#spoonflower

26 August, 2015

Jerome Grant Projects: Duet #2

beckarahn2015-08-26T16:41:27-05:00An Artist's Life, Everything Else, Gallery Exhibitions|Comments Off on Jerome Grant Projects: Duet #2

My second project for my Jerome Grant is all about the story. My partner Dawn and I have been friends since the 7th grade. Dawn is now a professor, teaching art at a community college. She isn’t a digital or fabric person at all; she gravitates towards printmaking and book arts. I thought it would be fun to go “offline” with Dawn and write a series of postcards to one another. I bought several packages of blank cards and a bunch of stamps and we mailed our conversation back and forth with one side of the card for words and one side for a sketch of something. She block printed, I water colored with tea and we talked about art. Why do I hate working with the color red? Do you have a “go to” doodle that you always draw when you don’t know what to draw?

Dawn really inspired me to do something hands on and get away from the computer a little bit. So I started a series of designs based on cut paper collages made from found paper and junk mail. I now have about 6 designs based on that idea and I am really loving that whole set of work. We talked a little at the beginning of the project about making a garment that told a story. Could a dress be a book?

This design is the base I started from. Two sizes of circle punches and a stack of catalogs and envelopes. I made 4 like this that became the final fabric design. They alternate between bright colors with no text and grey/black/white with text on them. I wanted to incorporate text into the design to refer to that book idea, but I didn’t want it to be a literal story that you would read. So I used text as a design element throughout.

What kind of a story would a dress tell you? It would have to be a “choose your own adventure”, where something you would do would be like turning the pages of the story. So I created a text design from a torn up choose your own adventure book from the thrift store. More text, but used in a textural way. That is what makes the texture on the hem of the dress, which is shown here. This is a screenshot of the actual dress panels as I was working on them.

The origami butterflies came next. I had made some fabric butterflies as a way of using up some pretty scraps for a show early in the spring. And I loved that this design was evolving entirely from paper, so I made two kinds of butterflies. These above were folded from origami paper and photographed to be layered into the design. And then I made 3-D fabric origami butterflies that embellish the dress. (I have an affinity for origami butterflies. My engagement ring was an origami butterfly folded from shiny silver paper.)

Finally I wanted to get our postcards incorporated into the design, so I scanned the text from several and created a final text design that is our handwriting with a color gradient over top.

This design was printed on 2 yards of silk crepe to make a “scarf”.

Where does the “choose your own adventure” come in? The dress is designed to be rearranged by the wearer. Like a magnetic nametag, the fabric butterflies have neodymium magnets stitched to the back and another stitched to a felt backing. The magnets let you put butterflies anywhere you like. Up over the shoulder, all along the hem. They also hold the scarf piece in place, so you can add a cowl back or an extra strap or a hood or a piece draped grecian style.

This one is called “Choose Your Own Adventure”. (And I will post finished photos also after the show has opened.)

24 August, 2015

Jerome Grant: Duets Part One

beckarahn2015-08-24T10:34:01-05:00An Artist's Life, Gallery Exhibitions, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|Comments Off on Jerome Grant: Duets Part One

The three projects for my Jerome Grant exhibition are all duets with other artists. I chose three people as partners who I thought had something to teach me about art and design. The original idea was to work on things digitally and have the focus be about the ways we all use digital design tools, but as we started to talk, each duet turned into something a little different. The first partner I worked with was my dear friend Donna Kallner. Donna is the fiber artist of the three and although her particular passions are ancient art forms, she is one of the most self-taught “techhie” artists I know.

Donna was featured in the Spring 2015 of the publication from the National Basketry Organization.

Donna and I decided to play a game called “Photoshop Tennis”. The idea is that you pass a digital image back and forth and each make an edit. I do something and lob it back to her and vice versa. We gave ourselves a pool of images to work from with a shared DropBox folder. We set down some ground rules (choose at least 2 photos to combine) and a general aesthetic (organic, earth tones.) We had wet dogs, fungus, brick, bittersweet, weathered tables and agates among the images in that folder.

