A Guide to Artmaking in the Pandemic

Social(ly-distanced) Fabric(s) A Guide to Artmaking in the Pandemic

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A compendium of at-home artmaking resources and projects from students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Contents Madison Neel 1. Salt Dough for the Clay Hungry ......................................... 3 2. How to Eco-Print ................................................................. 7 3. Easy Scrap Fabric Corner Bookmark .............................. 18

Department: Fiber and Material Studies Course: Social Fabric(s) Instructor: Christalena Hughmanick Term: Spring 2020

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4. How to Block Print ............................................................ 20 5. Fabric Manipulation ......................................................... 22 6. Felting ................................................................................. 29 7. How to Make Friendship Bracelets .................................. 34 8. How to Make a God’s Eye Design .................................... 37 9. How to Make a Stuffed Bird ............................................. 39 10.

How to Make a Mask .................................................. 42

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How to Draw Blind Contours ................................... 46

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A Guide to W(a/o)ndering ........................................ 49

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How to Sew a Net Stitch ............................................. 58

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How to Make a Bottle Monster ................................. 65

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Salt Dough for the Clay Hungry

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Giselle Arellana is an artist from Queens, NY.

2 Before baking

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How to Eco-Print

After baking and painting

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MATERIALS

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rusty objects /copper items / iron

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containers

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white vinegar

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sticks or dowels

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rope/twine/string

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pot

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fabric

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flowers, leaves, petals, etc

MAKING RUSTY/IRON WATER

1. Gather iron/rusty/copper materials

2. Put the objects in container 4. Add boiling water to the white vinegar until full.

Cover and store in a dark place for 5 days

3. Pour white vinegar into half of the container

5. After 5 days the rusty/iron water is ready to be used

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STEPS 1. Gather sticks/dowels/ and twine to wrap the fabric in later. *if using some type of metal pole/dowel it might have an effect on how the print turns out*

3. Gather any plants, leaves, flowers, etc

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2. Soak fabric in a container filled with half white vinegar and half water.

Once fabric is fully coated, squeeze out excess liquid and put to the side

4. Take the plants and soak them in the same vinegar water solution used to soak fabric. Leave plants in the container during the dye process

STEPS CONT. 5. Lay out the fabric that was soaked previously 6. Take a flower or leaf that’s soaking in the water-vinegar solution and soak it generously into the rusty/iron water that you made.

7. After being dipped in both solutions, place it onto the fabric to your liking 8. Repeat until you get your desired design

*press play*

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STEPS CONT. 9. The fabric should look somewhat like this

11. Wrap the twine/string around the rolled up fabric tightly and tie it in place

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STEPS CONT.

10. Place a stick/dowel at the end of your fabric and try to roll it up tightly

12. Place your rolled up fabrics into a pot on the stove that has enough water on the bottom.

Steam on low to medium heat for 2 hours. *you can also add dye to have a colored effect*

13. After two hours take pot off the stove to cool off

14. Take rolled up fabric out and start to unravel

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STEPS CONT.

MY LAYOUTS

15. After rolled out, hang to dry!

*press play* 14

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END PRODUCT!

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Melody Wu

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Easy Scrap Fabric

CORNER BOOKMARK

Scrap Fabric Easy

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Easy Scrap Fabric

Easy Scrap Fabric Corner Bookmark

CORNER BOOKMARK

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CORNER BOOKMARK

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Reevah Agarwaal is an artist from New Delhi, India Instagram: @reev.art Website https://reevah.weebly.com/

What You Need

Instructions

• Fabric ink or acrylic paint

1. Lay your fabric flat on a table, make sure you iron it to get any wrinkles out.

• Carved stamps, carved blocks, gathered leaves, anything you want to print • Roller or sponge

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How to Block Print

• Fabric of your choice (Preferably plain weave) • Flat surface to mix ink

2. Mix a color of your choice and spread it on your flat surface.

3. Cover your roller or sponge with a desired amount of ink, a small amount of ink goes a long way 4. Apply ink onto your carved surface or desired object evenly 5. Lay the inked object, ink side down onto the fabric and apply even pressure 6. After about two minutes of applying pressure slowly lift your object to reveal printed image 7. Repeat as many times as you like!

