Daryl's Blog

I’ll keep this short.  I am very tired!  Only seven more dresses to go…

This has been an amazing experience.  Never again will I look down on lowly alterations.  It is challenging, and I am learning to use some of my cool machine feet, like the rolled hemmer.  I haven’t used that in maybe 35 years?

I am working with fabrics I never ever use, tafetta, lace, chiffon, velvet, beads and sequined fabric.  This is like a crash course in formal wear.  I even had to dig out my needle board for pressing velvet.  Mine is so old it has actual needles, not the velcro hook kind they sell now.

First, an update on the 27 dresses….

I will say, for all my complaining, I am actually enjoying this, I’m learning a lot, since prom gowns are not my specialty, I’m fascinated by what industry uses as stiffening agents, and I’ve discovered heavy gauge fishing line can be sewn into the edge of ruffles to make them stand away from the body.  Who knew…

Believe it or not, I’m just about to the half way point of the alterations.  It has gone much quicker than I expected, and without having to make everything perfect, I’m actually enjoying speed sewing!  Again, who knew…

But the BIG news came today in an envelope from the HGA.  First, some background…

I have applied to exhibits off and on for most of my professional career as an artist, and I can wallpaper my bedroom with the amount of rejection letters I’ve received over the years.  That goes with the territory.  It makes you thick skinned, and more determined, and that also goes with the territory.  I probably shouldn’t say the letters are rejection notices, because they aren’t.  They are letters that say your piece wasn’t selected, and in a show of 35 pieces, where 350 people applied, chances are pretty good your piece won’t be selected.  But you just keep on sending in those jury fees and hope that someday your lottery number will come up.

Last year, for Convergence 2008 in Tampa, I was determined to push myself to get more of my work exhibited, and in shows I wouldn’t normally have placed my work.  Convergence 2008 had eight different exhibition opportunities, of course the Fashion Show, and others that had themes like felted, home furnishings, accessories, basketry, etc.  Among the exhibits was HGA’s annual Small Expressions.  I have applied to Small Expressions a number of times in the past, and of course, haven’t been selected.  But I keep on trying.  Out of the eight exhibits for Convergence this past year, and I applied to all eight believe it or not, I got accepted into six of the exhibits.  I was really thrilled, mainly because I managed to apply to all eight exhibits, making work specifically to fit the themes.  But I was really disappointed that I wasn’t selected for Small Expressions, for that is the show that meant the most to me.

The Visual Art Center of NJ held their members show a couple of months after I was rejected from Small Expressions 2008.  I had done a new piece to enter into Small Expressions, two dimensional, that I thought was pretty powerful in content, and a bit difficult to look at, and very graphic, but it took more than a quick look to grasp the message.  I decided to put the piece, “Survivor” into the members show at the Visual Art Center, among 200 other works of art, mainly photography and painting.  It was the only hand woven piece in the show.

I received a phone call from the Art Center two days before the show, they needed to talk to me about my piece.  I was terrified they were going to say that the piece wasn’t good enough, or wasn’t up to their standards, OK, I admit, I can have a pretty thin skin and low self confidence when discussing my work…  Anyway, they wanted to know if I would be attending the opening because I had won an award.  That caught me completely off guard, and I assured them I would be attending the opening, and I nearly fainted when I arrived at the opening and saw that out of 200 other works of art, mine had taken Best in Show.  It was a very validating experience, the same piece that had not been accepted a couple of months before, was give a Best in Show, and some very nice ink in NJ’s largest Newspaper.  That all happened last May….

The Economies of Scale exhibit at the Phoenix Gallery in NY, which I wrote about in a previous blog, just closed this weekend, and one of the pieces in that exhibit contained the same imagery as the Survivor piece I just described above.   But I rewove the piece in a smaller scale, about the size of a post card.  It is part of my Personal Post series.  I entered this year’s Small Expressions, 2009, using the Personal Post Suvivor piece, and two others, one of which I’ve pictured here called, The Spouse.  And today, in the mail, came a packet from the HGA, with acceptances for two of the three pieces I entered.  It is a proud day for me, I will bask in my success for a day or two, because I know tomorrow, the same works can just as easily not be accepted.

If you click on the February 24th Small Expressions Exhibit over in the Upcoming Events Widget on the right, you can see both The Spouse, pictured here, and Survivor.  I chose to put the Survivor piece, because of its graphic nature, over in the Events Column.

