Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Open Source Embroidery Fika

Artists, designers, programmers and craftspeople are invited to come along to the Open Source Embroidery workshops run by Ele Carpenter at Umea University. The workshops will provide the opportunity to find out more about the project, share your skills and learn new ones. We’ll be discussing the ethics of creative practice, the relationship between craft and code, and making new art works. Bring your ideas, computers, cables, threads, needles and yarns…

Workshops: 14.00 - 17.00

Tues Nov 4th – HUMlab
Thurs Nov 6th – Fine Art School

Tues Nov 11th – HUMlab
Thurs Nov 13th – Fine Art School

Tues Nov 18th – HUMlab
Thurs Nov 20th – Fine Art School

HUMlab is underneath the library in the Humanities Building. The Fine Art School Konsthogskölan) is next to the river, we'll be in the sofa area by the main entrance.

The afternoons will be very informal and the schedule will be roughly:
14.00 Fika and meeting everyone
14.30 introduction by Ele
14.45 invited quests discuss their work and ideas
15.45 Fika break
16.00 Skillshare making workshop
17.00 Close

Look forward to seeing you at one or all of the workshops

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Re-using Fabric

The Vasterbottens Museum here in Umea has a beautiful collection of textiles, from early linen dresses and recycled patchwork to Sami hats and reindeer reins. So many contemporary patchworkers are using new fabrics, so it was interesting to see the bumpy imperfections of sewing together fabrics of different weaves and thicknesses, which are also apparent in the Html Patchwork.



The Sami used every scrap of fabric - here the trimmed hems of clothing are used to make beautiful decorative harnesses for reindeer.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

OSE Bliss!

Ah - the bliss of having a research fellowship is wonderful. I have spent this week reading all the emails about related art works that people have sent me over the last two years... Thank you Glittrgirl, Keith, Pete and Michelle.

One of the most amazing works is Running Stitch by Hamilton and Southern, which explores the issues of public space, data visualisation and the materiality of stitch and step through time and space.