OFF THE GRID

May 28 - May 31, 2009

Speakers and Concurrent Sessions

Keynote Address

Off the Grid
Gerhardt Knodel
What if? What if nothing is exactly as we have determined it to be? By consciously slipping off the grid of that which has been proven by experience or known to be true, new and unexpected relationships between unsuspecting subjects can be formed as the foundation for new bodies of work. Why not be an active agent of change in our dynamically expanding world?

Closing Remarks

Off Which Grid?
Jessica Hemmings
Textiles have long found themselves positioned off the grid of mainstream visual art practice. While many bemoan this oversight, it may be time to understand our position in a more positive light. The time has come to ask which grids—environmental, commercial, conceptual, material—will contemporary textile practice choose to inhabit in the future? Responding to themes raised during the conference, the closing remarks will attempt to suggest a way forward to acknowledge and celebrate the complexity of positions that contemporary textile practice inhabits today.

 

Featured Speakers

Organic Cotton:

Beyond Oatmeal and Granola Colors
Harmony Susalla
Harmony will share what inspired her to abandon a successful career in textile design and make the leap into the emerging field of organic fiber. Infused with color and design, Harmony's organic fabrics are not about guilt; they are about gorgeous. In addition to sharing her personal motivation and inspiration, she will explain the complex economic and environmental impacts of textile production. You will learn how to look at your own fabric choices. This session promises to leave you educated and inspired.

Ray Materson-Metamorphosis:

An Embroidery Artist Recounts His Steps from the Depths of Hell to Rebirth and Redemption
Ray Materson
Metamorphosis is a walk through the life of Ray Materson presented by the artist himself. Through numerous projections of his highly detailed artworks, Ray’s story unfolds. Ray uses wit and anecdote to share his journey and his encounters with a variety of characters along the way. His presentation is a spiritually riveting study of a life healed.

Honus Wagner
Ray Materson

Textilian: A Career in Textile Explorations
Victoria Z. Rivers
This lecture highlights the career of Victoria Z. Rivers and focuses on the synergies that evolve from textiles: traveling, collecting, researching, curating, creating, exhibiting and publishing research. This illustrated lecture depicts the evolution of Victoria’s printed, dyed and embellished art textiles, and field research experiences. Her vast research topics include research on baskets and agriculture, solar and lunar motifs in South Asian embroidery, global textiles and fashions patterned with traditional textile based imagery, and her book The Shining Cloth.

Lectures

From Passion to Product
Janice Arnold
How do you make the leap from doing what you love to making a profitable business? What twists, turns and challenges can you expect along the way? Textile artist Janice Arnold shares her entertaining and extraordinary roadmap to success in this open and lively discussion about her business, life and love of textiles. Learn some of the keys you might need to know in order to draw your personal map for becoming a successful independent artist and professional businessperson.

Performing Fiber:

New Mappings for Social Change
Mary Babcock
Fiber has often challenged the distinction between 2D and 3D media definitions. Today, fiber stretches off that grid into the 4th dimension, embracing time-based art: video, sound, performance and engaged action. This presentation combines the immediacy of an actual performance with a slide presentation. Mary Babcock will address the unique position fiber can play as a vehicle or catalyst for social change. Examples range from “guerilla”-installed public performances and workshops enacting fiber metaphors to larger, international time-based festivals.

Off the Grid:
Unconscious Advice for the Self-Conscious
Jerry Bleem
As makers we often enter our studios with goals: the next show, the next sale, success. At times these expectations can encourage our artistic development, but they can also keep us on the grid or prevent us from exploring new territory. What might we learn from artists who ignore career, market and style? Would allowing our passions and intuition free rein take us Off the Grid? Let’s consider advice offered by the self-taught and the visionary, and learn from their drive to create.

Minding the Margins:

Craft, Criticism and Contemporary Art
Maria Elena Buszek
While the success of renowned contemporary artists from Ghada Amer to Andrea Zittel has demonstrated the degree to which galleries, museums and patrons have been willing to embrace craft media, critics and scholars have done little to study or articulate the relevance of this fact. In this lecture, Maria Elena Buszek will share recent, cutting-edge scholarship and criticism on the art/craft divide that those on both sides may find enthralling, infuriating or confusing—but undeniably exciting.

Mining for Meaning: Intentional Content
Jane Dunnewold
How do ideas manifest in unexpected ways? Where do outrageous inspirations come from? We’ll dig into a practice that leads down into self and out again. This lecture is a twofold path—images in a steady stream of chaos and beauty, and concrete design advice based on exercises to open your head and expand your thinking. The exploration is part inspiration, part bag of tricks and part acknowledgement of that elusive balance between struggle and grace.

Soy Wax Resist: Example 1
Jane Dunnewold

Radically Familiar: Fiber as Fine Art Medium
Bean Gilsdorf
Numerous international-level artists make use of textiles but don’t identify themselves as fiber artists. How—and why—do they remain Off the Grid of established craft practice? In answering these questions, we’ll examine the roles of textiles, surface design and concept in contemporary art, and compare the cultures and attitudes of fine craft versus fine art. Let’s explore this phenomenon together and discuss the implications for our own work.

Material Poetry: Textiles in Ghana, West Africa
Mary Hark
Supported by a Fulbright Senior Research Grant, Mary Hark spent nine months in Ghana, West Africa. While there, she steeped herself in a world where the line between art and daily life is fundamentally blurred. Color, pattern and the presence of cloth permeate everything. Filled with fresh understanding for the possibilities and power that cloth can carry, she will share her experience from this lively cloth culture.

