Category Archives: Fabric Art

Art primarily using fabric as its basis.

Stop Slavery Now: A Conversation About Human Trafficking

Eva Preston, Judgement Day, mixed media at Stop Slavery Now: A Conversation About Human Trafficking

Bonnie MacAllister and Joanna Fulginiti know each other through the Women’s Caucus for Art and worked together at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Rachel Udell, also a member in the show, worked at the museum as well. Bonnie explained to DoN, “We got into F & N Gallery because we were curated into a show…and we talked to the gallery director and he with a wonderful woman named Jess McCann invited us and donated the space to us, it was this beautiful collaboration. We were able to extend the call beyond our WCA members and got work from as far away as Atlanta, we have a film that was lent to us for the night, and the dolls will be in the window for a week.” Sorry, little DoNSters it’s taken a while to get this story together, this event was April First Friday, the dolls are at http://phila-wca.blogspot.com/2011/08/call-for-art-rag-dolls.html

The Ragdoll Project is meant to create awareness for human trafficking, they invited participants from different workshops, in West Philly through Spiral Q Puppet Theater, Follicle Hair Studio on South Street. Joanna described the production to DoN, “We set up sewing machines, we used donated fabrics and we just made dolls. The dolls will be sold and all the money will go to Dawn’s Place which is a shelter for victims of human trafficking in Philadelphia. Dawn’s Place is the only place in Philadelphia that helps victims of sex trafficking specifically. And they do need money, they need donations, so we’re going to sell all the dolls and donate all the money.”

Rachel Udell, I’m Tired, digital image and Danielle Ferrell, effraye’, screen print at Stop Slavery Now: A Conversation About Human Trafficking

“The dolls were made by the Women’s Caucus for Art and other people that come to our workshops. I get dolls sent to me in the mail everyday from people who heard about it on www.theragdollproject.org That will show you how you can make a doll and donate it, anyone can make a doll and it is a donation, so they won’t get it back but we’ll sell it and the money will go to the victims of trafficking.” Jess McCann, the co-curator of the show is part of the Philadelphia Modern Stop Slavery Group, she and Joanna Fulginiti selected art by women and intended the installation to have an educational aspect. “We have certain statistics or quotes that we felt were very important to capture about the issue that would inform the people something that they might not be familiar with. A lot are quotes from Johns who purchase sex, statistics about who is prosecuted; rarely are the pimps or traffickers prosecuted it’s usually the women, the women themselves. Who are often victims.”

Beth Prusky, This is How It Feels, charcoal and acrylic on archival mylar at Stop Slavery Now: A Conversation About Human Trafficking

“They wind up going in jail, that’s something people need to know about. The violence like this piece by Rachel Udell, this is about the violence women in prostitution face. They have a violent life.” Joanna points out a particular quote, “A study of 475 people in prostitution finds 62% reported having been raped, 73% reported having experienced physical assault and 92% said they wanted to escape prostitution.” Joanna is passionate about the subject, “It’s a violent life and the violence comes from the pimps and the Johns. People have this idea of prostitution like it Julia Roberts, Pretty Woman, glamorous, but it’s not. It’s full of violence. That’s what the first two pieces are about, the inner turmoil.”

Lauretta Paraguassu, Children of the Night, watercolor and ink on paper at Stop Slavery Now: A Conversation About Human Trafficking

Quote from a John, “She gave up her rights when she accepted my money.” Joanna dismisses this myth, “You know, men just kind of doing this like it’s that old boy’s club kind of thing, ‘there’s nothing wrong with this’, ‘this is how you treat women’, like blindly going along with this male idea.”

Megan Kelly, Body Monster, collaged painting on paper at Stop Slavery Now: A Conversation About Human Trafficking

Joanna Fulginiti, Ragdolls, mixed media at Stop Slavery Now: A Conversation About Human Trafficking

Joanna Fulginiti‘s painting started The Ragdoll Project, “I did that piece because these girls are just being treated like rag dolls, they’re not even human beings. They can be tossed away after they’re used and I started that and once we starting thinking of a project we could do to raise money for the victims and someone commented on my piece like, ‘Oh, maybe we can work with rag dolls.’ They’re not hard to make so that’s how we started with this.”

Stop Slavery Now: A Conversation About Human Trafficking

Joanna explained the context of the art, “Most people don’t know that the average age of a prostitute is 13 years old. Which is so scary, this is a children’s issue. Pimps are luring teenagers into this. The average age of entry is thirteen and actually the average lifespan of a girl after she enters prostitution is six years. So it’s stealing their childhood, that’s what these pieces are about. Suicide, homicide, like many of these girls are homeless girls, they may have lived in foster families their whole lives, so it’s not like they even know where they are. Some of these women became prostitutes and no one even came looking for them or cared where they are.”

