Armscyes

Photo Credit Bill Burlingham

Orphaned Fragments: the dissection of particular parts where two things intersect.

This is a series of stitched drawings that I'm developing from my understanding of the armhole as a dressmaker.  It is my closer investigation of the technique of sewing a set-in sleeve, and on the word "armscye" itself.  I was fooled by the word for the first decade of my dressmaking as I was mastering the technique, because most dressmakers refer to and pronounce the opening as "arm's eye."

I'm making these drawings from deconstructed fragments of the armhole, with attachments to other parts pulled from seam allowances.  My drawing process provides a way for me to consider both the construction technique and the devolving of the word "armscye" from etymological fragments.  The dictionary does not provide a clear trace of meaning, nor is it clear that these are drawings of the armhole.

A set in sleeve looks effortlessly beautiful on the outside--a curved arch that holds space for the arm's mobility--however the inside reveals the awkward, imperfect hand work needed to ease the relationship between the sleeve and the armhole.  I'm most interested in these imperfections found on the inside that trace the work of the human hand. I'm purposely distorting the standard pattern technique to balance the arm hole, repeating the compositional format with different results.

Armscye 1 and 2 for ARTwork 6
January 19 - February 1, 2013

Loop Value

RedShift at Chicago Architecture Foundation

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Loop Value: The How Much Does It Cost? Shop is a quasi pop-up store that reveals the far reaching impact our habits of consumption have on the world around us.  Visual displays act as educational tools to raise awareness and offer options to remediate these habits.  RedShift created for this exhibit a series of dresses covered in mass market slogans, combining details from a number of thrift store garments.

Exhibit designed by Jason Pickleman 
Photos by Day Still

Frock Talk at ESS

photo credit: David Ettinger

A RedShift Production at Experimental Sound Studio for In/Ex/Change
Friday July 22nd, 9am-5pm

ArtStays 9 International Festival of Contemporary Art
Ptuy, Slovenia

In/Ex/Change is an exhibit structured on a respondent network of participation that opens up new pathways for interaction between art organizer, maker, and viewer.  Using fabric as a connective device and social metaphor for this exhibit,  I'm looking at the edges of internal cuts in cloth, areas intentionally perforated, and ruptures that occur as a function of wear and use, as opportunities to create connections socially and materially.   I've made a series of samples and drawings for the exhibit site in Ptuy, Slovenia (a former prison),  inventing a correspondent event here in Chicago called Frock Talk to animate some of the ideas embedded in the art work.

Locating my design practice at Experimental Sound Studio for Frock Talk, I'm offering my alteration and mending services throughout the day to visitors and participants, inviting artists from all disciplines to come and contribute to what I see as a chorus of activities and surfaces. This is a bring your own content event drawing from ruptures, connections, and binding processes where all forms of media and expression are welcome.

The day will unfold as follows...

We'll have a live stream costume alteration with Damjana Mlinaric from Muzikafe in Ptuy, Slovenia for Hole, Lynn Book and Katharina Klement's opera without opera.

Sound artist Alex Inglizain will create an audio response to the production activity by recording the amplified physical movement of hands, needles, scissors, and threads; processing repetitive sounds by use of audio feedback to represent the invariant outcomes of repetitive labor .  The resulting sound scape with video footage and photo documentation from the event will be transmitted to the exhibit site in Ptuy, Slovenia.

Artist Mark Augustine will create urban weaves from three Google site studies.

12:30  ... We'll have a potluck lunch in the garden.

I'll have a make your own party hat table.

Performer Dan Mohr will wrap up the day leading us in Georgian labor songs.

RedShift mending and alteration services will be offered throughout the day.
All proceeds to benefit ESS

Standing In

"I Stand Corrected" is a video by my studio mate Jereon Nelemans.  He asked me to stand in for this recording as a viewer placed off to the side. We're both interested in playing with formal design to create open grids, looking at the work of Mondrian, and studying the Fibonacci Series.

Spoke, Chicago

December 2010

I Stand Corrected from Jeroen Nelemans on Vimeo.

Light Train

Light Train

Spoke, Chicago

December 2010

These are a series of ten woven drawings created with a photo luminescent thread. The ten surfaces, created in sequence, are a metaphor for achieving fullness; the first weaving is empty while the tenth weaving is full. The linear material , a glow in the dark filament, supports a passive metabolic process like Fuller, absorbing light from the surrounding environment, emitting light in the surrounding darkness.
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washed muslin

glow-in-the-dark thread

straight pins

5" x 7" each

RedShift at Body Implement

photos by James Prinz

I created RedShift Party Hats in leather and feather for "Body Implement" at Nick Cave's Sound Suit Shop in Chicago's South Loop, November 2010. There's a narrative behind these hats which begins 13 years ago with a magazine tear sheet and the performance "Mercuria" by Lynn Book and Theo Bleckmann at "Here" in New York. I designed the costumes for these two vocalists who embodied more content than I've ever cloaked. Please see the clip...

This is a story about the infinite in the everyday, when invention interrupts intention with fluid generosity.

In Ridicule Of Spectacle

Experimental Sound Studio: Project Space, February 2009
 
This was a performance, drawing session, and photo shoot to bridge the disciplines of art and dressmaking through the act of modeling.  To develop this piece, I investigated the idea of being tarred and feathered, the alchemical symbol of the blackened mirror, and butoh performance images.  The  visual narrative took on a textural layer with writer Sara Levine's prose poem "In Which the Seamstress Speaks."  I am continually interested in how personal identity can be shaped through material interactions, and enjoy rearranging fairy tale outcomes to escape set orders.


The result of this project is a series of hand made look books for RedShift, one of which is in The Joan Flasch Artist's Book Collection.