If you go to the blog entry of December 20th, there is a detailed description of how I did this piece, basically the image is printed onto silk, cut into strips, and rewoven back together in a Theo Moorman inlay technique.  The gray background is the ground cloth woven at the same time as the image.

Back to altering prom dresses…

I am throwing out a quick update before I head out to a Super Bowl party.  I am not of course interested in the game, mostly hanging in the kitchen with my girlfriend, though the commercials interest me, and I’ll be especially curious as to who is actually going to be advertising with the current economic crisis.  And my step-sister is a marketer, so our conversations the following week are much like a critical analysis of a current art exhibition at the MET.  But I can catch the commercials tomorrow online, without having to be bothered following the game.  And my daughter is recording the game, so we can fast forward through it and only watch the commercials.  Now that’s a switch….

My husband returned safely this morning, about 5am, from Mumbai, India.  It was a long 16 hour non stop, but he is home, and in his suitcase were 10 georgeous silk saris, he picked some lovely colors.  I use these for linings, and trims, both of the coats photographed over the last week had saris for linings.  All ten saris cost around $90, and each one contains yards of material.

I believe there was a enjoyable chick flick recently, titled “27 Dresses”.  Something about a perennial bridesmaid who had a wardrobe full of the oddest collection of prom gown/bridesmaid dress/costume ensembles.  When I walk into my studio, I feel like I just opened her closet, hanging from the archway between the two halves of my studio, are actually 27 garments, I counted them last night after I blogged, though two of them are mens trousers.  They are almost all prom type dresses, some wedding types, beaded, sequined, and I’m a bit overwhelmed looking at the rack of alterations I need to do in the next few days.  This is where the “One Day at a Time” slogan comes into play.  In this case it is “One Dress at a Time…”  I managed to work through three of them last night, burning the midnight oil, and I am getting into the rhythm of down and dirty sewing, no handwork allowed, constantly remembering, “It won’t be seen from the audience”.  That is my new mantra.  And if any of you know my work, you will know that this is the complete antithesis of how I usually work.  The sewing needle and thimble are my best friends.  Alas, that won’t get me through this stack of froth.  So, tomorrow, I’ll attack the next group, but for today, I have a party to attend, and a day to pay attention to my world traveling husband…

The best way to learn how a garment is engineered on a body, is to take it apart.  When I was 15 years old, my mom had me tailoring my own coats, and some of the more affluent citizens of the township where I grew up, began asking me to do some basic alterations to their clothing.  My mom was always nearby if I had a question, but I had quite a lucrative business going, for a 15 year old, doing alterations, basic dressmaking, and learning how to deal with clients, and with deadlines.  I did that for a few years, through High School, and a bit while in college, and then life after college got in the way, and I swore that I’d never do alterations again.  I considered it tedious low pay work, and I hoped with my new degree in art, that I was quite above that sort of thing. (I know all of you are snickering uncontrollably here…)

Fast forward many years.  The current economic crises is what it is, no one is immune, in fact, where I was once booked a couple of years in advance for lectures and workshops, other than the fiber conferences where I am scheduled to teach this summer, there is no contracted guild teaching work at all now and in the foreseeable future.  And there are rumors of lay-offs at my husband’s company as well.

So, though I am very busy inventing things, and creating things, and learning new things, like any artist would be doing with the gift of time, I got my arm twisted to some “minor” alterations to a “dozen” dresses, for a local High School production of Footloose.  They are paying me, which helps, but I was quite unprepared for the volume of work that was waiting for me when I went to pick up the work this afternoon.  Two hours of fittings, and at least three dozen garments, most of them prom dresses, with huge 2 and 3 layer full skirts, at least a half a dozen need to be completely redesigned in the shoulder area.  I can do this kind of stuff in my sleep, though the challenge will be for me to do speed work for costuming, not handwork for couture.  The show is in 28 days, and I gathered from the conversation that this may not be all I have to do for them.

I am grateful for some paying work, and I’m not complaining, I can do this work easily.  But it isn’t what I really want to be doing.  I’m sure everyone reading this would rather be doing something else than what life throws at you.  After all, I promised four more projects if you were counting.  Plus the Irish Handwoven Fabric I got for Christmas which I blogged about in December.  Sadly none of that will produce any income, only experience, and publicity, and the thrill of the process.

So I’ll hunker down, get organized, and plow into this pile tonight, and keep track of my time since they are paying me by the hour.  Stay tuned…