children. I very excited to have received this education grant allowing me to reach out into the community to engage them in reflections on cultural through textiles. I will be conducting these workshops in Spring 2011.

Last night we ate at a Japanese restaurant in a Sunnyvale strip mall. It was a fascinating collection of store. There was a kind of western bar, Asian dollar store, Korean household goods store, Japanese restaurant and a Korean grocery store. In the Korean grocery store we saw a Middle Eastern family and Indian family shopping. I liked this woman's skirt. You can't see it very well here, but her head scarf has embellishments that accent her skirt nicely.