Summer Lovin

Summer's long days and nights fade before we're ready and catch the perfect selfie on the beach  in front of a sunset.

Summer romances are said to be similar. I've spent my summer teaching elementary school students for whom English is a second language. With no summer romance appearing, I've had to embroider one into being...

Come home and put me on like a sweater is a season-less romance for the whole year round.

Self(ie)

Starting something new: life-sized (or almost life-sized) fabric figures with embroidered tweets. I'm about to start weaving fabric with which to clothe her. Stay tuned.

Selfi(ie). 2014. Paint and embroidery on
stuffed and sewn fabric.

Bearded Brooklyn

What do trends in facial hair say about the status quo? Beards are in in Brooklyn. Just in time for winter.

Watercolor and embroidery on fabric. 2014 by Iviva Olenick

www.IvivaOlenick.com

I've been slowly making organizational and content changes to my web site, www.IvivaOlenick.com. I'm particularly excited about a new series of small, soft sculptures, "Native/Immigrant City." You can check them out here.

  

This tree was planted in front of my apartment as part of the NYC Million Trees project. "Brooklyn Full of Leaves, Treehouses." 2014. Sculpture with fabric, paint, stiffener, embroidery. 

Brooklyn Family and how has it been so long?

Dearest blog readers,

It feels like I've been on staycay, as it's been so long since we've talked. Balancing multiple trajectories (teaching, making art, research, planning, curating, Bushwick Open Studio visits, gallery meetings, art openings, design projects) + the Brooklyn Half Marathon have left me aflutter.

But I'm back.

Here is a rendering of my Brooklyn "family" in 3D - my pregnant alter-ego, my imaginary dog sharing the story of the night we met, and Bedekah, the imaginary friend of my neighbor's daughter and of little girls all over Brooklyn.

If you've really, really missed me, you can find me this Sunday aka tomorrow, 6/8 at TAC's 5th birthday celebration at the Small Works invitational show on the second floor. I am showing two of my 3D figures. Plus, there will be collaborative art making/weaving, and preparation of a new sewing seeds garden.
505 Carroll Street, Brooklyn, NY.

Starting off 2014 with a non-literal but literary Bang

(freedom is a trip)

a concrete (i.e. visual) poem by Montana Ray 

My re-interpretation in embroidery and fabric manipulation with stuffing...A "soft" gun. Flat, before stuffing and embroidering, the separate fabric pieces I cut resembled Montana's original - I traced her poem to get the right shape. Somehow in the translation, the shape morphed. For one, I added extra fabric at the extreme right because I ran out of space for the top 3 lines of the poem. 

As you can tell, the piece is small
- 3.5" h x 7" w x 1" d

Oh, Facebook. We never met, but...

"Visual assault of your Facebook
photos the morning after we
didn't meet. Your flimsy excuses
and unrepentant arrogance.

"Piecing him together from
Facebook and OkCupid photos.
We never met, yet I almost ended
up at his apt one night..."

Embroidery, watercolor, and
appliqué. 2013. 6" x 4.5"

Another piece for my December 13th show with Muriel Guepin Gallery. Stay tuned for opening reception and exhibition details!

Dyeing, repurposing and weaving with Weaving Hand Studio

Dyeing and drying the warp by hand with an iron. I actually hand painted the warp with watercolor wax pastels...

I also spent some time weaving, using cut-up, old t-shirts as "yarn" for the weft. 

Crustacean support group

"Maybe I have to have a soft shell, be a soft shell crab so that I don't get smashed. But then I'll just end up in someone's sandwich." Crustacean Support Group.

Text by a friend for @EmbroideryPoems, BAC-sponsored project. 2013. 

Embroidery and watercolor on silk. 3"x3.75".

Paint Stains...

Sometimes, a piece just isn't finished. I updated this over the course of 18 hours, starting last night and ending just a few moments ago...

Blueberry Dye experiment

Continuing my dyeing experiments, I visited my beloved local Trader Joe's on Monday night, where I purchased 2 bags of frozen berries. Here are the results of mixing half a bag of frozen blueberries and a bit of vinegar.

