Whisper Project #2: a textile exhibition

A few days ago I was delighted to attend the opening of a textile exhibition in Ingersoll, a small town near me. This was the opening of the Whisper Project #2, a project of the Fergus-Guelph Pod of SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates), which I belong to. I don't get time to participate in a lot of activities with the group, but this is the second time I've made a piece for this project. 

It's really fun -- it works like the old fashioned game of telephone: the first person gets a photo and creates a 12x12 piece based on the photo, then passes a pic of only their piece (not the original) to the next person in line, and so on, until the end of the line (usually 5 to a group). It can result in some pretty neat artworks! 

This time I was smack dab in the middle of a group, and really enjoyed working from my inspiration piece, which was beautiful. I was able to see the whole show hung, 7 groups of five this time, and it was great. 

My piece is called "Before the Coffee Gets Cold", inspired by the Japanese novel of the same name, and I was so pleased to see that it was on the promotional card for this show. What an honour! 

This was great fun, and the show will be moving around to various locales over the year, so I may get another chance to visit it again. It's nice to have a deadline to help you finish something :) 

Weekend Review: Willi Smith, Street Couture

 

Willi Smith, Street Couture / Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, ed.
NY: Rizzoli Electa, c2020
256 p.

Willi Smith: Street Couture is a companion to the exhibition Willi Smith: Street Couture, which was very briefly on view in person at Cooper Hewitt in 2020 but has a full online exhibit to experience!

It's a great read in its own right, and it was enjoyable to pore over the images. 

It's made up of 21 different sections, plus an introduction and timeline, and each chapter takes on a different aspect of Willi Smith and his fashion career. From personal recollections to examinations of his design aesthetic, retail growth, creation of sewing patterns, to even a look at the graphic design used by his company Willi Wear, there is a huge variety of intriguing info laid out here. There are also lots of images; Rizzoli does these kinds of books so well. It's a great overview of Willi Smith and the ways in which his designs were shaped, sold and have remained so fresh. 

I really became fascinated with Willi Smith earlier this year when I used a vintage Butterick pattern to make my project for the Black History Month Pattern Designer Challenge. I loved this pattern, and had known a bit about him but I felt that I wanted to learn more. This was a superb resource to do just that! 

I enjoyed the range and the organization of the book. There are discussions of his personal life, his business(es), partners, the actual clothes, his design visions, and a very relevant chapter on his work with McCalls and Butterick and why he believed that sewing patterns were an important part of his business. In that chapter, the authors point out that Willi Smith's mother and grandmother both sewed and he saw that you could be fashionable without being rich -- his position was that his designs were for the everyday person on the street, that they should be accessible. And as part of that, he respected home sewers. In fact, his viewpoint is quoted in this chapter: 

Smith respected the home sewers’ awareness of their bodies and willingness to take risks, and saw this audience as more intimately connected to fashion as a means of individual expression than the ready-to-wear shoppers who followed the colors and trends of the runway. He understood how choosing the pattern, selecting a custom fabric, and assembling the full garment allowed many possibilities for invention.  (you can read the full article about his patterns at the Willi Smith Archive)

I also appreciated that the book covers his strong relationships and support from both his sister Tookie (a model) and his business partner Laurie Mallet. The women in his life were huge supporters who helped him succeed, and it is acknowledged and shown here. There is also a frankness about his personal life as a gay black man in the 80s, which is such a key element of his work as well. And it affected his career, as he was one of the many victims of the AIDS epidemic, dying at far too young an age. 

I'd definitely recommend this book, as it is full of information, personal anecdote, fashion talk, and wonderful images. And if you can't find it, do check the online exhibit as much of it can also be found there. Enjoy! 

Weekend Review: A Red Like No Other

 

A Red Like No Other: How Cochineal Colored the World /
ed. by Carmella Padilla & Barbara Anderson
NY: Skira Rizzoli, c2015.
319 p.

Since I'm on the subject of colour this month, I finally brought this book home from the library to read -- I've been meaning to for years! But it's quite large and heavy, a classic art book, so I had put it off again and again ;)

But I'm glad I finally dug in, because it's fascinating, though the content is almost as heavy as the actual physical weight of it. It's a look at Cochineal through the ages, as the sub-subtitle says: an epic story of art, culture, science, and trade. 

It's an exhibition catalogue from an exhibit on the history of cochineal put on by the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. And as such, it is packed full of amazing images from the exhibit, ranging over centuries, from prehistoric to modern uses, and examples of natural dyes used to create red tones revealing why cochineal was so prized for its stable reds and variety of shades it could produce. 

Of course, because it's a set of essays by over 40 scholars, there is no real narrative, just a loose arrangement of themes and timelines that combine to give a vast picture of the reach of cochineal in global history. The exhibit was inspired by the museum director reading a book called "A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and a Quest for the Color of Desire" by Amy Butler Greenfield. And if you're looking for more of an exciting narrative about cochineal, this is probably the one to reach for (I have my eye out for it now).

But this art book is full of fascinating historical information, and has exemplary illustrations -- I learned a lot about things I didn't even know I was interested in! One of the first essays was called "Three Reds: Cochineal, Hematite and Cinnabar in the Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican World" and I found it so intriguing. 

The book is broken up into 7 sections, and each is really a book in its own right. The 7 topics are all centred on cochineal -- the colour and the insect that creates it -- in varied time frames. Starting with Pre-Columbian & Early Contact Americas (since the source of cochineal is Mexico and South America), it moves to Global Trade, then Science, Textiles, European Art, the Colonial Hispanic Americas, and finally brings us to the Modern World. There are 4 - 6 essays in each section and the number of pieces contributed really gives a wide view of the topic. 

This is not a book that you're likely to read cover to cover, or in a weekend. But as a beautiful book to look through, dipping into different essays over a couple of weeks and picking up varied facts and enjoying the illustrations in particular, it's a good one. If it wasn't so expensive I'd say it would be a great coffee table book. As it is, I recommend that if you think this sounds good, you give your local library a go. Much more affordable that way!