Archive for the ‘Fashion’Category

Xenobia Bailey: The Aesthetic of Funk

Fiber artist Xenobia Bailey makes crocheted hats that are anything but typical. Her hats are objects with odd shapes and forms, embellished with feathers and beads and luscious color combinations intricately woven into patterns that are outrageously beautiful one-of-kind hats. Her hats are eye grabbing. Each hat is a showstopper, and each wearer a performer turning passerbyers heads. On the streets people stop in awe of Xenobia’s hats curiously questioning. Where did you get that cool hat?

She’s embodies a modernist flair decked in stylish Mies Van der Rohe black round eyeglasses, her clothes crocheted in brilliant colors and patterns, and textures emotes what this prolific fiber artists calls, “funk.” As a fiber artist her hats are a blending of tactile textures, rich patterns and anthropomorphic shapes, seeing her hats I can’t help but think of the ebullient spices in New Orleans flavorful gumbo stew. She likens her aesthetic to the syncopated beats of funk music informed by African patterns found in textiles and architecture, and the rhythms of global music practices of call and response. She has BA in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute. Xenobia’s work links the symbiotic relationship between her design background and being a fiber-artist.

If you missed her exquisitely crocheted hats at the Global Africa Project held at Museum of Art and Design in 2010, then visit MAD.org for more information on her work. She’s represented by STUX gallery in NYC and listing on upcoming shows and more of her work can be found on Xenba.blogspot.com. Thinking of wearing an original Neo-Funky crocheted hat make sure to visit Xenobia Bailey’s Etsy shop. 

21

04 2012

FiberPhilly2012: Get Your Fiber On!

 

Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love was crowned Fiber Month by Mayor Michael Nutter. This March and April Fiber Philadelphia 2012 will hosting a series of lectures, exhibitions planned for 40 locations at such major institutions as Moore College of Art and Design, Crane Arts building and numerous independent art galleries. Elissa Auther, kicked off the opening weekend with a lecture at Moore College of Art and Design on, Fiber in the 21st Century Art World,  on the explosion of fiber and fiber-base practices in contemporary art and everyday life. Elissa is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and Adjunct Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver and her book String, Felt, Thread and the Hierarchy of Art and Craft, published by University of Minnesota Press in 2010. For more information click the calendar of events: Fiber Philly events.

Below: Materiality Exhibition held at Moore College of Art and Design.

 

03

03 2012

SPARE BEATS: Happenings Near You

Right in step with Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, the Independent Fashion Bloggers  Conference takes place in NYC from 08- 12 February at Milk Studio. Want to know what’s next in fast paced landscape of fashion blogging then join IFB, they’ll bring together some of the best and brightest personalities in the fashion industry to discuss the issues, challenges and exciting future of fashion blogging and social media.

GLIDE’12: Consumed is accepting CFP abstract submissions for virtual conference to be held 07 November 2012. Be part of this major partnership with the GLIDE team and Iridescent, the Icograda Journal of Design Research. Audrey Bennett, will serves as guest editor, she’s the founder of GLIDE, and Associate Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.  For more about GLIDE click: http://glide12.org/

In need of some cultural nourishment, then head over to SVA MFA Design Criticism Spring Lecture series, starting next week February 14, the Spring line-up jumps off with an intimate Q&A with The New York Times’ newly appointed architecture critic Michael Kimmelman.  For more information on D-Crit’s lecture series click D-Crit.

Design Indaba: 29 FEBRUARY 2012 – 4 MARCH 2012 Interact/Design Indaba 2012. This year’s venue includes the Design Indaba Conference and Simulcast from 29 February to 2 March 2012, and Design Indaba Expo from 2 to 4 March 2012.

 

08

02 2012

SPARE BEATS: Happenings Near You

When it comes to Culinary Salon I simply can’t resist boasting about pop-up diner, TY-LÖR BORING DINNERS!
 Ty-Lör Boring,
a NYC based chef and Top Chef: Texas cheftestant is joining us at CITY GRIT to present a five course, farm-to-table meal reflecting his classical training in French and Asian cuisine. This style won Ty-Lör great praises at Spasso in Greenwich Village, where he worked as the opening Chef De Cuisine before becoming a hopeful ‘cheftestant’ on “Top Chef: Texas.” Click for more info.

THE FINN JUHL CHAMBER IN THE UN HEADQUARTER: Celebrates 100-year anniversary of Design design icon Finn Juhl starting 27 January rediscovery the UN Headquarters latest renovations. This major efforts is being overseen by Kasper Salto and Thomas Sigsgaard the winners of the Danish Arts Foundation’s competition to provide new furniture for the UN headquarters in New York. The Chamber was originally designed and furnished by the Danish architect Finn Juhl and is currently undergoing renovations which will be completed in 2013.

