Dive into your creative stream
Textiles - Blog Posts
im in the midst of finals season so all yall will be getting from me is shit i did for school enjoy!!
Me: *complaining about the loss of the muppets on a large scale*
Mom: *sends me a picture of a crochet hat that looks like a muppet*
Me: *starts crocheting puppets to fill a void in my heart*
First stage in a multi-step project. Hand-weaving fabric which I will then use to sew the body and limbs of a marionette doll.
"To More Rarified Air (For Dorothy in 7th Grade)"
Find me around the web on my Carrd: LINK / Drop a tip in my Ko-fi: LINK
Experiment with making small squares and then weaving them together. MAJOR practice piece. May do more with this, may leave it as-is. Designs based on Paracas textiles.
Find me around the web on my Carrd: LINK / Drop a tip in my Ko-fi: LINK
Howdy! I’m still alive.
I’m fortunate, in that my day job is being done remotely, but it’s a very difficult change and I really don’t like it, so the stress has been getting to me. I was invited to be part of a really cool thing but it may have completely fallen through due to the stay at home order, I have no idea, so that kind of kneecapped my motivation, art-wise.
Hard copy version of my comics aren’t in my etsy store at the moment, as I’d been sneakily printing them on the printers at my office and I don’t have a printer at home. PDF versions are still up for sale.
At this time, I struggle to see the point of making art that doesn’t “do something.” Here are two tapestries I’ve made (I’m working on getting the edges even and reducing the amount of hour-glassing before I go totally nuts and invest in a rigid heddle loom) and some socks I darned for my boyfriend.
Completed my first “useful” weaving — a rag rug made of four panels woven together.
A Bright Banner
Handwoven on my "trash loom" with cotton and acrylic fiber.
Practicing with patterns on my loom; this thing make me think of a cheerful cuttlefish.
From the dowel to the bottom of the fringe it is 12 inches long, the tapestry itself is roughly 10 inches long and 8 inches wide. The dowel is 12 inches. .
You can buy it here LINK for $10+ shipping
My Etsy:LINK / My Society6:LINK / My Ko-Fi:LINK
Hamsa
Handwoven on my "trash loom" with cotton and acrylic fiber.
The Hamsa is a symbol of protection, popular in the Middle East and North Africa, in Jewish, Muslim, and Christian groups.
Fom the dowel to the bottom of the fringe it is 14 inches long, the tapestry itself is roughly 9 inches long and 7 inches wide. The dowel is 12 inches.
You can buy it here LINK for $15+ shipping
My Etsy:LINK / My Ko-Fi:LINK
hot damn!
These are my breasts and nipples, complete with acne, moles, and hair. Will this image violate tumblr’s new content rules?
Examples of exceptions that are still permitted are exposed female-presenting nipples in connection with breastfeeding, birth or after-birth moments, and health-related situations, such as post-mastectomy or gender confirmation surgery.
I am a transgender man. I have not had the opportunity or the money to have top surgery. I am excruciatingly aware that the “gender presentation” of my nipples is in the eye of the beholder. Disconnected from the context of the rest of my body and gendered presentation, they look like “female-presenting” nipples. Hell, there are plenty of cisgender women with more chest hair than me.
Are we going to determine the “gender presentation” of my nipples based on my legal gender? That’s debatable too. My most recent legal IDs list my gender as “male,” but my birth certificate lists my gender as “female.” I cannot change the gender on my birth certificate without going back to the state where I was born and getting an order from a judge, and paying a fee. Until I have the time to and money to do that, there will always be at least one legal document where I am still considered female.
Written content such as erotica, nudity related to political or newsworthy speech, and nudity found in art, such as sculptures and illustrations, are also stuff that can be freely posted on Tumblr.
I would say this painting has artistic merit, at the very least from a technical standpoint. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would see no artistic merit in this painting, regardless of technical skill. The line between “nudity found in art” and “adult content” is as indistinct as the line between “naked” and “nude.” Tumblr and Facebook’s new policies stem from SESTA/FOSTA [LINK] and corporate monopolies [LINK].
Policies meant to curtail sex work always hurt more than they help, whether the sex work is voluntary, coerced, or forced. Example: NYC, LA, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. have all had/have laws that allow possession of multiple condoms to be considered evidence of prostitution, resulting in arrest or the confiscation of the condoms. So, no safe sex if you’re doing sex work, I guess?
Policies like these disproportionately effect people and communities who are viewed as being “inherently sexual” or “overly sexual.” Facebook’s overzealous new policy prohibits reference to “sexual preferences.” I will bet money that policy won’t be enforced when a cis het man makes a status update about “I like girls with [insert physical attribute here],” but it will be enforced when a queer person refers to a top, a bottom, a switch, a Daddy, a [insert relational attribute here].
As to what constitutes art and how that concept gets weaponized against LGBTQ people (and other oppressed groups, I’d argue), just read about the history of conservative loathing for the National Endowment for the Arts [LINK].
I don’t think my little protest painting will make tumblr and their corporate overlords change their minds. But I couldn’t not express my opinion on this.
I don’t know if this blog will get flagged or deleted or whatever. I’ll keep using tumblr until I no longer have a reason to. But, just in case, I’ll be setting up a pillowfort, and maybe a poizen. In the meantime, you can keep up with my shitpost tweets HERE.
Here’s my first ever tapestry. Woven as a birthday gift for my lovely boyfriend, on my trash loom that I made from a thrift store picture frame.
It’s the sunset over southern prairie land.
I have got Ideas about fiber art so expect more in the future.
My Etsy: LINK / My Ko-Fi: LINK
Embroidery piece for my mom.
My Etsy: LINK / My Ko-Fi: LINK
What I’ve been working on lately – my first ever piece of embroidery!
It’s for my grandmom.
