Courtney Martin; Assignment #3: Erin Endicott Lecture

I chose to attend Erin Endicott's artist lecture. She is a contemporary embroidery artist. When I first think of embroidery, I think of people having their names sewed onto jackets or grandmothers sewing floral designs to hang on their wall. After hearing Erin Endicott's lecture, I quickly realized that there is more to it. She began with showing us her work from graduate school, which included a lot of mixed media work. She said that her background was in drawing and painting and she tried to combine the two in the majority of her work. She also described walnut ink, which she began to use in the majority of her works. One image that I enjoyed was a piece that included the page of a book with red thread covering all of the text with a painted/drawn image next to it. Next, she showed us her more recent work, which includes working with wounds using embroidery, walnut ink, and cloth material. She said that the fabric she uses is something that is passed down throughout her family, such as their family holiday table cloth that her grandmother gave her and her son's christening gown. The main subject of her work is wounds. She uses only thread and the walnut ink to create her work, which I thought was very interesting. She can literally fit all of her needed materials in one small box. Also, the main aspect of her work is more focused on the process. Her process focuses on intricately sewing these abstract images that take a lot of time and focus.

Overall, I enjoyed viewing her work. As I stated before, I never thought of embroidery as a form of art and the pieces that are created are interesting to view and to touch.

Robyn Burton: Assignment #3

At the Personal Adornment runway show last Thursday many students created some wonderful pieces to wear that were made from some unusual things. I think what made some pieces shine over others was the music choice, the presence of how the model or models walked down the runway, and the meanings behind why everyone choose to make their pieces. It also seemed like an interesting process to take a material that you'd never think to be able to be worn like q-tips or a twister game board and make it wearable. After seeing all these materials come down the runway it became exciting to watch.

The first piece to catch my eye was Melanie Ortiz's "Barbie 2 point-uh-oh," with make-up done by Jaryn Wilcox. The piece was made out of stretch polyester, plastic sheeting, yarn, wire, hot glue, and plastic soda bottles. Along with the materials the model had drawings of plastic surgery dotting all over her body and walked like a plastic barbie. The idea was about body image, and having a barbie like figure that the media and society pressures on women. I think that the piece had a good message and was made very well to get the point across.

The next piece to catch my eye was Heather Higgins's "Bandaged in my Parents' Cancer," with make up done by Phil Czekner and her as the model. This piece was made out of cheesecloth, canvas, MX Dyes, zippers, safety pins, and an I.V. pole. This piece was to Heather's parents who both suffered from different cancers who both survived them, but also dedicated to those who have lost their lives to cancer. This piece was very heart wrenching especially with her presence of walking slowly down the runway with the sound of a heart monitor behind her that goes flat. I think this piece was very strong in symbolizing the suffering of those with cancer.

The last piece that I considered with the best alteration of a material and one of the best of the show was by Amanda Cotellese titled "Twister," with model Julia Layman. This piece was made out of 4 Twister games boards, cardboard, paint and staples. It was a fun way to turn a game into a wearable piece, and just seemed very well put together. Also the presence of the model and the music behind it made it a fun, and gave you the feel that it was meant to be on the runway.

I think all together it was a great show and everyones work was well put together and well thought out in manipulating a material to making it something wearable.

Lenore Thomas Demonstration - TJ Brandt

Last week our class was lucky to have Lenore Thomas come and demonstrate for our printmaking class. Lenore Thomas is an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh and she works with mixed media in her works. She is also a part of an artistic collaboration called "Satan's Camero".

The demonstration that she showed the class was how to mix different types of media in order to make an amazing work of art. For example, she showed us we could combine lithography, silkscreen, and etching together, as well as xerox transfer and make something very unique in its own way. Another thing that i thought was extremely interesting is the fact that Lenore Thomas uses the same designs or plates for some of her works...she even still uses one she has had since grad school. Although she uses the same plates/designs, she is able to change the colors or how she uses the plate in the piece which makes it different from the last.

All in all i learned a lot from Lenore Thomas's demonstration. It was very interesting to see how she combined all different kinds of techniques. This will come in handy, as for our final project we are required to do more than one way of printmaking.

Kyle Gosson Assignment #3: Personal Adornment

I went to Personal Adornment on March 31^st, Thursday, and I never seen this show before. It was taken in Haas Gallery of Art; they used the hallway as for the runway. I never find myself into some television show that relate to model runway or catwalk, unless it is Victoria Secret Runway. However, this one is not on television so I am curious what it likes to see in real life and see those Bloomsburg art students’ works.

All of them done good job and some of those were very impressive to me. I think the “Societies Zombies” by Rachel Harris was really great. She used three models and they all are meaning in different way to define of societies. We watch television too much, use medicine too much and I wish I remembered the third one. One model wore a big box over her head with all actors face on it. People who are watching television, they would want to be same as those actors. The second model had a lot of medicine bottles and dragged from her legs. Rachel was showing us that people are addicting or relay on the medicine too much today.

There is couple other that I enjoyed to see, “3,500 Q-Tips” by Natalie Nicole. She used 3,500 Q-Tips to make a outfit and I thought it was going to look funny. Once it came out and it looked great, done better job than I expected. It’s all Q-tips and used hot glue to get all together, that’s it. So I found that Personal Adornment was pretty interesting event to go. I might go back next year as it is going to be my last year.