Joyce Ellen Weinstein, Blind Leading the Blind: Captured, screen print/linoleum block print at Stop Slavery Now: A Conversation About Human Trafficking

“You know I don’t think in the justice system they’re seen as victims. Yet. Certain states are more progressive than others but a lot of times in law enforcement they consider the women the criminals when a lot of them are forced into this. They’re victims. This is about treating girls as criminals. There is hope you know? These women can start over.”

Alison Altergott, Saturday’s Child, mixed media at Stop Slavery Now: A Conversation About Human Trafficking

According to Joanna, “The more you read about a country where it’s legal versus a country where it’s illegal, if you read about what actually happens, it’s very, very clear that legalizing it, increases demand. It normalizes the activity. so, them more people are prone to do it and there’s so much demand they can’t get enough women who want to do this on their own. They have to get, well – if it’s Amsterdam, it’s from Eastern Europe and they have to start trafficking because they just can’t keep up with the demand. If you legalize prostitution, your demand goes up so much that you have to force women into it just to keep up with it…there’s this idea that if you legalize it you can control it and make it safer but it’s almost impossible. It’s so violent. How do you make it safer? When a John beats up a prostitute, how do you stop that? The facts show when you legalize it, it increases demand and you’re putting all these girls at risk for being trafficked.”

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer

Read more at Side Arts Philadelphia Art Blog

Shagging – Kathryn Pannepacker at William Way LGBT Community Center

Leave a reply

Shagging – Shagging – Kathryn Pannepacker at William Way LGBT Community Center

DoN asked Kathryn Pannepackerr about the title of her fiber arts show at the William Way LGBT Community Center at 1315 Spruce Street called Shagging, what’s it mean? “Get your jiggy on! The title I started with was much too long, it was called Shag Tagging Graffiti Art for All, it was just too wordy, so I kind of just broke it down to the essence, Shagging. So, you know, working with fibers, a lot of texture, real simple knotting, kind of like shag rugs, my whimsical, funny, playful side, the sexy side of shagging.” So it is a double entendre like rolling around on the rug? “Well, it’s good to know that under it is chain link fence.” Another metaphor? “In a way, yeah. A lot of this work came from doing a lot of guerilla work outside on chain link fences around abandoned lots around the city. Just wanting to bring art outside for everybody, so that it’s really accessible for anyone.”

Shagging – Kathryn Pannepacker at William Way LGBT Community Center

“I’ve been known to go around and tag, make little checker boards or little, beautiful ditties, on fences and gates throughout many years. But, the last year or two in particular mostly on chain link fences. So, I got this idea, why not get a huge roll of chain link fence at Home Depot? You have to get it on line, and like an eighty pound order came, a huge roll, the idea was just to break it up and start doing huge wall pieces that I would exhibit in museums and galleries with the thought of art outside for everybody or art inside, sort of merge the two. Inside/outside. The other thing was I wanted to do large abstract painting-like pieces that were all about color and shape. Sort of like intuitive, quick and expressive.”

What do you mean quick? “Well, there’s nothing quick about textiles so I guess in a way it’s a funny way to think of it, but, it’s really just getting the juncture at the link of the fence and tying a knot and cutting it long enough so that it’s a shaggy knot.”

Shagging – Kathryn Pannepacker at William Way LGBT Community Center

“But, quick in the sense of, the background study that I have with with very detailed French tapestry which is pictorial flat weave, hyper-intensive timing, this was doing my own designs, simple forms and shapes, abstract, painterly-like, so, even though there’s nothing real quick about it, it’s certainly quicker than flat weave tapestry.”

DoN asked, “How do you do it? Is it hanging on the wall or do you just lay on the floor?” Kathryn Pannepacker replied, “No, I actually would hang it between a door frame or I’ve got those pipe looms, like a coat rack, or something like that, so I just hang it from there. The other thing is that people are always giving me yarns, it’s sort of like an ongoing thing. It’s kind of like a joke, that when I run out of yarn, I’m going to change careers because I’ve got this idea in my head that it should be OK that everyone changes careers at least three times in life, that should be a cultural given. Like at one point in time I would have liked to be a farmer or sell flowers on the corner. But I think when I run out of yarn I’ll switch careers but people keep giving yarn, so I’ve got more work to make.”

