fusionwear sv is LIVE!

Last Monday (May 4th) an online public participatory art project I conceived with The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles launched. fusionwear sv is a project inviting the public to reflect on the visual identity of Silicon Valley and how that might be expressed in textile design. People upload image to a Flickr group to participate. One can submit either inspiration images or textile designs.

I worked with Rasteroids Design to design this online component of the project. They have been great and will also be designing a BLURB book and an ISSUU magazine for the project.

San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles Installation

A few months ago I participated in the San Jose SubZero Festival by creating a visitor participatory semi-permanent art installation (yes, a mouthful!). The three banners are now up on the exterior facade windows. These were created quickly in a month and a half and originally I designed them to be banners hung higher up, that is why they do not fit perfectly in the windows.

There are a lot of things I would do differently now, but it was a good learning experience. I would love to expand and refine the concept of this project next year for Earth Day. I think it would be stunning to have all the windows covered in strands of only the woven diatoms and plastic bottle bottoms with some solar led lights illumination. I have started to conduct Earth Day assemblies in schools and envision an extension project in which students create the diatoms to be strung and hung in the museum windows. I'll be brewing on this idea.

Two of the banners got tagged. I kind of like it. Bu the things that stands out to me most is that the banners do not fit neatly into the windows and there are not enough participatory diatoms attached. Many people walked away with their creations and did not add them to the banners.



































































Below: Details of the elements the visitors created. I love the colors and textures. Each of these represent a diatom, a unicellular organism found in water. The plastics are all recycled and collected from creek clean ups and from three different schools in Cupertino and San Jose.

Clogged Currents Dance at Sub Zero Festival

Last Friday was the Sub Zero Festival in San Jose. I created three large banners that were displayed outside the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Visitors added elements to the banners throughout the evening and at 9:00pm and 10:00pm dancer Christina Braun danced to music created by composer Scott Perry. This is the second time that we three have worked together and Christina has named our collaboration efforts "Nectar".

The Sub Zero event was a lot of fun and later I was told that over 1,200 visitors entered the Quilt Museum. We were stationed outside so even more passed by. Below are images at the beginning of the evening. The event ran from 6 to midnight.














































Here are some images of the set up and the visitors beginning to come and participate in the visitor activity which was creating diatoms from recycled plastics and attaching them to the water banners. Rob Bell of Zomadic made these beautiful stands. For the craft activity I had the help of Susan Suriyapa, a grad student at San Jose State. She was really fantastic and full of energy(back to camera in black).























Below:Visitor elements beginning to be added.























I am glad that I got a chance early on to see what else was at the festival. I love this car. I had actually seen it in the Mission District of San Francisco a few weeks prior on Portrero and 26th.


















The ball below was one of two spinning around flashing lights and emitting music. I loved the way it looked with the scattered Jacaranda flowers that happened to have fallen from the trees lining the street. It looked like purple confetti and at first I thought the flowers were intended elements of the display.


















Below: Christina Braun before getting dressed for the performance. She was wonderful helping getting the lights and booth set up and she even made a diatom. I loved how relaxed and happy she was. I would have been totally stressed if I was about to perform!























Below: Scott Perry getting the music set up for the dance performance. He brought all his own equipment and the necessary black tape to hold the cables down. He, too, was super adaptable. He came expecting the performance to be inside (I had mentioned it might be inside if it rained), but was ready to set up outside and I am sure had to lug his equipment from a few blocks away at least as the streets were blocked off in the area of the festival.























I love this jellyfish like creation by a visitor. This is right before the first dance performance started at 9:00 pm. There was a large crowd around for both performances.























Christina showing Anna (Scott's girlfriend) how to use her camera before the performance.























