Monday, February 7, 2011

Blah

Quick entry (that I nearly forgot to do) because I do not have enough hours in my day.

This weekend was primarily about painting because I have a crit this week.  I don't have any pictures though, because it's currently not in a really photographable state.  Yes, I just made that word up, sue me.  Let's just say there's lots of stitching of lots of words.  And my fingers hurt.  And I'm still nowhere near done, and I don't think I'm going to be done in time, and I'm stressing out majorly.  If I hear one more person tell me being an art major must be so much fun, I might just punch them in the face. 

So what am I doing for sculpture?  Well, I decided to make a dress.  A dress covered in truths and lies.  I guess I want to highlight the transient nature of identity and the written word.  You can read my previous post to catch up on the thought process in detail.  In addition to that, as I've been working, it's also made me think of more modern communication like twitter and facebook and how we reveal ourselves in little soundbites (well, 'sound'bites, but you know what I mean).

What I've accomplished so far:

I bought a pattern.



The long sleeved version

I went back and forth on what kind of dress to make. On the one hand, I've only ever helped make clothes before, and that was awhile ago, and they were really simple.  On the other, I didn't really want to make a sack dress either. This was a compromise of sorts. It's complicated enough to challenge me, but not so ornate and over the top that I stand no chance of completing it. I'm confident in my ability to make the dress.  Fitting it to me?  That could be trickier.

I bought fabric.



I had no preconceptions about color going into the store. No idea what I wanted. The pattern tells you what fabrics work for the cut of the dress, so that's where I started. And of course I wanted something that wouldn't cost $20 a yard. I had a hard time because everything seemed to have a really obvious pattern, which doesn't work for what I want. And then I found a linen blend (one of the suggested fabrics) in pink, on clearance, and that worked for me.  I like the pink.  One of the reasons I'm getting into using textiles and fibers is because of the feminist reclamation (just got several books out of the library on the subject, so excited to read them but I have no idea when I'll have the time!), and I think pink fits into that in a way.  Nothing wrong with being traditionally feminine and 'girly'.

I printed words.



I'm still cutting them up. I forgot to flip the first one I printed, so I used that as a test. It transfers cleanly (iron on) but it's shiny, so I have to cut it as close to the words as I can to minimize random blocks of shininess. So what I was hoping would be really quick is taking forever. This one sheet took me over an hour. And I still have 6 to go.  But I very seriously doubt I'm going to be ready to iron them on until at least next week, so I keep telling myself not to panic and don't kill myself trying to get everything done all at once.

I honestly don't know how long this is going to take me. I'm also concerned that I'm going to start thinking of it more as 'fashion' than 'art', and I'm trying to keep my crazy random thoughts reined in. I already had one project change on me in the middle of making it, and that's why I'm so behind now in painting.

So, tomorrow, I finally get to open that pattern up and start cutting! I would have started that this weekend, but my cat would have taken one look at the tissue paper and decided that it was play time, and then I'd be out a pattern and really annoyed, and that just wouldn't help productivity.

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