Shagging – Kathryn Pannepacker at William Way LGBT Community Center

At this point in our conversation a group of students entered the gallery and DoN followed around while Kathryn Pannepacker described the work. “Many of these pieces are done by homeless men and women or people in recovery, so we would use the pellum fabric, to ask lead-in questions like, ‘What does home mean to you?’ So, they would write their comments into the weave and add that to the fencing. The fabric is called pellum, a non-woven interfacing that a tailor might use inside of a coat. And the beauty of working with this material is that after they would write and tie a knoe you don’t necessarily read the message on it. So, it’s a nice opportunity for folks to share their thoughts and feelings but if they want to keep it private they can keep it private. So, in some of the cases they wanted to share their thoughts, so, I also recorded on a paper a list that writes it all out, like blessings, and prayers, poems and words of advice or things they’re looking forward to.”

Shagging – Kathryn Pannepacker at William Way LGBT Community Center

“What gave me the idea was for a number of years I’ve been doing little weavings between fences and gates around the city, in fact, I was doing little ditty weavings between fences and gates wherever I would travel around the world and it would be a way of leaving a popcorn trail of what I was doing. So, then I started to use chain link fences around abandoned lots around the city because, around different neighborhoods where I was living, it was so depressing, I just wanted to add some color and life to that abandoned lot. I would do large, or smallish it didn’t matter, but like shags, colorful checker boards or whatever and the idea came from that and what would it take to bring that into a gallery. You might find yourself, you know, you work so much in your studio, then we work in a classroom situation, you need your own time to feed yourself or refuel. So I was like,’What’s the good link between what I’m doing in the community but also that going to inform my own personal work?”

Shagging – Kathryn Pannepacker at William Way LGBT Community Center

“In fifth grade we were introduced to macrame and we were making plant hangers with macrame and so immediately after that I was doing these like wall pieces with macrame knot but then I got into latch hooking and all that, so I love all that.”

Professor of Fibers at Tyler School of Art, Pazia Mannella, was with the group of students, so DoN took the opportunity to ask her feelings about FiberPhiladelphia 2012? “I think it’s just amazing, especially someone who works in textiles and fibers, it’s so exciting to see so many examples of textile work and fiber arts work and really ranging from very traditional to experimental installation. I was at all the opening events and it’s an amazing community that is in Philadelphia.” DoN asked Professor Mannella about the political discussion surrounding women at this time and how fiber is often associated with women and her opinion of the political attack on women? “Well, I do think historically fibers has been linked with women and I think that it’s important that the voices are heard within this political realm. And that’s been kind of the issue with it being predominately men commenting on the health of women. I think that both men and women can react to a range of issues through fiber work.”

DoN commented that men seem to forget that women are taking care of business – the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the homes we live in, are often made possible by women. Professor Mannella replied, “We’re really trying to increase our enrollment of men in our area, we have a male major, and we’ve had male majors in the past, but I think there has been a bit of a stigma with the word ‘fibers’ among, at least, the men, the male student population, in my experience. But I think it’s interesting, some of the men that are taking our classes that are in their early twenties, they seem less affected by these gender debates, it’s just like there’s a difference among these young men, especially the ones in our class, they have a different point of view and they have respect for this craft and don’t feel stigmatized by it as a woman’s art. So, it’s great to see all genders working with this technique.”

Shagging – Kathryn Pannepacker at William Way LGBT Community Center

Kathryn Pannepacker said to DoN, “I have this funny way of just using up yarn, just shagging, being textural and fun.” The art in the William Way LGBT Community Center shows influences of Mondrian and Klee, DoN wondered if this was fulfilling a need to paint? “Well, I do paint, but I don’t paint like this, I tend to paint more, sort of, art naive Matisse-like, paintings that might be narrative in a way or self portraits. I think of me rolling a ball of yarn looking at my easel, like will you take me back when I’m ready to start painting again? Because sometimes I get real affixed with weaving and then I shift over to a mural project or a painting project or get real intensely focussed with my time in community work.”

Shagging – Kathryn Pannepacker at William Way LGBT Community Center

“I wanted to share this with you, I’ve got this way of thinking, that may be a little nutsy at times, that you can’t call yourself an artist unless you’re making artwork. The whole idea of really taking care of yourself in the studio and making sure you have enough of solitude time in the studio. This work here, and the garland that’s outside the door is all part of the one-a-day series that I did. When I get really intensely focussed on a project and I get back home in the studio, I like to do a one-a-day or something that’s going to bring me to my own series of exploration – color, texture…”

Shagging – Kathryn Pannepacker at William Way LGBT Community Center

“I got the good news about the Leeway Foundation grant, I wanted to start on my website, slowly, slowly, a blog charting the process of how I’m spending my time and what I’m doing. I have all these great ideas but for now it’s a little now and then.”

