Hens Rene, the latest from FiberGraf

August art openings in New York

In August, many New York galleries go on vacation. The ones that stay open tend to have large group shows, and to show more experimental work.

At top is a photo of me in front of my Were I So Besotted pieces at "Condition X," an exhibit at the School of Visual Arts curated by Keren Moscovitch in consultation with David Gibson.

The photo below is of Jon Baker, the graffiti half of FiberGraf, in front of our piece, "Henz," at Kunsthalle Galapagos in a huge group show, "Can't Hear the Revolution," curated by Julie McKim, Albert Shelton, Eric Hougen and Gracie Kazer. Both exhibits are on view until August 20th. If you're in the New York area, check them out.

Victoria's Secret, tagged and draped

In December of last year, Jon, the other half of FiberGraf, gave me a Victoria's Secret catalog filled with tags on and around the models. I have been sitting with this catalog open on my main desk for the past few weeks, getting to know the images.

Initially, I was uncomfortable working with this imagery. I am a woman who is not fond of most magazines geared towards women. Personally, I don't like Victoria's Secret, mostly because I feel it offers a stereotypical or typical version of femininity, one that doesn't fit me (literally and figuratively). The more time I spent looking at the catalog, however, the more I began to see humor in the images. Jon explained that graffiti artists often tag magazines and printed advertisements. I now see the addition of his tags as somewhat parodic.

I have added my own kind of tag to the models by draping fabric over them in the shape of skimpy dresses or lingerie. In one case, the bottom image with red marker, I used fabric with a conventional men's woven pattern.

Like all of our collaborative work for FiberGraf, we have found here a way to combine our artistic languages on new substrates. I plan to create more of these pieces and to continue to explore the way in which the content and meaning of the images change as we add and delete information.

HenZ

This is the latest from FiberGraf, my collaboration with graffiti artist, Jon Baker.

We are dreaming up ways to translate the complexity and detail of pieces like the one at left to something replicable on clothing and bags...Can you picture it? More to come very soon on this idea.

Urban images - signage, graffiti, FiberGraf

This piece at left is the latest in my collaboration with graffiti artist, Jon Baker. He has provided me with colorful images, like the one at left, which I transform into embroideries. This one is from his black book, a sketchbook graffiti artists use to perfect their tags (signatures).

This one is nearly finished, although I would like to add more French knots to some of the smaller squares of ink above the "Hens" tag (Jon's tag).

I usually post this work on another blog, but wanted to include this here, mostly because I find myself very drawn to urban imagery lately, as evidenced in my previous two posts about "Forgotten Brooklyn" signage. 

I also discovered that another fiber artist, Marie Elcin, recently created an embroidered graffiti piece. You can see it here. 

Thanks, readers, for your feedback about "Forgotten Brooklyn." I appreciate your honest comments. 

But does it need graffiti?

 Added in a drop of graffiti that appears on the sign. Not sure it is needed in the piece. It is a separate piece of shear fabric that can be removed...

I liked the idea of layering the old, original sign with the more recent graffiti.