YAS contemporary lifestyle

Artist in Residence: Sue Lawty Sue Lawty installing her work 'Order' on the wall of gallery 101, June 2005 (click image for larger version) Our relationship between the past and the present is complex.  Some artists choose to tear down the edifice of permanence and reject the burden of history in order to create a new point of reference.  With Sue Lawty, however, a respect for historic and ethnographic material enables her to both assimilate and change the past.  Her work provides a critical link in the chain that connects the historic with the contemporary, the traditional with the innovative. Lawty has been collaborating on a significant new body of work with the V&A Textile Collection and in addition, she will be working directly with the historic collection, discovering and uncovering objects which will inspire a new acquisition for the contemporary textile collection. For Lawty, the journey of discovery is crucial, she will share her experience and the creative ...

Don't blame me if you fall into this site like Alice down the hole and don't come back. ‘At the End of the Day’, hanging, Natasha Kerr, 2007. Museum no. T.43-200 http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/textiles/quilts-1700-2010/

There were four major creative influences in my young life. Vera scarves and garments. My mother had a Vera Tunic in a gold, orange and white pattern that she wore with white toreador pants. Jane Callis Evans, a neighbor who was a graphic designer and painter and who allowed me to "assist" her in her studio at the age of four. The hand screened Jack Denst patterned wall paper and silk draperies my mother decorated our dining room with in the 1950s.I have an image of this room, which I will post as soon as I clean off my desk and find it. "Jack Frost You Rascal"  Jack Denst  Rudy Gernrich, I owned one of his dresses when I was 18 or 19, cut my hair like his models and wished I had the body to wear his mini dresses and monokinis.

Thursday the Evolution Team for the Art Meets Fashion project has our third meeting. I've researched collaboration and I think I have a pretty good idea of how I'd like to work with the other team members. Now, I'm sketching, writing down all of my ideas, researching the historical relevance of evolution as it pertains to fiber, and fiber arts. The intern and I went to PF Changs for dinner last night. Because she has a 9 month training program in London coming up, I'm attempting to help her with social skills. Might come in handy, after training the intern will work in an upscale salon on cruise ships. Sunday, I have a wrap up dinner for the follow up stage of the census enumeration. Fabric wise, the first two pieces in the Harriet Tubman quotation series are ready for words. These pieces have been dyed using a resist process, block printed and hand painted. Next comes layout for the quotes and then the words will be hand painted onto the fabric. I originally th...

Each day for the past few weeks has been jammed packed. A friend asked me to lead a crafts class at an Adult Health Day Care Center back in March. I'd been looking for a space to teach some dye classes and thought this might a good way to get some instruction practice under my belt. Little did I know that older adults would soon be become an ongoing theme in my life. The same friend forwarded an application for the Workforce Academy for Youth, conducted by the county Department of Aging and Independence, Intergenerational Program. In this program a senior (defined as over 55) is matched with an emancipated foster youth. The youth is also an intern working in a county department for six months. The county holds a job fair to match youth to departments. Looking forward to retirement (actually a stable income with no employment attached), of course I applied and was accepted as a life coach. My intern is a treat. Ambitious, articulate, open. I understand that I have been given...