We had several versions of designs going, but this set of photos ended up being the final fabrics. A brick wall, a snowy cornfield, frost on a window and a line drawing that I scanned. These were layered with different opacity, repeated, mirrored, inverted. We did a lot to them, but I think they still read in the final fabrics amazingly well.

I love that we created a geometric print from an organic shape. That is one of my favorite parts of this design. I can’t tell you who did what because it evolved very organically. I was completely skeptical at first because I had never created a design from a large landscape image. My photo choices tend towards close up macro shots, at the other end of the spectrum. One of the “new” ideas I think I learned was the use of repeating layers. The brick pattern was layered several times by itself and rotated – transforming the brick into a more irregular cross-hatch pattern, which is a fantastic texture. We left our files “in progress” when we passed them back and forth, so I could dig right into the layers and see how everything fit together. I think we get into habits as designers of going to your “go to” tools and this was a really interesting exploration for me to dig into Donna’s work and say “what did she do there”. It was a way for me to watch her work and see a new process.

The ensemble that these fabrics go in to is two major pieces: a sheath dress made from the blue brick print and a coat made from the geometrics. Both pieces have the frost image layered on top in very specific places. It makes a “collar” on the dress and is layered at the hem and cuffs of the coat at very large scale. The hand-drawn print is the coat lining. The dress and coat are made from cotton sateen, the coat lining is satin. (The coat is interlined with a heavy cotton twill to give it some weight and structure.) Both pieces are based on 1950’s vintage patterns.

I have titled it “You Can Take the Girl Out of the Country”. I do know that I am taunting you, but I won’t show the finished pieces until after the show has opened. Hopefully you can use your imagination a little bit until then.

4 August, 2015

Upcoming Classes: New Classes this fall

beckarahn2015-08-04T11:52:41-05:00Classes & Teaching, Spoonflower & Fabric Design, UpcomingClasses|2 Comments

I am teaching a LOT of new classes this fall and I am really excited about that. I am going to be one busy lady.

The waterlily is a sample for my Digital Art Quilt class. It is one of the “Beyond the Book” classes that I am teaching, which are based on projects from The Spoonflower Handbook, but I am taking them a step further and adding some hands-on components. This is based on a really cute quilt project from the book using an original piece of collage art. We are going to expand the collage idea by making paper collages, handpainting some papers and adding digital layers to the design as well. This one is made only from the pages of an Eddie Bauer catalog and a sharpie drawing of pebble shapes. I think I am going to print it at about 15 inches square and finish it as an art quilt.

Check out most of the fall classes here on my Upcoming Classes page. I have a few more to come that are waiting to confirm dates.

8 July, 2015

Design Challenges = Practice

beckarahn2015-07-08T11:04:48-05:00Spoonflower & Fabric Design|3 Comments

This is my design for the weekly Spoonflower design challenge. The theme this week is “What’s in your bag?”. The idea is that everyone carries around something interesting in their purse or bag and you should use that ephemera as a basis for a design.

I don’t actually worry too much about the voting part of these contests, although it is very fun and validating to see the likes and comments from everyone. For me these design challenges are all about deadlines and practice. With all kinds of skills from playing musical instruments to sports, you get better by practicing. I feel like design is the same way. I am out of practice with pen and paper drawing. I participated in Illustration Friday for quite a while, but I got busy with other things and stopped. So for these last few challenges, I have been drawing and digitally coloring. Practice. I don’t think pen and pencil drawing is a mandatory component to being a great designer, but I do think the more skills you have in your toolbox the more versatile you are.

The other creative challenge that I love is having a random topic as inspiration. Being assigned a topic takes you out of your comfort zone. It makes you think about topics you might never design and to really think about all the different ways you could represent lemonade or llamas. Next week is a baseball theme. I know next to nothing about baseball and I am really not a fan, so it is a real challenge to me to come up with what to design. I think it will involve dogs and baseballs. I know a lot about that.

