Photo Shoot of three tapestries

Today George Young photographed a few more of the completed tapestries. Below are the images. Each has elements that come off as hats or hair ornaments.



























This piece above, Butterfly Papa Hu, is inspired by a Japanese print in the de Young Museum textile collection as well as by the Chinese and Japanese fireworks of my childhood memories. My Dad called these fireworks by the Hawaiian pidgin name, "Papa Hu". My favorite were the fireworks that reminded me of exploding flowers. I tried to capture that exploding flower imagery here. The paper butterflies behind the brown netting are all recycled bit of postcards and print material from the de Young Museums recycling bins. The brown netting is recycled netting donated by Walker Bag of San Francisco before they moved to their new warehouse location.























This piece above, Fortune, is inspired by the intersection of histories of Japanese American families, the Japaense Tea Garden of Golden Gate Park and the creation of the Fortune cookie.
The below piece is inspired by silk riots in London and by a tapestry in the de Young Museum collection. The silk strips in the back represent the slashing of imported silks by frustrated textile workers and blade shapes are echoed in the form of the silk fragments. I have earlier postings on all these pieces.

Neuron Kimono Completed

I completed the Neuron Kimono yesterday and had it photographed professionally today. My photographer for my sculptures is George Young in Palo Alto. I am so lucky to be able to document my work with such a great photographer. I love how he lights my sculptures and having my work photographed professional always feels like the last step in completing a piece for me. Now I am ready to prepare it for shipping out to L'Attitude Gallery.

I will be creating the box to ship the piece in this week. I need to construct the boxes for shipping as well as create assembly instructions; the piece breaks apart in half and the large blue neuron elements are snapped on with clothing snaps. The final dimensions of the piece are 3'11" wide x 5'8" tall (including pole) x 3.5" deep. Media: magnet wire, silk, waste canvas, Japanese and Chinese food wrappers, Japanese manga comics, kozo paper, plastic sushi grass, plastic sushi garnish flowers, pearls, costume jewelery, and produce netting. I try to use as much recycled materials as possible.

I am much happier with the wire twisting on this piece than on my past works. In the past I have used manual electrician wire twisters to twist my long lengths of wire. For this piece, I used a drill to twist the wire and it looks so much more consistent. This was suggested to me by an art critique group I am in. I cannot emphasis enough how beneficial it is to be in a critique group. It really has helped me focus on pushing my art to a more refined construction.

Photo by George R. Young























Detail image: