Workshops

Higbee Gallery | Linda Öhrn-McDaniel

Concept, problem solving and material process are the fundamental starting points for all my creative work as a designer, artist and educator. The act of exploration and discovery consistently inspires me to create new ideas. Narrowing my field of options in theme or color expands the need to use craft technique, fit or surface design to solve creative issues within each garment. A primary example of this approach is the circles and hearts that feature prominently in this exhibition. The symbolic meanings and basic geometric shapes allow a wide variety of options to explore and help to reflect my…

LIFE, THOUGHTS & GARMENTS

Stager and Blum Galleries | Sara Hume, Curator

Cultures around the world have developed an array of resist dye techniques. Dyeing provides rich colors but once the fabric has been colored in a dark shade, lighter color patterns will not show up. In order to allow lighter colors to come through, areas have to be blocked from receiving dye. Any of these techniques of blocking the dye are referred to as a “resist.” Sometimes these techniques have arisen independently; sometimes the techniques have been passed across cultures through trade and exchange. In many cases the origins have been lost to time, leaving only rich and remarkable textile traditions. Resist techniques can be seen in the most expensive and treasured textiles, but also in relatively humble objects.

The exhibition is organized by technique in order to bring together examples from around the globe. The objects are grouped into three main categories of resist methods: mechanical, chemical, and ikat. While specific techniques may vary widely, they rely on a few basic principles. The dye can be resisted using mechanical means by tying, stitching or folding. Alternately the resist can be chemical, generally paste or wax. The third category, ikat, refers to textiles in which the resist is applied to the threads before weaving. Ikat is generally a mechanical resist technique, in which the threads are wrapped and bound.

MECHANICAL RESIST

Shibori, bandhani, tie-dye

Tie-dye is a technique that has become familiar to many Americans because of brightly colored t-shirts popular in the 1960s and 70s. The technique of tying off sections of cloth or garments before treating it with dye has been around for centuries. Japan and India are among the many parts of the world with long traditions of tie-dye. While most of the examples of mechanical resist techniques in the collection are variations of tying and binding with thread, other methods such as clamping and pole-wrapping can also be used. While these techniques have been practiced for centuries and are performed by highly experienced artisans, there is always an element of randomness and chance to the results. The subtle variations in shade and pattern are intrinsic to the beauty of the handmade pieces.

CHEMICAL RESIST

Batik, adire eleko, tsutsugaki, modrotlac

The use of paste or wax as a resist has developed in many cultures around the world. In the earliest forms, the patterns were created free hand by drawing the wax or paste onto the fabric. Such techniques can be seen in the finest Indonesian batiks and Japanese tsutsugaki. As textile printing developed, resists played a critical role in preventing dark colors from spreading into lighter areas. Several cultures developed techniques of printing the resist onto the fabric before dyeing. Achieving several colors on a textile demands repeated application of wax or paste before each submersion in the dye. Additional colors are created by overdyeing one color over another.

IKAT

Ikat, jaspe, adras, kasuri

The word ikat derives from the Indonesian verb menigikat, which means “to bind, tie or wind around.” Clearly the word first applied to Indonesian textiles, but has come to be the general term used to describe any textile made with this technique. The method involves wrapping yarn with a resist before dyeing. When such yarn is woven, the resulting textile will be patterned. The elaborate Central Asian and Indonesian examples required repeated binding and dyeing to achieve the variety of colors and intricacy of design. The patterns created in ikats will have a characteristic raggedness around the edges. The patterns can be created on the warp or the weft, or both. When both the warp and the weft are patterned, the resulting textile is a double ikat.

Broadbent Gallery | Jean L. Druesedow

The defining characteristic of any fashion period is the shape of the silhouette. Shape is largely determined by what is worn underneath the fashionable garment and next to the skin. Why silhouettes have often had so little to do with the shape of the human body is one of the mysteries of fashion. It is influenced by economic, political and social circumstances as well as attitudes toward sexuality and the ever-present desire for novelty. In this exhibition undress includes not only the garments that give the body structure and shape, but also garments worn at night, at home and in informal situations. These are the garments that reveal and shape private life.

Alumni Gallery | Sara Hume, Curator 

Fans are among the earliest accessories because they perform a critical function. In the days before air conditioning, the cool breeze created by a fan came as welcome relief. Far from purely functional, fans became highly ornamented and beautiful. Over the centuries and across continents, a number of different basic forms of fans developed. This exhibition explores these different shapes and styles. From hand-painted rococo designs of the eighteenth century to celluloid, art deco pieces from the twentieth century, the variations are remarkable and stunning. Approximately fifty fans spanning three centuries will fill the Alumni Gallery.

Stager and Blum Galleries | Sara Hume, Curator

Pleating is one of the most basic fabric treatments as it serves to create three-dimensional clothing out of two-dimensional cloth. Folds and draping occur naturally when cloth is wrapped around the body. As tailored clothing developed in the West, these folds were stitched down, creating pleats. Pleats can also be produced through heat treatment of fabric to form intentional, lasting creases. 