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer

Thread of Thought, Tara O’Brien Artist’s Talk at CFEVA

1 Reply

Thread of Thought, Tara O’Brien at CFEVA

“I came to book arts as a librarian’s daughter and my poor father practically had a heart attack when he found out I was applying to grad school to do book arts. ‘Those are those nut jobs that take books and nail them to canvasses and call them art.'” said Tara O’Brien during her artist talk at The Center for Emerging Visual Artists. “A lot of what I was dealing with in Graduate School was making sure that that’s not what I’m doing, I’m not desecrating the Book. In fact, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what is the future of the book, where is it going? In 2003 we were just getting into a huge tipping point with the Internet and you went there instead of to a book, unless you were my father. A lot of that time was spent thinking, ‘What is a book? What can it be? What’s the conceptual quality of the book?’ And so for the early pieces in the show, these two Thread of Thought and Plenum in the back is what could it be?”

Thread of Thought, Tara O’Brien at CFEVA

“Plenum, for example, is a term physicists use to describe all of the matter in the universe. So, what is a book, what can it be? It can be anything in the Universe. As I was talking earlier about Plenum the other thing I wanted you to do is approach the book when it was closed and when you open it it reveals a completely different structure inside, a surprise in finding a book. Which is what you get when you approach a novel and find that that stellar writing you kind of think, ‘Oh, they wrote that so beautifully.’ So, how can you combine the two in art and literature? How does a book work physically? How do you read a book page by page and how do you follow the threads of what the author is trying to get through to you? And then you can break it down to how are the symbols on the page giving you this linking. And that’s why I chose crocheting instead of knitting because each chain in a crochet is a link from one to the next one but you can build so much from a crochet chain. Both of these books are a single thread all the way through the entire book, the whole narrative, if you will, from the thread references as a you read a book. Like when you’ve gone fifty pages and and you don’t remember turning a single page because you’ve gotten so caught up in this single thread.”

Thread of Thought, Tara O’Brien at CFEVA, Hyperbolic Space

“Or you get to the point in a book here where you do realize your turning pages faster than you think.” Tara demonstrated how many of the pages pull the others with the thread and pages fly by like a magicians deck of cards. “And finally you almost turn in junior English denouement. So those books lead to thinking metaphysically, ‘What is the future of the book?’ I have no idea. Do I think books are going out of style? No. Not a chance, they just have a chance to evolve now. We’ve got eReaders, they’re here to stay, have fun with them but come back to these. The next group is the little tiny ones they all fall under the title Entelechy, Aristotle’s philosophy that every entity has a force that drives it to self-fulfillment and I just really like that idea. I’d like to know what this force is? What is it made up of? How does it break down? And in making these books I found that opening a page spread in a book is also kind of a metaphor for life.”

Thread of Thought, Tara O’Brien at CFEVA

“If you do these stitches you can see the full spread of a chapter or a moment to a link in your life. For example, as of now, all of February is one page spread for me, I don’t know what’s happening right now in this page spread but I can turn the page back in time and look at what happened in February in my life, and it’s clear now. Whereas in February I had no idea. A little crazy, right? I was really excited about this show because it offered me a chance to do new work. I do a lot of knitting, a lot of crocheting and I’m interested in a lot of things, I’m a library conservator so I get to look at a lot of old stuff, at ancient patterns and I get to look at old cookbooks and all these things that people have been doing forever. How are we going to interpret it?”

“My Winter project this year was to knit a pair of Latvian mittens, in Latvian culture for years and years and years the girls know they will marry at age sixteen and they make these incredibly complex mittens, one pair for every member of the family of her future husband. So, she’s been knitting five hundred pairs of mittens by the time she’s sixteen. They’re complex and double stranded and they start knitting when they’re five years old, it’s part of the culture.”

“Fast forward to 1995, and we have a mathematician from Latvia who finally solves the problem of making a model for hyperbolic space. So, what’s hyperbolic space? Well I’m going to do my best, but, it’s a mathematical thing – continuously negative space. It’s the ruffles on your lettuce, and what she was able to do was disprove Euclid’s theorum, given one straight line and a point off of the line there is only one other parallel line only. But this theorum doesn’t work on a globe but nobody could prove how it didn’t work and why not? In the 50’s they started experimenting with paper models but paper if you cut it, it falls apart.”

“So this person from a knitting culture sat down and said, ‘I know how to do this.’ And so she took these specifically exponentially increased, this one is six to one, you can see these two lines, when you take this continuously negative space and fold it you can bring two lines together and you get a set of parallel lines. As you go on with these, it takes forever to make a row, and then you take another fold and lay it next to that and now you have three parallel lines.

