Museum Trips with Art Sanctuary

As the summer went on we started taking on high school interns. During the week they are involved in small learning plans during the day. this time around they went to The Philadelphia Museum of Art to follow up on a previous lesson. Here are some pictures from the trip

Meeting Myra Reichel

At the start of working with my Alumni artist, Myra Reichel, I was a little unsure exactly of the type of work that she was in. Myra is a weaver and works particularly making tapestries, but I had only seen a few of her pieces online. After visiting her home and office, both of which she runs her studio out of, I saw that she has done more than I thought. From simple to complex, Myra has rugs and tapestries and even clothing around her house and office that she herself has wove. Being a photographer and mainly working in two dimensional art, I wanted to step outside my comfort zone and get hands on with some three dimensional work. I used to take a sewing class in middle school and I loved it, so I thought I would try my hand at weaving. Throughout my time with Myra, I will be learning to warp and weave a loom on my own, set up a large floor loom, and accurately learn weaving techniques form someone who has been in the business for over 25 years.

Postcards!

These chairs are the postcards that will promote Kay's installation! They were first printed on a standard postcard, but then were laser cut at the Imaging Lab. Here I am tracing the silhouette of the chair with the pen tool in Illustrator. The path was later used to guide the laser.

Planning, Pricing, and Launching

Hey Everyone! The last couple of weeks Machele has had me do a lot of research for a few of her up coming projects. We have been working together to identify some of the issues that each project will face and how to work though through them. Here is a little break down of some of the process we have been going through for the past few weeks. 

• Planning: To plan for a product there are a lot of things to consider. Once the initial design process is over we have to make a plan for what materials are going to be used and consider the potential  constraints. Taking to consideration for example, how durable does this product need to be? how strong of an adhesive is necessary? what kind of printing process will be needed? what sizes will be appropriate?

• Pricing: After we have answered the questions of materiality and process we have to do extensive research on what the cost of the whole project would be and come up with a price to sell it at. THe pricing process can be difficult because we often have to go back to the drawing board if we find out a particular route wont turn out to be cost effective.

• Launching: Once we have all of the materials for a project figured out and the plan has been set in motion the product has to be launched. This includes updating social media and vendor websites to include and promote the new product. Online presence is important for a brand so that you can get the word out and generate traffic to your site when you have a new product. 

Lionie

                  

 

Here you can see how this huge installation started. Kay first had to collect many people's stories before she could begin the undertaking of creating them. This object was Brooke's stuffed animal, Lionie. As a 21 year old still painfully attached to her favorite stuffed animal, I understand where Brooke is coming from. Once again, this object was a two layer screen print on fabric. In the photo, I am in the process of registering the second layer of the print. Hopefully Brooke will see the installation at the Free Library in October and get some closure over her lost Lionie!

Screen Printing Process

The premise of Kay's project is to recreate lost objects that people wish they still had. This object, a stuffed animal Teletubby, was lost by Tatiana. 

Each layer is first printed on acetate.  The acetate is taped down to the table underneath the screen. It acts as a printing guide. Before I print, the fabric is placed underneath the acetate and maneuvered until it is in the right spot. This is called registration and is particularly important when doing a print that is more than one layer.

The Teletubby was a two color print on fabric. First, a red layer was printed (what I'm doing in the photo), then a black layer on top. The flesh tones and silver were hand painted by Kay after the silk screen process was finished.

This week in Kay's studios we had interviews with 3 women. Since Kay's project is all about lost objects that you wish were still around these women were telling their stories about their objects. One of the ladies had lost a glass vase that she had brought over from Germany when they had to flee from the Nazi's. After her sister took it when she married she died unexpectedly and the woman never saw it again. The way she talked about her experiences in Germany and then coming over here to Philadelphia was quiet amazing. At one point she mentioned how they wouldn't let you leave the country with more then ten dollars so her mother sewed coins in the hems of their dresses to conceal the money. All these stories showed me what this project is really about because when I am assisting Kay with her project sometimes I forget that it isn't about seeing if I can burn and print a screen in one day but more of the finished project and how it is going to impact people who see it.