Here is a description of the performance Clogged Currents:
Enveloped in plastic grocery bags and an illuminated diatom hat, San Francisco butoh artist Christina Braun will dance two performances centering on the water themed tapestries of Corinne Okada Takara. Her eerie and playful movements will reflect upon plastic bags clogging waterways and algae blooms flourishing in the stagnation. Contemporary music representing sludge, filth, and pollution in nature created by composer Scott Perry. Costuming will be elements which remove from Takara’s large water tapestries in front of The San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles.
The performance begins!














































Below: A short video snippet of early portion of dance performance.

































































A video snippet of a later portion of the performance:

Visitor Participatory Diatom Project

Here is my step-by-step board for the woven diatom visitor project at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles for the Sub Zero Festival tomorrow. There will be a second activity which is creating diatoms from plastic bottle bottoms. All materials were collected from creek clean ups and schools.













Today I will be prepping the plastic bags into strips for the weaving. I will also have print out images of diatoms for inspiration.

Final Water Banners

Today photographer George R. Young took photos of my Water Banners for the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. He did an artful job lighting each piece so that they really sang visually. George Young had been a friend of my family since he was stationed in Maui while he was in the military (he was a special diver on a nuclear sub). This was when my father was in college. George has been a photographer for many decades and has weathered the transition from film photography to digital photography with agility. He has been photographing my art since I started created little wire insects. Now he just shakes his head when I tell him I have three pieces that are 8ft tall. He had to scoot his camera stand to the very back of his studio in Palo Alto and the torri gate stand just barely fit into frame.

The elegant stands were created by Rob Bell. He made two for me. I'd love a third, but cannot afford it right now. These were a big investment for me, but well worth it as I can easily break down and set these up and use them for gallery shows, dance and in other settings. I just love them. I love it, too, that he used all scrap wood that had been laying about his studio for years to build these. Way to repurpose!























Detail image below:























Each banner will be decorated with diatoms made by visitors to the Sub Zero Festival on June 5th. The inspiration for the color and designs were ariel views of waterways as well as Japanese textile patterns. On the orange tapestry is a large hat that will be removed and worn by dancer Christina Braun during the festival. The hat was inspired by diatoms, and Japanese dance and rain hats. Each tapestry had light up led elements.
The banners will be later installed on the facade of the museum. The stands I will keep for future art shows and dance collaborations.
Orange banner below:

Water Tapestry Banners Update

Here are two of the completed banners tied down on cardboard. I will be adding a few LED lights to each. All three banners will photographed professional on Sunday by George R. Young. Today I picked up the stands from Rob Bell in San Francisco.

Butoh Dance Costume continued

I have been working periodically on the water tapestry light up hat for the Sub Zero Festival. I just completed the third large tapestry and can now focus on this hat and all the visitor participatory elements for the event.












































Here is the hat with some of the woven plastic bags on it. There will a bit more over the triangular sections. I have placed a light to shine on the dancers face. The hat has also been tilted and elevated so that Christina's face will be more visible as the expressions of the face are very important in butoh. I hope to get this hat to her early this week so she can practice with it. The elevating structure removes so if it is too cumbersome, I will remove it. There will be several large sashes to anchor the hat. around the chin.

Third Water Tapestry for San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles

I have completed the wire form base for the third water tapestry.























Detail























Interesting nylon fabric donated by Walker Bags of San Francisco.























The first two wire form banners stacked together hanging on a stand. The visitor created diatoms will attach and complete these banners. I will also be creating a large diatom element for each as the focal point. Several diatoms will illuminate on each banner with led lights.

Butoh Dance Costume

I am working on the third tapestry for the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles and in the process am also working on a large diatom element that will remove from the tapestry and be worn as a hat by dancer, Christina Braun. Above are images of the wire form in process of being built.



















Above is the hat form being built on a trash can lid. Below: Preliminary sketch. I had originally thought of doing a sort of floral diatom shaped hat, but it looked, well, too floral. After looking at a lot of diatoms, I decided to make it round and base it on a Japanese rain hat. Instead of one diatom design on the hat, I have arranged various diatom shapes in a radial format around the hat form. I will be placing led lights behind the forms. I will be weaving plastic bags to create the solid diatom areas.