Capilano University Textile Arts Grad Show

Here are some photos from the opening night of our Grad Show at Seymour Art Gallery in Deep Cove.  http://www.seymourartgallery.com/index.php

It was a fabulous evening and a wonderful celebration and exhibition of some of the work produced by students in the 2-year Textile Arts program at Capilano University. http://www2.capilanou.ca/programs/textile-arts.html
The show runs until this coming Sunday, May 27th when there will be an artist talk at 2pm. Please come by if you can make it!

 

Paper lanterns

These are some prototypes for vat-dyed, shibori lampshades made for my final project in Surface Design.

I received a very generous donation of assorted fine papers from Yvonne Wakabayaski http://www.yvonnewakabayashi.com/ and I wanted to test the limitations of each type of paper. I started with some origami folding for tesselation patterning, which I could not get to work on any of the papers. I went on to fold and clamp the paper before dipping them in various vat-dyes. Some paper stood up very well in cold water vat dyes, but didn't do as well in the warm indigo vat. To my surprise the most delicate-looking paper was the most durable.

 

 

 

 

 The truncated doctahedron shape is my favourite; it looks like it belongs in Doctor Who...especially when you adjust the picture like this!

And it's very spacey-looking at night...

 

Embroidery Project

This embroidery sampler from my second semester (last spring) fulfilled the project criteria that it must be a 'narrative of self, include text, and a date'.
I thought it would be interesting to delve into my educational past for this project. I wasn't a very focused student, but I  had a social agenda back in elementary and high school, which is well documented in my report cards.
I extracted some of my teachers' comments from my report cards and created this little handbook, which I thought could be a very useful guide for the younger generation of girls in my family.

Spring Inspired Tapestry

 I'm working on my final project for weaving, a tapestry inspired by the springtime. I wanted to capture the look of the sunlight as it appears through the foliage; I like all of the shadows created by the layering of leaves.

 

 

Paper Pursuits

I combined shibori techniques with indigo dyeing and origami for these three projects for Surface Design.

I'm exploring more tesselation patterns for my final project; their potential for interiors is astounding!

 

 

 

Tapestry

This small tapestry that I made last year is based on the Inukshuk at English Bay in Vancouver.

Sculptural Projects

The requirement of this project was to create a 3D sculpture using 100 or more things ~ no restrictions on what those things could be. I used approximately 2500 toothpicks to complete this piece.

Sculptural Projects

Here is a sampling of small sculptural projects I've done while in the Textile Program at Capilano University.

The first sculpture shown below was completed using basketmaking techniques. The materials used for this project are raffia, jute, alpaca wool and linen.

Silkscreening a Pattern in Weaving

This past summer I was absolutely enchanted by a weaving pattern that resulted from using the cornucopia tool in Weavemaker, a program used to design weaving patterns. Cornucopia can be used anywhere within the pattern: on the treadling, the threading, the colours or the tie-up and the results can range from awful to fabulous! I warped up with the Perwinkle pattern from A Handweaver's Pattern Book and used the cornucopia tool in the treadling section until I got the awesome pattern shown below.

For my final project in Surface Design I used the print out of the pattern, which appears as a  geometric rendering of the weaving structure, and transferred the three resulting images to silkscreens using Photoshop and a scanner.

I screenprinted the yardage in an ombré colour palette that began with burnt umber and transitions through burnt sienna, raw sienna and ended with yellow ochre.

The reason that I love this pattern so much is that the repeat structure is deceptive. At first glance it appears to be a simple, diamond-shaped repeat structure of two motifs, but there are actually eight unique diamond repeats within this structure that are randomized within the pattern to create sixteen different repeats.

The image above was taken after heatsetting the yardage first in the dryer for 2 hours and then with a heat press.

Unfortunately, I was inconsistent with the heat pressing, despite my thinking that I was being so methodical, and after I washed the fabric there are some pretty obvious areas of wash out. Luckily, part of the criteria of this project was to layer silkscreening and embellisment techniques, so I have begun to cover the washed out areas with a four-sided embroidery stitch that makes the mistakes look like intentional design components....sort of.