Morgan Cope- Personal Adornment Day

I Chose to attend the 7th annual personal adornment day & make-up extravaganza on Thursday March 31st in the HAAS Gallery. I wasn't really sure what to expect as I was walking to go up the stairs in the gallery. When I first walked in the hallway was set up like a run way with rows of chairs lined up against the walls. When the show first stared there was a guest artist and her name was Erin Endicott, they introduced Erin and informed us with some background information about her,what she does and her accomplishment. Which one of these accomplishments is writing a book titled "fabric arts design book 7" I think that the show was set up in a good way using the hallway as the run way, the other thing I would've changed was to maybe have more room and more seats.

The show was first set up with 2 performances that dealt with 2 problems going on in our society today. The first performance came off to me as it was about gangs fighting and bringing other people in the gangs. I also think that the gang was the "bloods" since they were wearing all red. The 2nd performance seems to be about some type of slavery, they brought out a boy and chained him up in front of everyone for him to be ashamed. I wasn't too sure why there was performances at an art fashion show but I liked that they had it. They only thing I think I would have changed and liked better about it was if I could have seen it better and if the performances were longer.

There were 35 different artist and each had 1 or more outfits that they had made to present in the show. Each artist has an outfit, or "wearable art" that had a title to their work, I noticed that the title of their work somehow was some how represented in the outfit. Also their work had a powerful meaning behind the title and the piece of art. The thing that I liked the most about how the outfits were constructed with everyday household items or items that you wouldn't normally wear, not all items were something you could pick up and just glue on. They toke a lot of hard work to make the outfits and plan out how the wanted to present the outfits to the audience. I had a couple favorite of pieces, the first piece I really liked was "the window washer" by Kyle Ale. I think this was a comical piece and it made me laugh but I really liked how he presented it. The second one I really liked was "Alive" by Olivia Deranco, the meaning behind it was about her eating some kind of meat and realizing that there was other things out there too eat like pastas. She made a wreath that she wore around her neck that has all types of pasta on it. The last piece I really like and I think was my favorite was "Barbie 2 point- uh oh" by Melanie Ortiz, the meaning behind her piece was about girls being obsessed looking a certain way when a lot of people how they look in today's world is fake. She made a plastic dress and had arrows written all over her body to indicate that a lot of people now days change everything about themselves

Gabriella Antoniello. Adornment Runway Blog

This past Thursday I attended the Personal Adornment runway show. It was filled with beautiful artwork and meaningful pieces. The first part of the show consisted of acting of 2 short skits. The meaning behind them both was powerful and touched my heart. It is cruel how some people were treated and still are treated to this day. The first skit was a gang who was initiating a gang member into their group and showing how cruel they are just to be “one of them”. The person was beat up and then shot because the other members left him behind when they were shot at, and didn’t think about anyone but themselves. The second skit was when a boy got locked up and had food and bottles thrown at him. He was tormented and then beat to the ground. However the second part of the show was the handmade garments that the people were modeling.

The first piece that was brought to my attention was by the artist Heather Higgins titled “Bandaged in my Parents’ Cancer”. This piece was very meaningful and it made me sad. The way she expressed her ideas was very powerful and meant a lot to her. The materials she used in the piece was cheesecloth, canvas, MX dyes, zippers, safety pins, I.V pole. The blood she had on the bandages looked real and it was crafted very well. I also liked how she was walking around with the I.V pole, without this I don’t think the piece would have been complete. I liked this piece a lot because not only did she have a family member suffer through cancer but I also have. My cousin also was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 35. It was very hard on my family and then when he passed away it was extremely hard. I recently got diagnosed with skin cancer and it scared me, now knowing I’m better I have a strong connection with people who had a family member or themselves who suffered cancer.

The second piece was well put together and full of color and excitement was by the artist Rachael Spector Titled “Rae of Sunshine”. The piece was very unique and full of color. I loved it because of all the color and the materials she used. It was very creative to make a dress out of umbrellas, poncho, tissue paper and tulle. I think this was one of the bet pieces I saw. Her idea was awesome and the way she used the materials was great. I really enjoyed her piece and I liked how she has such a positive attitude to this as opposed to the other piece. I would love to have something like that made as a costume for me. Overall they were all great, unique and meaningful pieces that they worked very hard on. I loved the fashion show it was very organized and ran smoothly.

Kelly Geist Assignment #3

I attended Erin Endicott's artist lecture about her work called "The Healing Sutras". Erin makes embroideries, and she talked about her work from past to present and showed pieces from when she started and pieces that she is currently working on. She also talked a lot about her process and how drawing and painting, which was really what she was interested in to begin with and what her early works actually were, influences her work. Erin's most recent work focuses on pain and healing. Specifically, she talked about how she was interested in "wounds" or behaviors that are inherited and a young age or that we are born with. She uses a lot of child clothing, such as her son's christening gown, or items of personal significance and stitches what looks like blood or stains on them from a distance. However, when you get up close to them there have very intricate and well planned designs on them. These are supposed to represent wounds. I found her work to be interesting because I've never really seen anybody stitch "wounds" into clothing or even think about embroidering clothing that way. I really liked her idea of being born with wounds or inheriting them before we are even old enough to realize but instead of representing them as they are as mental or emotional wounds she shows them as physical wounds. In a lot of ways there is no difference between a mental and physical wound, so I liked that she used them as one in the same. Also, a lot of the work that I like to create deals with the same type of subject matter so that was probably what caught my interest the most. I also liked that she wasn't afraid to use her sons baby clothing, her wedding dress or other pieces that are sentimental to incorporate them into her work. Instead of keeping them neatly tucked away somewhere she used them as a healing tool for herself. Overall, I really liked her style and the subject matter that she was depicting. It made for interesting pieces.