Tips: If your ink or paint feels too dry, add a few drops of water to make it viscous. Try to choose an object with some texture, such as a leaf with defined veins. When applying pressure, to avoid friction you can lay a piece of parchment paper or plastic wrap on top of the object as a protective surface.

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Ruyi Qian

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Fabric Manipulation TOP - Cut small portions of fabric and roll into cones - Glue up or sew together.

BOTTOM TOP - - CutCut fabric into rectangles small portions of fabric and roll into cones - Sew together

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- Glue up or sew together.

BOTTOM - Cut fabric into rectangles

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Cut out the shapes that you want Manipulate the shapes(folding, insert, sew)

Cut out the shapes that you want Manipulate the shapes(folding, insert, sew) 23

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Set Set thread thread in in one one direction direction Weave with dry flower Weave with dry flower and and ribbons ribbons

Manipulate the thread with wire

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- WEAWING 26

- WEAWING

- WEAWING

- WEAWING 27

Mia Bissias

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Felting

MANIPULATE WITH OTHER MATERIALS

MANIPULATE WITH OTHER MATERIALS

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Felting

History of Felt

Needle Felting

Needle Felting, cont.

To me, felt is one of the most interesting textile materials. Not that weaving is boring or anything, but many different woven structures and techniques are passed down and have a strong association to one culture or another.

Felt however, has associations with many different cultures. It is most prominently associated with Central Asia, but samples of felt dating back to the Bronze Age have also been found in Denmark, and many classical Greek writers mention felt in their works.

Not only is felt historically interesting, but the structure of felt is super interesting. I like to think of it as a bunch of dimensional scribbles being bonded together!

The following images are some of the oldest preserved pieces of felt. The image on the left is a saddle that was found in a Russian burial site. The swan on the right was found preserved in permafrost and is approximately 2500 years old.

Materials

Steps

• Foam board

1. Place your roving where you want it!

Felting is also much more immediate than weaving and it’s very soft and squishy!

The following links offer some more insight into the history of felting:

• Felting needles • Roving (preferably 100% wool)

https://chaoticfibres.com/felting/the-story-of-felting/ http://www.historyofclothing.com/textile-history/felt-and-feltmaking-history/ http://www.torbandreiner.com/felt-history-general

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2. Start stabbing the roving with your needles! I’d start slow to make sure the roving stays in place!

3. Your piece is done once the felt changes textures; it sort of stiffens up a bit and feels more solid!

4. Note you can make dimensional objects as well! Here is a bowl my mom made!

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Wet Felting

Wet Felting, cont.

Wet Felting, cont.

Materials

Steps

• Tarp

1. Spred out your roving or comb it out to declump it

4. Scrub until the fibers start sticking together; the piece shoud feel fairly strong and comprehensive at this point

• Window screen • Oil soap • Warm water • Towel • 100% wool roving

2. Mix soap into wayer and lay out your piece; have 5-10 layers and have each layer in alternating directions (horizontal vs. vertical) 3. Start continuously adding the soal water to your piece and scrubbing

5. Now, roll this piece into a towel and roll it out approximately 50-100 times (sometimes, the work is strong enough to throw against a hard surface instead of rolling it) 6. Once you start to see little bubbles in the felt form, it is time to rinse out the soap and dry your piece out!

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How to Tie the Knots

How to Tie the Knots, cont.

• There are four types of knots: Forward, Backward, Forwardbackward, and Backwardforward.

• To tie the forwardbackward and backwardforward knots, instead of doing the same four shape twice you do it once one way and then the second time do it the other way.

Asher McGrath Leahy

• To tie a forward knot, take your string on the left and make a four shape over the string to the right and pull through the loop you’ve made. Do this twice and you’ve made a forward knot!

