Presently, I’m attending an online travel class discussing Italian Luxury Fashion. Throughout the reading and watching videos there is a constant theme echoed by most of the fashion houses…the effects of the pandemic and re-thinking the importance of community, and our need to be together. Francesco Risso, Creative Director of Marni stands out in my mind.
In an interview with Tim Blanks, Risso mentions, “The power of the hand – things you can make with your hands are treasures that last forever. Objects from the past are for the future creating a life of objects. Making things by hand preserves craft.”
Pictured above are garments sewn using sticks-a-gogo Art Cloth. The proofs are the latest fabric designs added to our collection. Its amazing how well the fabric works together collaborating on a new visual narrative.
“The mimesis of amateurism began around 1966; that is, at the last moment of the “Eastman era” of amateur photography, at the moment when Nikon and Polaroid were revolutionizing it. The mimesis takes place at the threshold of a new technological situation, one in which the image-producing capacity of the average citizen was about to make a quantum leap. It is thus, historically speaking, really the last moment of “amateur photography” as such, as a social category established and maintained by custom and technique.
The above-referenced quote was taken from an essay written by Canadian artist, Jeff Wall, “Marks of Indifference”: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art, reinforced my definition about images captured using a cellphone camera as art, taken by a photographer.
This image was taken while sitting under a tree. I mentally placed the image in my mind, and voila, I snapped the photograph. Various technological options were used to manipulate the photo. The cellphone photograph was used to create a narrative on fabric. This piece is from the sticks-a-gogo Art Cloth Bokeh Collection: Landscape found in my store spoonflower.com/profiles/sticks-a-gogo_art_cloth
In short, Boke is a Japanese photographic technique that produces an aesthetic quality of blurring. “In 1997, the English spelling bokeh was popularized under the direction of Mike Johnston of Photo Techniques Magazine.” Wikipedia
I am excited to introduce the Bokeh Collection to the line of sticks-a-gogo Art Cloth.
Mobile Photography is the future of the art form. Discrete intimate and always accessible to capture a moment. – David S. McNamara
Photographs are said to preserve a moment in time, chronicle a piece of history, and refer to the ephemeral. Does the act of photo manipulation rewrite the history documented in the original photograph? I don’t use photos as a memory aid, but as a way to manipulate color, patterns and shape. I decided to co-mingle technology with textiles producing sticks-a-gogo Art Cloth.
For the last two years, I’ve produced images for surface design on fabric. Below are two examples, showing the original image and the resulting surface element.
What started as a casual meeting during a presentation Christine was giving at Canada College Fashion Department, has become a friendship. A friendship which recently blossomed into a professional collaboration. Christine Groom of ZigZag Designs and me, Mary Lou Fall of sticks-a-gogo Art Cloth are collaborating at Artistry in Fashion on September 28, 2019 from 10-4 pm at Canada College located in Redwood City, California.
I am so excited to share one of our collaborations.
ZigZag Designs Loretta Jacket and sticks-a-gogo Art Cloth Trees_1
Creating digital textile images via contemporary digital printing technology empowers me to make my own art cloth designs. Looking through the lens of my cellphone along with a gentle click of the finger, I am able to create a narrative of places, people and things I find interesting.
The ability to bring my vision to “life” from start to finish elevates my importance as a designer and a consumer. Utilizing new skills, which by the way, I’ve been taking classes using Photoshop Elements, supports my desire to create something special, a timeless unique piece of artwork. A symbiotic relationship develops between me and the image, I am emotionally attached to the cloth because it describes who I am.
For a long time, I’ve wanted to combine two of my passions…photography and fabric. I’ve been fascinated with Photoshop for some time, and recently discovered a vehicle for designing fabric digitally, Spoonflower.
I started out with a picture I captured with my digital camera.
“In this era of service jobs and office work, most of us have never been inside a factory. Several decades of overseas competition, unequal trade policies, and a flood of cheap imports have decimated American factories. Since 1990, job losses in apparel and textiles have been greater than those in any other type of manufacturing, and today we have little idea where, or how, the shirt on our back is made.
In 2010, I discovered an old yarn mill in Maine that reminded me of the state hospital workshops I had photographed for my book, Asylum. While those places had long been abandoned, this mill was fully operational, a scene from the past miraculously coexisting with the present. I returned to the mill several times, and from conversations with employees, learned of other mills in the Northeast, many still functioning as they had for decades, using vintage equipment now prized for producing the “genuine article”.
In 2013, I toured several mills in the Carolinas, where the majority of textile production eventually migrated from New England, because the labor was cheaper. The mills are vast and mostly automated, and have survived by adapting technologically to the global marketplace. Though they bear little resemblance to their Northern forbearers, they are bound by a common history and are economically dependent on each other. By the time a finished fabric reaches the customer, it has passed through many factories, each a crucial link in the chain of production.
Over the past five years, I have gained access to an industry that continues to thrive, albeit on a much smaller scale, and for the most part, out of public view. With my photographs I aim to show how this iconic symbol of American manufacturing has changed and what its future may hold. I also wish to pay tribute to the undervalued segment of Americans who work in this sector. They are a cross section of young and old, skilled and unskilled, recent immigrants, and veteran employees, some of whom have spent their entire lives in a single factory. Together, they share a quiet pride and dignity, and are proof that manual labor and craftsmanship still have value in today’s economy.”
Today, before I venture out to do my inner core workout, I want to share my latest endeavor, “Block Painting.” I’ve wanted to experiment with this technique for awhile, and decided to go for it! Initially, the blocks were purchased to use with polymer clay, but after watching numerous YouTube videos, I decided to use fabric. I also plan on using the eclectic mix of paint in my collection, before investing in the medium.
Here are various blocks for borders, allover printing, etc.
Remnants of a quilting project.
I drew a grid on the fabric first for placement of the block. Of course, the striped fabric may or may not be your choice, but I wanted to try it anyway.
Sticks-a-GoGo 
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