There's a fine line between self-reflection and self-voyeurism.  

Look beyond the red dotted swatch for details...

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A poem by Paul Shullenberger in response to "In Ridicule Of Spectacle"

party hat central calling
elusive tassels’ nonesuch
numinous graffiti hotline:
does a stitch in time throw
clocks out of whack?

wear your words lightly
if they float you’re there
grains of sand are feathers
through foo stints as hair

stutter-dance with doodles
peripherally lensed
landscape’s scalp massage it
grab knead twang the air
--for kristin mariani



Many thanks to Carol McCurdy, Ella Stauber, David Ettinger, Sara Levine, Adam Vida, and Alex Inglizian

The Palimpsest Project

Spoke, Chicago April 26 - May 23 2010

This was a collaboration with re[public] in/decency to create an environmental and performative chalkcloth "palimpsest" to trace the intricate relationships between the physical body, transgenerational memory and landscapes of belonging. The chalkboard and chalk cloth are metaphoric contemporary incarnations of the historical palimpsest, a manuscript on parchment which has been effaced to make room for later writing, but of which antecedent traces remain. By enlarging and collectively engaging in the rite of inscribing and re-inscribing personal narratives, unique and powerful (individual and collective) connections are made, engaging in an accessibly expressive and socio-cultural dialogue.

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Images from Memory Excavation, Pop Up Art Loop, Chicago May 6, 2010
Photos by Day Still

Chalk - video by Jeroen Nelemans from Kristin Mariani Frieman on Vimeo.

A Sample Of Making

Spoke, Chicago November 2 - 21 2009

A Sample of Making was a RedShift design project to provide a platform for the intensive labor involved in making clothing. For a period of three weeks I produced singular garments within the Spoke gallery space from my collection of salvaged wools in a spectrum of colors. Seeking to present my process of design alongside the product of my practice, I aimed to create opportunities for critical exchange by engaging others in the design process. Working with several interns, I held open studio hours, a workshop, and hosted a closing event to view the work created at Spoke.


New City Review

Rachel Moore's Art 21 Interview

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With Special thanks to the following interns for their time and handiwork:
Sarah Amariat
Kelsey Heiniger
Rosemary Lee
Coral Manor
Danielle Wyman

Pressing Needs: A Case Study of Cares and Desires

SAIC Sullivan Galleries, October - December 2008

Installation for J. Morgan Puett’s collaborative project Department (Store)

"Pressing Needs" is an arrangement of garment care labels and dressmaking tools set inside a display case from the former Carson, Pirie, Scott building designed by Louis Sullivan.  Collecting numerous labels out of various articles of clothing, I stitched over words using a machine darning technique.  The fabrication process removed and re-framed language to alter meaning, resulting in a colorful accumulation of poem-like fragments from my free associations with notions of care and desire.  I am continually adding to this collection, keeping the labels stored in a scroll of muslin that lengthens as needed. 

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Return Relief

Audible at ESS, Chicago: June 28th - August 17th

Return Relief is a site-specific deinstallation drawing and extension of my exhibit Thread Tracings: a Dressmaker’s Still Life. Bringing a fresh supply of materials to the gallery space, and using the pinholes of the preceding installation as a guide, I created a new description of the artwork’s progression in time. The result was a large-scale wall drawing, a retracing of the original labor in relief form.

Wall drawing: thread, straight pins, ball-point pins, safety pins, tailors’ chalk, pencil, silk strips, ric rac, marker layout dots, sticker dots, wooden stretchers, steel rods, bobbins

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Thread Tracings: A Dressmaker’s Still Life

Audible at ESS May 2 – June 15, 2008

Thread Tracings is a series of over 100 embroidered drawings created from a dressmaker’s raw materials: needle, thread, and muslin. The compositions are created in sequence; threads pulled from the structure of the cloth hold a memory of linear form. This form, sometimes tangled, sometimes open, is captured in the process of tracing, and then recreated with an embroidered backstitch. The newly stitched lines, all the same length, seem to float on the surface of the cloth but on closer inspection are embedded within it. The work is an exploration of repetitive action over time, creating a vocabulary of memory from the filamentary remnants found within the dressmaker’s studio.

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Duet With Lynn Book: http://vimeo.com/8999859

Carving Distance

A small feeling found in an image,

A large feeling backlogged in a body,

The feeling of pulled out eyes, siting

Sitting down on a plain, a dream bed view

Of people, all kinds, mostly family-like

In rooms, infirm, unlucky and waiting

Always waiting, as close as breath or

Teeth ground once or forever, like

Time, and wind, water and the rest

On rock, on well-whispered verse dirt

Red, gray-streaked-ochres and almost

Purple, almost as if to burst open what is

Not washed away from poured-out clouds

Or whatever the multiverse fashions of its

Myriad, mumbled and slung round stuff

Scaped, racing and struck loopy by pulls

And pull-pulses and rubber nosed pussies

Or something like that: flamed, crevassed

With arms and other limbs that swing but

Mostly reach burnt and calloused out

Hollows.  This is what is behind the words

That floated up last, in the bed boat, this

Morning with leg skin embrace in patches

Branch over branch, bone rumbles and whirs

Loose life soft-all, a momentary calm

While recall strikes a lonely path out of the

Mouth part, tongue sprouted up from heart

Of heart-shaped dream cell, a thought, more

Feeling, feeling less image, but here with

My fingers I do the thing I ask of sadness

: to carve love out of distance …

- Lynn Book

Constructivist Dress

Museum of Contemporary Art  Chicago, July 2005

Reconstruction of a 1922 Liubov Popova dress for Stephen Lapthisophon’s installation My Heritage, My Tradition, My Voice.

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Photos by James Prinz