Paint Lace

These images are about the edges of color creating shapes. Lace can have irregular edges like these.

Plastic Lace

This is a thermo-formed product which has had a secondary shaping process giving it a corrugated texture imparting a longitudinal stiffness and a latitudinal stretchiness.

Jaalis - Stone Lace

From Fern

Your project seems very interesting. When looking at the "Hard Lace" entry on your blog, it made me think of the stone screens called "jaalis" that were often historically used in Indian architecture. The screens are both beautiful and functional because they provided shading, light and air movement in an extremely hot climate. I've attached an image that I collected from some previous research.

Xray Lace

The extreme positive/negative effect of radiation images was derived from the prior experiment with the maple leaf figure /ground reversal. The sinus cavities and empty spaces in the skull are separated by filamentous bone, showing as white threads connecting and running through the dark shapes. This might lend itself to needle lace in allowing for more random attachment points for the tape. I want to look at possibilities for creating dimensional objects in space rather than simple flat lace. These images are a year apart and are a record of sustainable quality of life for the patient. The next one in the series will be the record of how sustainable this quality is.

Leaves

Creek water, floating leaves. Monet waterlilies, blending colors.





Red maple leaf star reflection. Moving, twirling, still.






Figure - Ground maple leaf reversal. Like Chantilly lace where the lace is black and the ground light.

Tannin

The reason the leaves stain the sidewalk is that tannic acid is leached from them by the rainwater. This is the same compound that makes cedar water dark colored. Tannin make a good mordant for certain cellulose fibers. It is present in many species of trees.



These pictures are of the cedar water interacting with the colored leaves. They reminded me of our conversation on Mon. night. Colors floating on water and moving with the current. Also reminds me of the Ray & Charles Eames' movie, Blacktop, of washing the parking lot, with the soap suds flowing. Not very sustainable in the sense of permanent, but very sustainable in the sense of experience, because we all remembered the images, even if we could not recall the name. The emotion and sensory perception of the moving color had a lasting impact.

http://www.eamesgallery.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannic_acid



This picture is a rotated & lacy view of reflections and cropped to be sort of symmetrical. Same creek.

Parallels to Quilting

History
Process
Materials
Story of lace
Meaning = something to People





Gee's Bend Quilters
Resource dependent, economic class
Collaborative, community, social act
Iconographic, representitve

http://www.quiltsofgeesbend.com/

SIX by SIX

we have decided to create samples of lace, lace techniques, and materials in a 6" by 6" format.

Lace Futures Contributors

With the description of the project, we thought it would be also be of interest to see the work of the lace artists commissioned for the show.

Here are some images, descriptions and links to their sites:




Todd Boontje - Dutch artist working primarily with laser cut fabrics.















Demakersvan - Dutch design house with a goal of "challenging and beautiful products".














Cal Lane - Canadian artist who takes existing metal objects and makes them into lace.

Invitation

Here isthe genesis of our thinking and prime mover of our intentions with this project. The college has invited the community to participate in explorat5ions of lace.
Dear Colleagues,

In September of 2009, The Design Center will present an exhibition "Lace in Translation." The Center's archive of the Quaker Lace Company is serving as resource and inspiration for three internationally rec-ognized artists – Tord Boontie, Demakersvan, and Cal Lane who are creating major works which explore their own interpretations of lace. These works have been commissioned by The Design Center at Phila-delphia University and are already in process. Hilary Jay, Carla Bednar, and Nancy Packer have a won-derful season of art and design planned for all of us.

Theme:
One of the most intriguing aspects of lace is that we not only see it, but we also see through it.
There is a play between the lace and the surface that shows through, each affecting and redefining the other.
The world outside a window is dissolved into a play of light and softened forms as it passes between the threads of a lace curtain.
Bare skin is covered, yet vivid and real, through the patterned openings of a lace shawl.
Lace, as product and idea, presents a wealth of possible interpretations.

Opportunity:
In parallel with the creation and installation of the commissioned projects, design students from all design disciplines on campus can be involved in projects which explore the creative possibilities of lace. Each discipline will create its own specific project design brief and choose its own criteria and pathways for creative exploration. After participating in their own lace projects (6-7 weeks), our students are likely to be more active participants in the symposium with visiting artists and other planned activities during the "Lace in Translation Show."