 

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk: The first exhibition devoted to the designs of world-renowned French couturier Jean Paul Gaultier will make its U.S. debut at the Dallas Museum of Art in November 2011. This is an unprecedented look at the designer dubbed fashion’s “enfant terrible” from the time of his first runway shows in the 1970s and who has become one of the most important fashion designers of recent decades. Organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with the Maison Jean Paul Gaultier, the exhibition premiered in Montreal on June 15, 2011, and will be on view at the Dallas Museum of Art from November 13, 2011, through February 12, 2012, before traveling to its final stop in the U.S. at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young, in March 2012. The exhibition will be on view at the Fundación Mapfre – Instituto de Cultura in Madrid, Spain, from September 26 through November 18, 2012, and to Kunsthal Rotterdam, the Netherlands, from February 9, 2013 through May 12, 2013, and then travel to Arkitekturmuseet, Stockholm in June 2013.

Check out Jean Paul Gaultier, Fashion’s wild child on CBS Morning News

16

01 2012

IRAAA Special Issue Merges Science, Technology, Art + Design

The International Review of African American Art just published a special issue which shows how aesthetic, scientific and mathematical configurations can be perceived in everything and experienced in many ways. This full seeing and being is a spark for innovation in art, science, technology, engineering, architecture and mathematics and, more broadly, in education and business… and life!

This Spring issue features a spectacular group of design and cultural critics, and theorist writing on science, Afro Futurism, STEM Education and the Interplay of Patterns are just a few of the amazing features highlighted in this issue. Pick up a copy and delve into creative intelligence!

 

Fashion and Street Culture @ Yale University

Today, street style blogs are some of the most popular sites on the Internet. But what is street style? And what is the relationship between style, streets, and pop culture? How have the Internet, digital cameras and other technologies impacted how we understand the way we dress?  Why do so many people care about the way other people dress?

The Urban Catwalk: Fashion and Street Culture, a two-day symposium at Yale University, aims to investigate the relationships between street style and identity.

Whether high end or mass market, fashion is a daily performance of identity. Street fashion tells a personal narrative about one’s dreams, fantasies, fears and struggles. From Marie Antoinette to Lady Gaga, and from Napoleon Bonaparte to Prince, fashion is used as an instrument of rebellion and commentary on social norms.

Come hear 20 minute presentations from a range of disciplines, including a special guest panel with celebrity stylist and founding fashion director of Vibe Michaela angela Davis, Guy Trebay of the New York TimesChioma Nnadi of Vogue, and Jimmy Webb of New York City’s Trash and Vaudeville. Our conference blends the intellectual with an ear to the ground. We close the conference out with a street style fashion show, where real-people models will showcase what street style means to them.

19

04 2011

Fashion in Film Festivals Hits Museum of Moving Image

The tireless curator and fashion scholar Marketa Uhlirova brings her “Fashion in Film Festival” to New York City. For this exciting edition of the festival, “Birds of Paradise,” she partnered with the Museum of the Moving Image’s Chief Curator David Schwartz, Ron Gregg at Yale University, and Eugenia Paulicelli at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

The festival, which is hailed as “a major extravaganza in costume spectacle, dance and diabolical glamour,” takes place from April 15 to May 2nd at the Museum of the Moving Image, while a seminar on the topic is scheduled for April 19th at the CUNY Graduate Center.

For a full program of the festival, please visit the Fashion in Film Festival site.

 

07

04 2011

Black Studies in Art & Design Education Conference

Coming in March
Black Studies in Art & Design Education Conference at the The New School

March 26th-27th 2011. Two Day Conference on interdisciplinary conference on Black Studies in Art and Design Education, featuring speakers from art, fashion. architecture, urban planning, art and design history and theory. Organised by Coco Fusco and Yvonne Watkins, Parsons The New School for Design, New York. Presenters include: Craig Wilkins, University of Michigan; Mabel Wilson, Columbia University; Noel Mayo, Ohio State; Carol Tulloch, Chelsea College of Art and Design; Jennifer Gonzales, North Carolina State University; Michele Y. Washington, School of Visual Arts; Kim Piner, School of the Arts Institute of Chicago; Noliwe Rooks, Princeton University; Clyde Johnson MICA are amongst the list of designers, cultural and design critics, and educators presenters.