This week’s “bag” challenge was pretty wide open and I decided to go a little bit literal, because I thought it was fun to have a fabric design that was just commonplace and odd objects. It was drawn in 3 sections. I started with the sharpies and made them and the knitting needles deliberately very directional to make almost a basketweave kind of pattern with the lines formed by those two components. I drew these bits all with fine tip sharpies and scanned them. I started coloring this one in Photoshop very “inside the lines” and pretty and then deleted the whole thing. It was too “nice”. I started again with a grungy streaky Photoshop brush and painted in things by hand. I added a layer of “fibers” in the background with a filter and then added some splatters and erased some bits of the colors to break it up and add texture. I played with the colors a lot. I wanted a dark background because when I think of “what’s in your bag” I always think about rummaging around in the inevitable dark corners of my tote bag. I ended up choosing slightly muted colors for coloring the odds and ends that I think look a little like chalk against the dark background.

If you don’t like to illustrate, there’s no reason you couldn’t do your own thing. Use the Spoonflower or Illustration Friday topics as a jumping off point for a little creative exercise: how about taking a photo of “what’s in your bag” or writing a haiku?

always lost, searching

compartments and dark corners

provide camouflage

19 June, 2015

My 7th Spoonflower-iversary!

beckarahn2015-06-19T11:13:37-05:00An Artist's Life, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|Comments Off on My 7th Spoonflower-iversary!

June 20th is my 7 year Spoonflower-iversary. That was the day I uploaded and ordered my very first fabric. I remember getting my invitation to join the site. At that point, you signed up to be on a waiting list and Spoonflower would invite groups of people to join at a time. They only had one printer and I think you could only order a yard or two at a time. I remember reading about Spoonflower in someone’s tweet and Googling to find the site and signing up that minute. Printing my own fabric? For real?

When it came time to design my very first fabric, I had no idea what to draw. I don’t usually suffer from the “fear of a blank page”, but I was truly stuck. It was intimidating. I wanted to love it, I wanted it to be mine. So I decided to do something practical. I made a fabric that matched my Etsy shop banner, thinking I would make some gift bags to send Etsy orders in. Smee the fish and bright colored bubbles. I even did a top-to-bottom seamless repeat of the bubble pattern, which when I look back on it now seems pretty sophisticated for my first design. I didn’t end up making gift bags from that fabric, because I couldn’t do it. When I unwrapped the package a few weeks later and I had my first yard of fabric in my hands, it was perfect. It was like the best Christmas present ever. It was my design and it was real fabric. I couldn’t cut it up and give it away. I still have that yard and it’s still my very favorite. I bring it to class with me sometimes and show it to my students.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the day I found my niche. I had been working at an art center for years, and I had taught hundreds of people how to do all kinds of fiber art, but I didn’t really feel like I had an art form to call my own. I wasn’t a quilter or a fashion designer or a felter, although I could do all of those things. I wasn’t really passionate about any of them.

I ordered several more designs and tried all kinds of things, but it took me a couple of years before I really figured out what to do with my own fabric and that was this dress.

I wish I could remember exactly the inspiration for this. I had a couple of events that fall I needed to dress up for. I loved those two photos the design is made from. I had a brainstorm. I meticulously re-drafted all of the pattern pieces for this in Illustrator and placed the photos on each piece. I had to figure out how to make files that were each exactly 1 yard of fabric so I could place all of the pieces. I wasn’t sure what it would look like when it was printed. Would the colors look right? Would it look too much like a photo billboard? I had no idea if it would work. After I ordered the fabric, I realized that I had made 2 left skirts instead of a left and a right and I had to redo and reorder that piece. I wasn’t sure how much it would shrink or even if it was the right weight for a dress. I had never even ordered this silk-cotton fabric before. (It turned out to be perfect.) It was a leap of faith and the worst that I figured would happen was that I would end up with some random silk scraps and no dress.

