studio notes #12
This week has largely been about prepping for the requirements of the residency and moving the mourning veil forward. The residency prep has been largely administrative so far, so I'm going to focus on sharing the more interesting part: the veil.
As y'all may remember, the veil is currently just paper, thread, and tape. I'd like it to reach my elbow when worn, so I still have some mushrooms to add to the design. But now that I trust the overall shape and size are going to work, I'm getting more excited about figuring out how to connect all of the pieces.
Initially I thought I could just thread or glue the mushroom pieces to the thread the same way I did with the sample. As the veil has gotten bigger, though, that is turning out to be pretty fiddly and very easy to tangle. I tried gluing jump rings, which did not work. Then I had another idea. Originally I wanted it to look like lace, but what if I actually made lace?
I don’t actually know how lace is made so a bit of a deep dive into the history of lace and a few overview YouTube tutorials later, and I'm really liking this direction. So this week I'm going to teach myself some different lace stitches and make a whole bunch of samples to see what might work.
I love the journeys that problems can take you on.
This piece is obviously going to be a big endeavor, and I'm starting to realize it may take the whole residency to complete. But I know myself well enough to know that I need other projects to bounce between when the big one loses its excitement for a little while.
I picked up a bunch more bra pads at Austin Creative Reuse and want to experiment with turning them into a kind of armor. I've been learning about decomposers, and one that keeps catching my attention is the carpet beetle. They're a household pest that I've definitely heard of, but in their natural habitats they are also important decomposers and pollinators. I was especially inspired by the beetle's exoskeleton and the way it acts as armor.
The carpet beetle is also beautiful, and its black and warm brown coloring fits right into the palette that is emerging in this project.
So this week I'll be learning more about lace, playing with bra inserts, and continuing to build on the ferronnière macramé piece that I've pushed a little further.