So, this is important for me because it references back to my idea of linking and connecting everything, here’s a woman who just knitted all the time because she was so practiced at it, all of a sudden these higher level ideas were coming out her just regular handwork and solving really massive problems. This book talks about the connection of this handwork from just the regular linking these little moments, these tiny little pearls of brilliant thoughts and made some coherence out of these higher thoughts. I hope that that makes sense.”

Fiber Philadelphia 2012

Thread of Thought at Center for Emerging Visual Artists through March 23rd.

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer, DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog Google and Wikipedia was used extensively to write this article.

Read more about FiberPhiladelphia2012 at Side Arts with Cassandra Hoo‘s excellent article.

[disclosure page] All ad links in this blog post go to Amazon.com

Kay Healy

1 Reply

Kay Healy, Center for Emerging Visual Artists, The Galleries at Moore

How does it feel to be showing your artwork in the Galleries at Moore? “Oh, it’s wonderful! There’s a lot of really good work here right now, so, it’s exciting to be in such a professional space. I was laughing because on Monday I had four people all helping me hang. I’m used to, you know, doing it all by myself.” Oh, yeah, DoN knows. “I’ve been dragging my boyfriend around, making him hold things for me. It’s really nice to have someone else with good opinions about how it should be hung. I’m hoping to really get my work out there and be in more exhibitions and that I’ll be able to spend more time making work instead of applying for exhibitions.” Holla!

DoN reminded Kay Healy about seeing her work at Art in City Hall. “This is great because it was in the Window on Broad at UArts and from that I was able to get into the Dysfunctional Furniture show at City Hall. And Leah Douglas from the Philadelphia International Airport saw it and she said, ‘Can I do a studio visit?’, I said, ‘Yeah!’, like, Oh Great!, real artists get studio visits! So, she dropped by and said, ‘OK, well, I have a forty foot case that I would like you to do for Summer 2012.’ That was about a year ago, so now, that’s my major project doing a forty foot version of this featuring a bathroom, a kitchen, dining room and a living room.”

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), in cooperation with Moore College of Art & Design, presents an exhibition by the new Career Development Program Fellows. A highly selective fellowship with only a 2% acceptance rate, these six artists represent some of the most promising talent among emerging artists in the region: Leslie Friedman, Daniel Gerwin, Rebecca Gilbert, Kay Healy, Heechan Kim, and Johanna Inman.

Introduction 2012

February 1 February 25, 2012

Widener Memorial Foundation Gallery

Circumstantial Assembly / CFEVA at Moore

Side Arts- POST 2011

Introduction 2011

DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog

Photographs by DoN
Blick Art Materials

[disclosure page]

Art Blog

1 Reply

Hayley Tomlinson, One Accolade I Must Achieve To Become A Successfully Working Artist, digital print featuring a hand made ribbon at Prelude Gallery, January 13th, 2nd Friday in Center City.

DoN asked Hayley Tomlinson about the eclectic collection of art objects she’s showing at Prelude Gallery including photography, prints, fiber and needle-work. “I‘m interested in everything. I do some blogging on Tumblr and what I really like is looking at the images on Tumblr and seeing what is trending? What are people interested in?” Giggles. “What I think about is, how can I capitalize on that and how can I gain popularity and become more well known. But, also I kind of just think when I make things wouldn’t it be funny if I just made this. Like I made a drawing of a toilet in a forest of birch trees.” Giggles. “I thought it was funny because I hate the thought of having to go to the bathroom in the woods but I guess if there are toilets in there but then I guess I‘d be OK.”

“I think about things I desire and things I fear like how can I be a better artist? And how can I be a more successful well known artist which is what the photographs are about.” DoN noted the portraiture with ribbons and how they stand out. “There are four ribbons First, Second, Third and Honorable Mention. These two are Third Place and Honorable Mention, I think they’re the two photographs that have been most successful and most successfully represented my Adobe Photoshop skills. I was thinking, I‘m in Philadelphia and what do I need to do in Philadelphia to be more well known. And one is being featured on the art blog. And that ended up happening. I had an article on the art blog and they showed that photograph. The other photograph is about the blog Tumblr which I think is very important for contemporary art, especially young people in art. People see my work on Tumblr and really respond to it, then that will really help me get my name out.”

Hayley Tomlinson, 627 Reblogs on Tumblr, handmade ribbon with photograph at Prelude Gallery.

Read more about Hayley Tomlinson and Prelude Gallery at Side Arts.

Congratulations to Hayley Tomlinson on her graduation, read DoN‘s review of her senior show.

DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art Blog

Photographs by DoN
Kodak Easyshare Z981

[disclosure page]

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Jul
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Jul
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30