It maybe sounds cheesy to say Spoonflower changed my life, but it’s kind of true. I loved designing fabrics but it wasn’t something I could just do, except by hand. When I was in college I worked at a summer theater and I costumed an entire show with costumes made from muslin, drawn on with sharpies and colored with crayons. I wanted them to look like they were out of a coloring book. Completely impractical (not washable), but such a great concept. I block printed borders on satin fabrics for another show because I couldn’t afford the fancy fabrics and trims I wanted to make the costumes look lush and “royal”. I could print fabrics on my ink jet printer, but only 8 1/2 x 11 inches at a time. I never could find the fabrics I wanted in my head because they didn’t exist. I now have a whole gallery of fabrics that exist because I designed them. This September, almost exactly 5 years from the day I ordered the fabric for that dress, I am going to have an exhibition of my work and our new book is going to be released and it is all about digitally printed fabric.

Wow.

So, cheers to Spoonflower and Stephen and Kim and Darci and all of the creative and wonderful people I have worked with at Spoonflower. When you are a painter, you don’t think about the people who make your paint or your brushes. I am lucky enough to have a whole fabulous team that is helping me do what I do.

4 June, 2015

Collaborating: An artist and two museums

beckarahn2015-06-04T12:24:16-05:00Gallery Exhibitions, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|Comments Off on Collaborating: An artist and two museums

Last night I was the guest artist at a special event for the Hennepin History Museum. It was an event to thank donors and the museum wanted to have me there to talk about ways that contemporary artists can work with and be inspired by museums. The curator pulled out the feather fan that I photographed and created a skirt design from. I also brought this skirt, which is a photograph of a woodwork detail at the museum.

This isn’t my only museum collaboration though, and I am thrilled to pieces to be able to show you this one. I have been keeping it under wraps for a while.

I was approached by a graduate student intern at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago with an inspiring opportunity. They were trying to find a way to bring some modern relevance to their collection and had invited a group of contemporary artists and community members to create works in response to pieces in their collection. They would give me photographs of a piece and then I could do anything to respond to it: write, create, curate. They had a textile piece and wondered if I might like to respond. YES!

They sent me several photos of the “sash”. I am not sure what this piece is for sure. It is woven and beaded and embroidered. It is about 22 inches wide and 30 long. In consulting with various textile geeks I know, our best guess is that it was a sampler type project, maybe using small samples or scraps of techniques used in classes and was meant to be decorative, like something to adorn the front of a podium.

My contact at the museum said,

“What is the role of the textile arts in an age of modern textile technology. Why do so many people make / construct their own textile clothing, garments, etc. ? In the early 20th century the Hull–House offered many textile, weaving, and sewing classes that were extremely popular at a time of tremendous factory expansion. The people taking those classes didn’t need to hand-produce their own articles, yet they did. What similarities exist between then and now? “

I decided to respond to the piece in two way: by making a contemporary piece and then writing a short essay to talk about the two pieces together. I decided first to make a textile piece to reflect the parts of the sash I found striking: the long fringe, the zig-zag trim, the gold sequins, the bold colors. I wanted something that was modern and fun and wearable, but that had a real tangible connection to my inspiration piece. I wanted people to look at it and immediately see the connection between the two. I decided to go modern and make it from digitally printed fabric using an “all digital” design. I very often work from photographs, but for this I didn’t want to print an adapted photo, but I wanted to use “modern technology” to create the design by drawing it all in a very virtual and non-tactile way, with vector art in Adobe Illustrator.

I call this skirt “Sashay”. I pulled colors out of the photo to create the design. The zig-zag motif makes a yoke on the skirt and is echoed with a peek of ric-rac trim at the hem. On each yellow bar on the design, I hand-stitched vintage gold sequins so there are subtle lines of sparkle. It is digitally printed on to linen/cotton fabric.

The Hull-House Museum has put together a website to feature all of the response pieces for this project called “Look At It This Way”. You can read my essay about the two pieces by visiting the site and checking out the other responses from musicians, poets and more. I am delighted to have been a part of this project and I had a great time working on it.