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How to Make Friendship Bracelets

• A forward knot moves your string to the right, a backward knot moves your string to the left. The other two knots keep your string in the same place, it just depends on whether you’re tying with the string on the right or the left.

Basic Bracelet Patterns Candy Stripe • To tie a backward knot, take your string on the right and make a backwards four shape over the string to the left and pull through the loop. Do it twice!

1. Choose at least three colors/strings (I would recommend 4-6) 2. Start with the first color of your stripe pattern and tie forward knots on every string, going in the order you’d like the stripes to go 3. Once you finish one row, start again at the beginning with your next color

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Basic Bracelet Patterns, cont.

How to Read a Normal Pattern, cont.

Hailey Rodden

Chevron 1. Choose at least three colors and cut two strings for each color 2. Start on the left with your first color and tie forward knots on one string of each color then stop

This is a pattern. At the top you can see the colors labeled by letters. This shows you what colors the pattern uses and how many strings you need. You can of course switch out the colors for what you want. This pattern has three colors and two strands of each color.

3. Start on the right with the same color (but the other string) and tie backward knots until you reach the middle 4. Tie the two matching color strings in the middle with any knot 5. Start the next row on the left

How to Read a Normal Pattern There are two types of patterns. “Normal” and “Alpha”. I’m going to show you how to read normal patterns!

These are the four types of knots in order: forward, backward, backwardforward, and forwardbackward. You can tell by the way the arrow is pointing and where the string ends up after the knot.

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For the first row you would tie a forwardbackward knot with the red string onto the blue, then a forward knot with the yellow onto the yellow, and a backwardforward knot with the red onto the blue. The second row is a forward knot with blue onto yellow, and then a backward knot with the other blue onto the other yellow. (In this row you don’t use the red strings!) You go down the pattern row by row until you’ve finished! You can repeat the pattern as many times as you need to make your bracelet long enough to wear.

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How to Make a God’s Eye Design

The pattern reading images are from Friendship-bracelets.net where you can also find a ton of patterns to try!

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How to Make a God’s Eye Design Amy Lang 1. Go outside and collect two sticks 2. Cross the sticks 3. Wrap some yarn around the middle to form a secure tie 4. Alternate wrapping over and under to make the design then tie off when you’ve done as much as you want 5. Hang to share :)

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How to Make a Stuffed Bird

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Simone Scigousky

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How to Make a Mask

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The finished product 44

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Mariah Joyce is an artist from Arlington, VA. Instagram: @mariahellenart Website: mariahellenart.com

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How to Draw Blind Contours

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Llio Zogra

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A Guide to W(a/o)ndering

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Most everything I do seems to have as much to do with intuition as with reason.

Susan Sontag, USA

w[a/o]ndering

thoughts on movement, making, and transformation

julie stopper

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How do different places make us feel and behave?

The term psychogeography was invented by the Marxist theorist Guy Debord in 1955 in order to explore this. Inspired by the French nineteenth century poet and writer Charles Baudelaire’s concept of the flâneur – an urban wanderer – Debord suggested playful and inventive ways of navigating the urban environment in order to examine its architecture and spaces.

Psychogeography describes the effect of a geographical location on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.

When I was an undergrad at NYU, I studied the theory of the dérive in a photography class.

My professor had us throw darts at a subway map. Wherever our dart landed, we were assigned to shoot a roll of film at this location.

My dart landed on a graveyard.

And if one day I am dust, ash and nothingness, let my night be a dawn, may I learn to be lost… so that I can find myself..

Florbela Espanca, Portugal

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The deeper the wave of obscurity, the higher its crest. Never, under no other circumstances, have I felt so clearly as in moments like these when every object must occupy the place it occupies and I must be the person I am.

I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms... Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

At an underground bookstore in Istanbul, my friend and travel companion, BĂŠla and I discovered the book pictured.