Even bigger opportunities in collaborations:
The presentation format for all these projects will be a grand assembly in the Kanbar Performance Space. As a result of this show, we imagine the possibility of collaborations across the design disciplines. Students and faculty will have the opportunity to "go shopping" among all the ideas in this marketplace and imagine the most satisfying interactions. Using on site terminals and a blog, opinions and suggestions about possible collaborative efforts will be immediately collected. On the last day of this assembly, a group of faculty and students will take part in a one-day retreat to collate a list of possible collaborative ventures and to facilitate the initial collaborative introductions. The multi-disciplinary teams that will form will be given the opportunity to generate a more comprehensive design proposal based on their combined and related creative ideas about the possibilities of lace. These proposals will be reviewed at another open presentation and teams will be given faculty advisors and financial support to prepare installations on campus in conjunction with the "Lace in Translation Show."

Objectives:
• Prepare design students for "Lace in Translation" by their participation in parallel design explorations.
• Use the exploration of this common theme as the basis for multidisciplinary collaborations. Each
student, having dedicated time to an individually created work within their own discipline, will be
receptive and sensitive to explorations of the same theme in other disciplines. The collaborations will benefit both from individual strengths and the exploration of a shared theme.

We look forward to meeting with you and hearing your ideas and suggestions about this proposal.

Hy Zelkowitz, Industrial Design
Marcia Weiss, Textile Design
Susan Frosten, Architecture

Lace in Chains

Alex gave us this clip from his friend, Sean Wulsin's website. Look at the windows. They have lace-like portraits of the political prisoners who died in the Caseros prison.
http://sethwulsin.artlogsites.com/#id=282&num=1
http://sethwulsin.artlogsites.com/a/portfolios/70/16-tons-the-caseros-prison-demolition-2006-2008#id=70&num=1

Hard Lace...

Amidst researching today and looking for ideas on ways to incorporate found objects that may or may not be equivalent in size, shape, material, etc. I came upon lace mosaics. I hadn't really thought much about that because typically when I think of lace I think of soft but I found it a fairly interesting concept. Here are some images:


The image above also made me think about lace in glass because although it would have a very different surface, it would still have a lot of the intrinsic sheer quality of lace.
Here's an image:

Observations...

Originally Wendy and I discussed making lace out of found object. She mentioned all the discarded items she sees when out rollerblading. I decided to go for more the organic route and in looking around have found that there isn't much in nature that couldn't be considered some type of "lace". Even the bark and mold on the big trees on campus create a very lace-like web. I went outside yesterday and there were tons of ginkgo leaves all over my car and the street (fig.1). I'm guessing the rain knocked them all out overnight and also made them leave marks on the sidewalk where city pollution or whatever settled over them (fig.2). I've been looking at ginkgo's a lot lately in my own work and love the contrast between the full fan shape and the long, thin stem. They're beautiful layered and even more so seeing how it occurred naturally as opposed to by my own pen. This was very different than the cut leaves I was working on earlier in the week (fig.3).
Bill asked that we consider different ways of defining different types of lace and I think that while process pretty much defines those categories, one if the biggest things is that lace is either structure built up from nothing or structure with elements removed.

fig.1


fig.2


fig.3

The Design Center

at the Design Center

Lace in Translation

September 2009

Maps

Words form a lacy over print on already lace-like land water interface. The idea continues that you can see through lace, it interrupts your vision, creating another surface to focus on, and yet lets you see past the surface to the underlying points of interest.

Marine and Littoral Litanies

Edges, boundaries, land-water interface. Sailing reminded me of charts. Lace like networks of creeks and rivers, estuaries and bays, marshes and tidal lands compete for attention.
Then. if that is not enough; Loran lines, compass bearings, the rose, navigation marks, and depth symbols overprint the watery areas. A reverse of a map. Click to enlarge chart.

Gulf Coast Small Craft Festival

This link is courtesy of the fly net because it is made the same way and uses the same netting tools as fish nets. Sailing has brought me many cultural experiences and one that made me profoundly sad was a couple years ago in Florida. Pete and I were sailing a Bahamian smack around Little Key near the small fishing town of Cortez. The town of Cortez was in a severe depression because the State had outlawed gill netting as a means of catching fish. There had been two fish packing plants in town and now one was barely holding on selling grouper instead of mullet. The folks in town, generations of fisherfolk, were now left with boats and nets they could not use, not very sustainable.
The first image is a model of a french fishing boat with a representitive net (actually tulle, a form of lace.) The second picture is a detail of a large serigraph by my friend Linda Molto, entitled, "Honey, I sunk the boat." You can see bits of fish net among the floats. the last is a detail of a poster showing a fish shack off Cortez describing a film describing the desolation of a local industry.