The conference is intended to be a forum for reflection on the troubling gap between the notable significance of Black creativity in global culture and its lack of presence in art and design education. The goal of the conference is to elaborate and assess strategies of reform that would diversify curricular offerings and thus improve education for all art and design students while simultaneously generating a more supportive environment for Black students and faculty.

Scholars and practitioners in Fine Arts, Industrial Design, Fashion Design, Architecture, Urban Planning and Art and Design History and Theory will engage in an interdisciplinary discussion about the challenges involved in rethinking  curriculum, engaging with historically disenfranchised communities, and recruiting and retaining Black students and faculty. The conference will also feature two keynote speeches by prominent members of the fields under  figures whose efforts have been central to diversifying the many fields that comprise art and design studies. Panels will address the following topics: rethinking art and design theory and history courses in light of the global influence of cultures of the African diaspora; curricular reform in practical courses of art and design; strategies of engagement with black communities; Black student experiences in art and design schools; and the specific challenges of recruiting and retaining Black students and faculty in school of art and design.

photo credit: http://www.blackstudies.ucsb.edu

Beauty and Fashion: The Black Portrait Symposium

This coming spring make sure to check-out another spectacular symposium by the photographer/Historian Debra Willis, chair of the Photography department of New York University, she’s planned another informative two-day symposium. How she does I’ll never know, but I’m grateful for Debra Willis’s non-stop commitment in keeping the dialog of black visual culture in the forefront. The Beauty and Fashion: The Portrait Symposium will take place at New York University/Tisch School of the Arts in 02-03, April 2011. Presenters include a stellar group of black scholars, artist, cultural critics, curators and writers all in one setting to discuss what is sure to be an intellectually stimulating conversation on race, sex, gender and the body. And best of all it’s free.

For more information contact: POSINGBEAUTY2011@GMAIL.COM

23

12 2010

GLIDE10: Ron Eglash Bridges The Gap Between Vernacular and Indigenous Cultures


Ron Eglash computations

by Michele Y. Washington
Click to hear Ron Eglash’s presentation.
Our final keynote speaker brilliantly closed out GLIDE10 on his continuous investigation on Culture and Science in the sphere of indigenous and vernacular cultures existing within the United States ethnic communities such as Asian, Latin American and African American. Ron gives an in-depth explanation of global indigenous cultures to dispel numerous myths that exist of such groups as being backwards, primitive and illiterate.  This raises several fundamental issues of cultural sensitivity, and he provides specific examples from one project featured on his website on the process of mapping out Native American asymmetrical and symmetrical beading systems. For another project you can sample an example of African Architectural typology replicated through the application of African Fractals, an organic branching structure referencing nature.

This African Fractals project offers clear cut examples of his teaching methods applied in the cultural significance of the ancestral origins of cornrows for Black American students in high schools. His goal was to challenge the students to investigate the issues that surrounded the Black Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas and Caribbean, students were able to identify hygiene, resistance, retaining ones culture identity linking their own cornrow hairstyles to its origins. Other examples of paring the musicality of Hip-hop provide a broader sensibility of the connection as to why they wear this hairstyle. He’s developed a computation where he feeds in various iterations of how many plaits are in one braid. According to Ron, such concepts can be applied to other ethnic groups to gain a better understanding of the ancestral heritage. The Cultural expression opens the door to engage students to consider the various modalities of the design patterns replicated by cornrow hairstyles, which blurs the line between indigenous and vernacular design. He also looks at graffiti as a form of vernacular stereotyping. Ends his talk on Puerto Rican youth rooted to challenge the students through mathematical computation of Spanish music through rhythms and beats of the music. Summary of what limits racial intelligence, he states, while no one wants to talk about it, the thoughts loom in the back of many educators and peoples mind.

What part of collective memory fuels some of this iconic bead work, rug design, totems that are also evident in other global cultures such as Africans, Aboriginal, India, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries?

Defeating myths of cultural determinism
Using mathematics to bridge cultural gaps
Making cultural capital more available to its owners (individuals) Educational capital
Looking at new forms of hybridity for learning Peace and social justice efforts
Environmental sustainability

Making contributions to mathematics, and inspirations Challenges:

Not all modeling of culture involves translation of indigenous or vernacular knowledge. Ethnomath: provide more evidences of application of knowledge Interesting concept over cultural ownership of whose holds on to authentic cultural heritage for example, Shawnee Native Americans. Alternative methods for kids to go from consumers to producers, makers by apply the discovery as a learning method.

Take a look at Ron presentation at TED.COM