While I believe poetry connects all cultures, I also believe trauma is a inescapable aspect of the human condition. This book wasn’t poetry on its surface, but it was to me.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Czech Republic

Max Blecher, Romania

Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.

Rebecca Solnit, USA

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Haruki Murakami, Japan

I used to work at a job that provided a travel stipend. For this reason, I have traveled all over the world. This personal experience with extended travel is the reason I chose travel gaze as my lecture topic.

Whenever I get to a new place, the first thing I do is go on an dĂŠrive. I typically have as a rule of thumb to go into any bookstore I see. I then pick up the local or national poetry of the place.

Nelson Mandela, South Africa

Frida Kahlo, Mexico

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Transcendence sneaks in everywhere as a survival response.

Contemporary language speaks of the effects of disaster entirely as trauma, or even more frequently a post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. The twin implications are that we are not supposed to suffer and that in our frailty we are not merely damaged, but only damaged by suffering… the confrontation with physical and psychological annihilation essentially strips life to its essentials, and for many survivors becomes a turning point from the superficial to the profound. Life takes on new meaning and one’s own life is often reprioritized.

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Switzerland Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life may also have much sadness and difficulty... Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Czech Republic

Rebecca Solnit, USA Equally, such experiences can become powerful sources of motivation for some individuals, indicating that trauma can have positive effects on those who survive the ordeal; it need not necessarily result in an enduring sense of demoralization or having been damaged. The role of the memory of traumatic experiences as a source of motivation and a determinant of human behavior is an issue that is one of the major preoccupations of literature and art.

I’ve been dealing with depression ever since an adolescent.

Bessel A. van der Kolk, Holland

Making a list of affirmations helped me with my depression.

Kendrick Lamar, USA

Jessie Reyez, Canada

A fool if I take it all for granted A smart man if I keep my feet planted To the earth 'cause the people that hurt can understand it

The past has show how fragile existing knowledge can be, and how psychiatry is prone to become trapped in prevailing paradigms without being able to see their shortcomings. The unknown is the worst enemy of knowledge. This book is a body of work to be criticized and reacted against; only a critical reading will help us further define what we do not know, and determine the scope of future explorations.

Bessel A. van der Kolk, Holland

Kendrick Lamar, USA

Louise Bourgeois, France

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

Audre Lorde, USA

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Ariana Brown, USA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYJH6FNGTxc

nayyirah waheed, unknown origin (known as the quiet poet)

I always prefer a poetry where the fingerprints show.

nayyirah waheed, unknown origin (known as the quiet poet) 56

Pablo Neruda, Chile

Once again, we are referring to a discussion of whether or not we subvert the classroom’s politics of domination simply by using different material, or by having a different, more radical standpoint. Again and again, you and I are saying that different, more radical subject matter does not create a liberatory pedagogy, that a simple practice like including personal experience may be more constructively challenging than simply changing the curriculum. That is why there has been such critique of the place of experience—of confessional narrative—in the classroom. bell hooks, USA 57

Ji-Won Kang

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How to Sew a Net Stitch

Sketch 1. Sketch the shape that you want to fill in with net stitch

Diagonal Stitch 2. Stitch the diagonal lines that are evenly spaced like a deviant crease line. *try to keep the distance between two lines as evenly as possible.

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Diagonal Stitch 2 3. Stitch the diagonal lines that are perpendicular to the previous diagonal lines.

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Netting

Chain Stitch •Lastly, do the chain stitch around the shape following the outline that you drew.

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Angelia Li

Done

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How to Make a Bottle Monster

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The finished monsters

Edited and assembled by Mariah Joyce and Christalena Hughmanick May 2020 Contributors, by order of appearance: Madison Neel, Giselle Arellana, Melody Wu, Reevah Agarwaal, Ruyi Qian, Mia Bissias, Asher McGrath Leahy, Hailey Rodden, Amy Lang, Simone Scigousky, Mariah Joyce, Llio Zogra, Ji-Won Kang, and Angelia Li

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