Image from Material Poetry:
Textiles inGhana, West Africa
Mary Hark

How to Prepare Digital Files for Presentation, Publication and Web
Carolyn Kallenborn
Have you ever e-mailed an image that takes 25 minutes to download? Or had a digital image printed for a poster that came out all blurry even though it looked fabulous on the screen? The digital file that is great for publication doesn’t work well on the Web. Carolyn Kallenborn will explain different types of files and how to change and manage file sizes for specific end use. In addition, she will show simple tools to make your digital images look more professional.

Silk Ikat Velvet of Uzbekistan
Barbara Setsu Pickett
The rich geometric patterning and dazzling color of silk ikat velvet weaving of Uzbekistan come from intricately dyed pile warps that are stretched on the loom. In weaving, these warps are lifted over brass wires that produce the deep pile surface. To achieve correct proportions in the design, the master dyer accurately elongates the pattern and the master weaver precisely compresses it. Pickett will present these bold velvet
symmetries and explore the traditions and current practices of creating them.

Beyond Digital Matrix:

Inkjet Textile Printing Status Report
Hitoshi Ujiie
Current developments in digital printing on paper are being adapted more and more for the textile market. As digital print technologies improve to offer faster production and larger cost-effective print runs, digital printing will become the technology that provides the majority of the world’s printed textiles. The presentation includes: (1) update on the state of the art in the printed textile industry and digital textile printing technology, (2) impacts on workflows, (3) impacts on textile design and (4) into the future

Discussion

SDA Publications: Meet The Editor
Patricia Malarcher
This interactive session will open a window onto the process that brings the Surface Design Journal and the SDA Newsletter into print. The editor will discuss criteria for selection of articles and reviews, and present guidelines for submission of materials, including photographs, for publication.

Panel Presentation

A Conversation with SDA Featured Artists
Moderated by Susan Taber Avila
This panel discussion will provide an opportunity to learn more about the process and conceptual ideas of Alice Kettle, Jennifer Angus, Kim Eichler-Messmer, Wendy Weiss and Jay Kreimer. Each artist will give a brief overview of their work and then answer questions posed by the moderator. Topics will include working on a large scale with labor-intensive techniques, maneuvering the logistics of installations and fragile materials, making the transition from school to real life and the collaborative process.

Demonstrations

New in 2009: All demonstrations will be offered twice during the conference.

Soy Wax Three Ways
Jane Dunnewold
Explore three unique approaches to this environmentally friendly and totally addictive soy wax. Cut stamps and then apply hot wax as part of a layering process. Fold, pleat and manipulate fabric, and then dip it into hot wax before dyeing or discharging. The more times the steps are repeated, the more intriguing the fabrics become. Complete the trio of tools by learning to make wax dye crayons. This rich combination of wax processes expands even the most sophisticated surface design toolbox.

Water Soluble Media Made Permanent
Kerr Grabowski
Create unique textures, watercolor effects, depth and multiple prints by combining textile medium and water-soluble media. This process works on synthetic and natural fibers, paper, wood, plaster and rubber. Learn how water-soluble media (charcoal, crayons, Caran d’Ache and much more) can be made permanent by bonding it to fabric. Textile medium and other bonding agents will be demonstrated, along with how to set fabrics containing dye (moist heat) and pigment (dry heat), without loss of color. This process is low-tech, nontoxic and permanent—great for curious children and playful adults.

Free-Motion Machine Embroidery: Dimensional Manipulation of Felted Surfaces
Lisa Klakulak
Lisa Klakulak will demonstrate the use of free-motion machine embroidery to compact and crater specific areas of thick felt, as well as to gather and raise areas of thin felt to create dimensional surface textures. On exhibit will be a plethora of stitch-manipulated samples, each with a corresponding piece of felt showing the piece before and after stitching. Several pieces will be actively manipulated through the embroidery process during the demonstration.

Texture detail of handbag, Yellow Jacket
Lisa Klakula

Creating and Printing Uncommon Surfaces
Kathyanne White
This demonstration will cover the many aspects of printing quality digital images on a variety of textiles and papers using an inkjet printer, including image and substrate preparation. Demonstration and discussion will provide in-depth information on printing on specialty surfaces, including Tyvec, Lutradur, vinyl, burlap, organza, canvas, lace paper, Airiel paper, watercolor paper, handmade substrates and more.

Encaustic for Fiber Artists
Daniella Woolf
The ancient technique of encaustic is an exciting tool when used to expand one’s visual vocabulary. Daniella Woolf will show how easily one can transfer images onto a number of surfaces, including wood, paper and fabric, as well as gold and silver leafing. The demonstration will show how simply one can collage and embed items with encaustic, using a variety of materials, including fabric, thread and other linear elements. This translucent material creates amazing layers and surfaces beyond your wildest dreams.

 

Questions:

For all conference organization questions, contact:
Kathy Dowell
2009 Conference Coordinator
Surface Design Association
816-471-2115

E-mail: Click here

For all registration questions, contact:
Gerrie Condgon
2812 SE Moreland Lane
Portland, OR 97202
503-788-3322

E-mail: Click here

For all SDA membership related questions, contact:
Joy Stocksdale
Surface Design Association
PO Box 360
Sebastopol CA 95473-0306
707-829-3110

E-mail: Click here