Monster Created
In the early 70s I taught batik classes at Jane Addams Hull House in Chicago. One of my students, Judy Petak, was a professional artist, who at the time, was working on a series of strike up to for a scarf manufacturer. The designs were for silk screening. Judy was preparing maybe half a dozen color ways and do creating each one by hand.
In the late 80s when i joined the technology revolution I immediately understood the implication of graphic software for creating repeat patterns. Not only could the repeats and motifs be manipulated, but the work that Judy was doing by hand in the 1970s could now be accomplished digitally in the wink of an eye, or mouse.
Lots of folks began using digital tools to design fabric in the 90s. Alexander McQueen with his sublime design sense pushed digitally designed and printed fabric to another level, and I think was largely responsible for bringing this new creative production method to the public's attention. Brits continued to lead the way in digital fabric design, Melanie Bowles and Ceri Issacs wrote the book I use like a digital design bible - Digital Design for Textiles.
In the 90s, one of the first formal tech courses I took was a programming class on color at Parsons The New School for Design in New York. This was way over my head then, and probably still is now, but I have never been afraid of jumping into deep water. In San Diego, through the San Diego Community College Continuing Education Department, over a period of several years from 2001 through 2008, I took all kinds of social media, marketing, SEO, and graphic software program classes. I was accepted into a certificate program for Multi-Media in 2008. This was a five hour a day, five day a week, nine month long course. Based on Adobe Creative Suite software it covered PhotoShop, Illustrator, DreamWeaver, InDesign, Final Cut Pro and a variety of smaller, though not necessarily less complex or complicated, programs for sound and video production.
During this same time period a number of services for printing digital fabric started business. This gave textile artists the ability to print small yardage runs for samples and artistic project. No more manual color separation and all that that involved when hand printing or silk screening fabric.(I consider all forms of creating fiber valid, the traditional, the contemporary, and the innovative.) Of course I worked out some simple repeats and sent them to Spoonflower for printing. Thrilled though I was to see my work digitally printed on fabric, I probably jumped on the bandwagon too early, before the kinks in the digital printing process were worked out. (I have recently returned to Spoonflower. Have yet to receive the samples, Spoonflower requires you to purchase before you can offer your work for sale on the site. The jury is still out on this one. I do now have the Spoonflower color chart, so that is one issue resolved. Perhaps, forcing you to purchase a review sample and then allowing you to edit your work based on the sample is one good solution to past issues.)
Today, you can have fabric printed in India with natural dyes, add metallics to your fabric designs, negotiate with a Chinese manufacturer for the best price on a thousand yards of digitally printed fabric and print on any number of different substrata. Truly this is a new stage in the evolution of production (Thank you Leisa Rich.)
So, who and or what is the Monster? Me, the work, the process, the technology? Truthfully all of them. Taking my archive of art fabrics, photographing them at different sizes, picking and choosing areas of interest, gives me thousands of images to import into PhotoShop and Illustrator. Throw in 50 years of creating repeat designs, motifs, and patterns and a little monster is born. Add contemporary design concepts used in fine fiber art and art quilts, and the monster becomes a teenager. The young adult monster is fully engage with the textile history of the world and explores native textiles, patterns and design from all seven continents. The mid-life monster practices, practices, practices. Finally, the professional, fully formed monster roars into life and this is the result.
In the late 80s when i joined the technology revolution I immediately understood the implication of graphic software for creating repeat patterns. Not only could the repeats and motifs be manipulated, but the work that Judy was doing by hand in the 1970s could now be accomplished digitally in the wink of an eye, or mouse.
Lots of folks began using digital tools to design fabric in the 90s. Alexander McQueen with his sublime design sense pushed digitally designed and printed fabric to another level, and I think was largely responsible for bringing this new creative production method to the public's attention. Brits continued to lead the way in digital fabric design, Melanie Bowles and Ceri Issacs wrote the book I use like a digital design bible - Digital Design for Textiles.
In the 90s, one of the first formal tech courses I took was a programming class on color at Parsons The New School for Design in New York. This was way over my head then, and probably still is now, but I have never been afraid of jumping into deep water. In San Diego, through the San Diego Community College Continuing Education Department, over a period of several years from 2001 through 2008, I took all kinds of social media, marketing, SEO, and graphic software program classes. I was accepted into a certificate program for Multi-Media in 2008. This was a five hour a day, five day a week, nine month long course. Based on Adobe Creative Suite software it covered PhotoShop, Illustrator, DreamWeaver, InDesign, Final Cut Pro and a variety of smaller, though not necessarily less complex or complicated, programs for sound and video production.
During this same time period a number of services for printing digital fabric started business. This gave textile artists the ability to print small yardage runs for samples and artistic project. No more manual color separation and all that that involved when hand printing or silk screening fabric.(I consider all forms of creating fiber valid, the traditional, the contemporary, and the innovative.) Of course I worked out some simple repeats and sent them to Spoonflower for printing. Thrilled though I was to see my work digitally printed on fabric, I probably jumped on the bandwagon too early, before the kinks in the digital printing process were worked out. (I have recently returned to Spoonflower. Have yet to receive the samples, Spoonflower requires you to purchase before you can offer your work for sale on the site. The jury is still out on this one. I do now have the Spoonflower color chart, so that is one issue resolved. Perhaps, forcing you to purchase a review sample and then allowing you to edit your work based on the sample is one good solution to past issues.)
Today, you can have fabric printed in India with natural dyes, add metallics to your fabric designs, negotiate with a Chinese manufacturer for the best price on a thousand yards of digitally printed fabric and print on any number of different substrata. Truly this is a new stage in the evolution of production (Thank you Leisa Rich.)
So, who and or what is the Monster? Me, the work, the process, the technology? Truthfully all of them. Taking my archive of art fabrics, photographing them at different sizes, picking and choosing areas of interest, gives me thousands of images to import into PhotoShop and Illustrator. Throw in 50 years of creating repeat designs, motifs, and patterns and a little monster is born. Add contemporary design concepts used in fine fiber art and art quilts, and the monster becomes a teenager. The young adult monster is fully engage with the textile history of the world and explores native textiles, patterns and design from all seven continents. The mid-life monster practices, practices, practices. Finally, the professional, fully formed monster roars into life and this is the result.
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Yasmin