My Etsy: LINK / My Ko-Fi: LINK
Clay loom weight decorated with an owl, Greek, 5th Century BCE
From the Acropolis Museum
Bedroom - Rustic Bedroom Example of a large mountain style guest carpeted bedroom design with gray walls and no fireplace
I was wearing the lichen themed hair clip I made, while on a walk yesterday. I spotted some beautiful lichen and moss and decided to have an impromptu photo shoot. So here are a whole bunch of pictures of my hair clip alongside the organisms that inspired it, just because.
Plus 2 bonus pictures of lichen because I love it.
Ms. Shizuoka Shigato Manale (left) of the Hiroshima Peace Project is wearing a kimono by bingata artist Isa Toshihiko, 1924-2010. The han-eri and tabi that I’m wearing (right) are by bingata artist 染谷 唯 Yui Someya. #japanesetextiles #ryukyu #okinawa #kimonos #kimono #IsaToshihiko #bingata #textiles #haneri tabi
Living Room in Boston
Ideas for a sizable, open-concept living room renovation
I was the first I have seen every thing
Sad bat pillow purse 💕
Felt, fleece, felling and fur (the four Fs).
The Paracas culture made the best art in the universe
(they are also the inspiration for a lot of the imagery in Yume Nikki)
Stained glass window Afghan with the border is now finished!
‘Of Meadows and Blue Skies’ by Melody Money
‘Of Meadows and Blue Skies’ by Melody Money was a solo show at Visions Art Museum in San Diego in 2021 that now lives on the form of an online and video exhibition on the Visions website. Melody Money is a mixed media textiles artist who prides herself on attention to detail and is “motivated to take a medium that is traditionally worked on a smaller scale and expand it to a larger version” and that's evident in this show.
After Melody Money received her Fine Art degree from the University of Colorado, she went on to study prismatic colour theory at Rudolph Schaefer school of design, and this schooling in colour theory shines through throughout the show. This works’ colour pallet is almost exclusively bright warm blues, greens and yellows. Few of the pieces from this collection use colour pallets that could be described as realist. Instead, Money opts for the sort of colours that you could imagine a child choosing for a scribbled marker pen landscape that features a buttercup yellow sun in the corner of the page. It’s clear that these colours, maybe even more so them the actual pieces themselves, were designed to invoke a child-like wonder and love for nature.
Money’s piece ‘field studies’ is more reminiscent of a sample board than a fine art piece but that makes me love it even more. The piece itself is a 4 x 10 grid of textiles field studies, these studies are predominantly beaded embroideries of local wildlife like birds, butterflies and various flora. Money clearly prefers creatures that fly as, apart from one solitary fish, all the animals depicted have wings of some variety. I do not find this preference shocking as the sky is a constant reoccurring character in her work, always lovingly decorated with swirling winds. This piece being a series of studies and not one final piece makes the work seem a lot more personal to Money, I feel like I am witness to a before unseen part of her process which is both greatly endearing and gives greater context to the rest of the work in this collection.
Money uses beading throughout these pieces, most significantly in ‘Rain’ but also rather heavily in ‘Field Studies’. All the beads she has chosen have either an iridescent or metallic quality to them, this means that in the bright lights these pieces shine. In ‘Field Studies’ a trio of blue iridescent swallows pull your focus immediately and in ‘Rain’ the whole lower third of the piece is alight, shimmering with silver bead work. These circles of beads and stitch create pools and puddles of rain that reflect both the faux, stitched light in the piece as well as the real, dynamic light of the exhibition space. Melody Money has said that light is the key to making her art sing, and I couldn't agree more, the beading on both these pieces would have been significantly less impactful and appealing had she opted for dull beads; it would have completely lost the magical shifting colours of the swallows and apparent glow and movement of the pooled water. The effect that light has on these pieces and really all of Money’s work make it such a shame I was only able to view this exhibition in the form of consistently lit photos and a lower quality than I would have liked video. I do think her work is lovely but to have seen her work in reality, especially in shifting sun light, would have been something else entirely.
‘Rain’ is an incredibly dynamic work, though the art itself is ever-stationary. Money’s use of layered vertical strips of differing shades of blue draws your eyes up and down the piece. This paired with the influx of cascading, downward-pointing triangles, which colours fade from navy to white, creates a faux sense of gravity, like the fabric rain is really falling. This effect and the way that Money has achieved it is beautiful and, in my opinion, makes ‘Rain’ the most visually stimulating piece in the collection.
By comparison, ‘Chant’ at first glance is a much simpler work; the colour pallet is more muted, and it lacks the flashy beading and intricate forms of some of the other pieces. Instead, most of the piece is made up of layers of silk shaded fields. From a distance this embroidery looks simply like blended colour, but up close the individual threads are evident and reminiscent of thousands of single plants and grasses. Due to the simplicity of the design of this piece, the intensity of the silk shading shines through. The most impressive element is the scale of the piece and volume of stitches - this amount of embroidery is a feat to undertake. But what I can only assume is dozens and dozens of hours of work has absolutely payed off, as all these dense stitches create this sense of never-ending, empty fields. This feeling is accented by the inclusion by seventeen beads of small iridescent birds in flight, up over the fields into the waiting bright blue sky above. These tiny birds seem little and insignificant in scale, compared to the force of nature that surrounds them, to a degree that I can’t help but feel small alongside them.
‘Of Meadows and Blue Skies' is undeniably a love letter in fabric and thread to the ever-changing natural world that surrounds Money’s home in Colorado. Having grown up in an environment similarly surrounded by nature, Money’s work really speaks to me, it reminds me of the importance of enjoying and protecting the wild spaces around us. Money says in her artist statement “I try to shine a light on everyday moments” and for me she does that both completely and beautifully.