More precisely, I let the berries boil in water, added the fabric and some vinegar as mordant, then let the whole mix simmer for an hour (with a lid on!). I let the fabric sit in the blueberry mush overnight, and removed it the following morning. I gently washed the fabric to remove any excess dye, and ironed it to heat set the dye. Above is the result.

While this fabric has a pinkish cast, I can still see the blue origins in the color. It is definitely darker than the purple onion skin. I'm having so much fun with this project!

Hell Yeah, We do!

Since attending the 5-day artist's dream workshop on Governor's Island, I have been working on long-term planning, which feels like writing down every wish I've had since I was five. In addition to fleshing out my career goals as an artist, I have spent significant time writing about the type of life-partnership I'm looking for. I am trying to visualize what I want as a way of encouraging it to happen. 

The piece pictured here uses some of the fabric my dear friend, Andrew Thornton sent me. It also is a somewhat wry take on the act of getting married. FYI - I am far more interested in the long-term health of a life partnership than I am in the wedding itself. Nevertheless, using the iconic imagery of a wedding ceremony seemed like an easy way to enter into a discussion about marriage.

Love fairies

About a week ago, spring hit New York, and I was so elated I felt as if I could fly away. I started imagining all kinds of things, and invented a new figure - the love fairy, an ever-present yet not always visible guide who will steer me towards a more satisfying relationship than the ones I've had to date.

This is the beginning of an embroidery about love fairies. The base fabric is from a friend, Paula Overbay, who also shows her work at Muriel Guepin Gallery. 

Paula, thanks for the gift. I can't wait to develop this piece more.

Getting closer

I am almost done with my third Brooklyn piece, which is a bit of a departure from the first two. I will post it within the next few days, I promise.

In the meantime, I thought I'd give a brief review of this past weekend's art orgy, otherwise known as too many art fairs hit New York within a 3-day period. After teaching on Saturday morning and having a brief brainstorming session with my gallerist, I dragged myself into Manhattan to see Independent, which had no cover charge, and an array of artwork from all over the globe, much of which felt clinical to me. I did not feel much inspired by the work, but was pleased to run into art critic Jerry Saltz, who I find to be hilarious and incisive. As his Facebook friend, I also find it entertaining that he is a poor speller, yet gets his point across quite clearly. Thank you, Jerry Saltz, for adding your voice to the contemporary art world.

I also had the pleasure this weekend of seeing the work of a new friend, Anita Walsh. She is showing a series of "living drawings" in Park Slope at Picada y Vino wine shop on 5th Avenue and 3rd Street. You can see more of her work here. The piece at top is hers, too, entitled "Living Drawing Series I," rubber and brass on white birch. 

I love the woven quality of the rubber bands as thread, and I love the organic decay that occurs. I feel as though I've discovered a new textile artist, and I'm thrilled!

Synapse

I love the word synapse. When I was in my early 20s, I had just started dating a man 9 years older than me whom I'd met when we shared an office at a non-profit. I found my job tedious, but looked forward to seeing him every day. 

Shortly after he and I started dating, he went on an annual beach vacation with his family. Alone again in New York City, I missed him, and, of course, wondered if he had been thinking about me. 

My most salient memory of that week was going to the Whitney Museum to see Robert Rauschenberg's "Synapsis Shuffle," a piece composed of numerous panels that were to be rearranged or shuffled upon each new installation by a different person or group. For some reason, I found it interesting that Martha Stewart was one of the participants in the Whitney Museum installation.

In any event, I have always loved the sound of the word synapse, which means a small gap where neurotransmitters travel. I like to think of a synapse as a space in a relationship where emotions and information are conveyed, shared, and exchanged. 

In the piece above, I removed some of the warp (vertical) and weft (horizontal) threads to encourage the fabric to fray, and to create larger "synapses."

Piece above: "Synapse." 2009. Embroidery on distressed linen. 4" X 3.5".

"I want to slip into the synapse of your loosely woven threads."