Box, inverted, kick, knife, sunburst, accordion, cartridge, tuck…

This exhibition highlights many of the countless variations of pleating. The pieces on exhibit span more than two hundred years of fashion history and are organized by type of pleat and technique rather than chronologically or geographically. Masterpieces by Mariano Fortuny, Mme. Grès, Issey Miyake, and Christian Dior are exhibited alongside folk costumes and intricate 18th- and 19th-century gowns

Broadbent Gallery | Margarita Benitez and Noël Palomo-Lovinski, Guest Curators

The innovative subject of the exhibition has potential to shape future ideas of fashion and business. The exhibition seeks to address pioneering applications of technology that will have a radical effect on the future of personal expression, image and clothing. The exhibition will be divided into four categories: Generative Technology Design, Democracy of Preference/ Subversion of Traditional Production, DIY, Technology and Expression. These four categories will illustrate how designers are creatively addressing technology in a wide variety of forms to express changing 21st-century culture. The applications of technology allow articulation of complex philosophical ideas and context, the perceptions of uses of impending technology, the fostering of a new relationship with craft, and individual means of production that are shaping future conceptions of fashion and clothing.

Alumni Gallery | Jean Druesedow, Director

Architect/sculptor/jeweler: all describe the work of Arthur Koby whom Vogue Magazine described as “one of the masters of collage.” Designer Geoffrey Beene asked Koby to provide jewelry for his runway collections as did Oscar de la Renta and Donna Karan throughout the 1980s. He combines, manipulates and assembles unexpected materials, found in his worldwide travels, into necklaces that his clients can choose to wear in full evening dress or with jeans and T-shirts. The fantasy necklaces might be made of “drawer hinges, Victorian shoe buckles, diamond-faceted stones made from melted-down beer bottles, hand-carved buffalo horn and shredded or solidified balloons” as the New York Times put it in 1987.  “You have to be a little daring; that’s what adds excitement!” said the designer.

This exhibition will include works on loan from clients who have amassed collections of Arthur Koby’s jewelry, and from the designer himself.

Broadbent Gallery | American Tapestry Alliance

The American Tapestry Alliance is pleased to sponsor the 10th iteration of American Tapestry Biennial. Launched in 1996, this premiere, international exhibition highlights the best of international contemporary hand woven tapestry. From 118 artists who submitted 230 tapestries, juror Dr. Jessica Hemmings, Professor of Visual Culture and Head of the Faculty of Visual Culture at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin, selected 37 tapestries for the show. She says:

“The tenth American Tapestry Biennial Exhibition confirms that the weaver’s pace of work and hunger for concentration continues to deserve recognition despite our ever increasing pace of life. As the range of works selected for the exhibition confirm, the portrait, landscape and abstract image all continue to find relevance as woven images today.” 

The American Tapestry Alliance was founded in 1982 to bring together tapestry weavers throughout North America and its membership now hails from countries around the world. ATA is a non-profit educational organization that offers a network through which tapestry artists interact by means of a quarterly newsletter, an active website and both educational and exhibition opportunities.

Higbee Gallery | Sherry Schofield and Sharon Kilfoyle

The Kent State University Museum is pleased to host this invitational exhibition of felted work by fifteen contemporary textile artists from the United States and Canada. Felt is legendary as one of the oldest materials from which garments have been made. Created primarily of wool fibers that have been manipulated with pressure and moisture so that the fibers interlock, traditional felt is non-woven. Although wool is not the only fiber that can be felted, the physical properties of wool fibers felt more easily to form a strong bond. In this exhibition the majority of pieces are made in the nuno felting technique developed by Australian Polly Stirling in the early 1990s. The word nuno is derived from the Japanese word for cloth. Nuno felting techniques are simple, and allow the blending together of fabric and wool in the felting process. It has inspired designers to create sheer fabrics that are easy to drape and to sew into elegant garments. Fiber artists and designers are experimenting with the parameters of this process, and the result has been an amazing array of fabrics, styles, and aesthetics, as well as surprising combinations of fabrics, wools, and synthetic embellishments. By hand dying both the felting fibers and the base textiles, the artists achieve imaginative patterns of color and texture and create garments unique in both silhouette and style. Our focus in this exhibit is the use of felt in elegant garments, using both seamless and sewn felt techniques, and showcasing both sheer elegance and sturdy construction.

Higbee Gallery | Jean Druesedow, Director

"Raiment for Liturgy: Vestments in the Kent State University Collection" will highlight a variety of religious garments and textiles from the KSU Museum's permanent collection, many of which are made from lavish materials.

The Roman Catholic Church decreed that vestments be made of silk, the most expensive and precious of all textiles, because bishops and priests celebrating mass should wear only the finest materials. For this reason, many of the vestments in the exhibition are made of luxurious woven silks brocaded in gold and silver or embroidered in polychrome and precious metallic threads.

Shannon Rodgers acquired liturgical vestments as part of the collection that formed the original gift establishing the Kent State University Museum.  Along with these pieces, "Raiment for Liturgy" includes textiles from the Fulton-Lucien Collection, acquired in 1986, and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, transferred to the KSU Museum in 1995. These pieces were collected primarily as examples of the textile art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Together these vestments serve as a survey of the extraordinary textile art of the periods of their creation.