The Mystic

This is a film called, obviously, 'The Mystic'. It was my final project for my Image Making class last semester. I made it over one weekend on one 100' roll of 500T color negative film stock, completely in camera. Following is the long complicated explanation of my methods for those of you geeks actually interested:

The first run of the film through the camera was the most difficult one, since it included bi-packing in the bolex this srip of sequined film every six feet or so. The strip ended up (after splicing only the sequins together, cutting out the empty sewn parts) ten seconds long, and I had worked out that my film would be about two and a half minutes (giving me ample room on either side, since the entire roll is almost three minutes long), meaning I had to pack the sequins into the camera and run it for ten seconds exactly fifteen times. Because this process of loading and unloading the camera had to be done in the dark, I physically marked my film by punching three holes with a hole punch at the very start, and one small thumbtack prick between each run of sequins. I would set my two daylight spools up on the rewinds, in the dark, and then actually tape the sequined strip to the most recent punched hole in the film, roll it up on the spools, and then re-thread the camera being careful to place the taped frame in the gate. When ten seconds had been shot, I carefully wound the camera to the exact frame count, turned off the lights, opened the camera, used a thumbtack to punch through whichever frame was in the gate, unthreaded the camera, set up the spools on the rewind arms, untaped the sequined strip, and started again from the pin prick that I could feel for in the dark.
When I was shooting this bi-packed part I had a lens on the camera (10mm to be exact) and was shooting a blank white wall I had illuminated. I had a matte box attached to the front of the Bolex and on it, a circle matte I had made. The black letters in this film (the dialog, as it's supposed to be understood) were accomplished by cutting out letters from black paper and taping them over the front of my circle matte for specific frame counts.
After all of this I rewound the film again, removing the sequined strip, and synced up my hole punches, then wound the film to the specific frame counts (there was a lot of math and charts and frame counts drawn out before this process started) in which I wanted the glowing white letters. Here, I placed over my circle matte more mattes I had cut out, this time with the negative space being the letters. Then I shot all of the letters I wanted in white as well as the flashing sequences towards the end.
The next step involved rewinding again, recruiting my friend AJ (thanks AJ!), and setting up a simple little set in the shooting space. We put a cloth on the ground and made this crazy light-box thing with brown paper and some chairs and plywood we found lying around, so that there would be a circular light in roughly the same spot as the sequins would have been flashing, so that in the finished film it would look like a crystal ball or something that was illuminating AJ. I made another matte for the camera, this one being the opposite of the first circular matte, a solid circle suspended in front of the lens. You can see the tape holding it up in some of these shots. I also matted off the right half of the frame. Then I had AJ sit and look serious, wearing very little clothing, and wave his arms around. I shot the required number of frames (all counted out beforehand!) with some single framing to make it look choppy and weird.
Then I rewound the film again, removing the matte over the right half of the frame, to the places in the roll where I wanted the close ups. Here I had AJ sit with his forehead against the matte box and squint while I ran the camera at regular speeds and single framing.
Another rewind of the camera, and AJ and I deconstructed our light box and set it up again facing the opposite direction. I matted off the left half of the frame this time and shot AJ again looking serious, but without the arm waving. We cleaned up the space and AJ put his clothes on. Then I dropped the film off at the lab.

OK! If you read all that, thanks. I was in a state of suspended mild anxiety the whole time since a lot of this stuff I was trying for the first time - mostly, I hadn't done all of those things all at once before - and there were so many ways I could of fucked it up. The room in which I did all my bi-packing was not entirely light proof, which shows in the fogging of parts of the film, but I don't really mind that. There is only one place in which I seriously didn't get what I wanted, but you have to ask me or guess if you want to know what it is.

I conceived of and executed this film in about four days, and because of that I feel that it's not that conceptually interesting. Visually, I think, it's a resounding success and I am very excited about the future possibilities opened to me by this experiment. I'd like to use these techniques and more considered ideas to make similar films that actually mean something. I'll keep you posted.

Sequin Sequence

The first video is one of the first things I made this semester in my Image Making class. It's a strip of clear 16mm leader with about ten seconds of thread sewn through each frame; every two seconds (every 48 frames) I switched from just thread to thread and sequins, one sequin per frame. This effectively created (as you can see) one giant sequin flashing different colors for a couple seconds.

The second video is a rayogram onto color positive film stock. I took the unexposed film and held the strip of sequins against it, with a light table below. By turning on the light table for a second or two the film was exposed, light shining through the sequined film strip, and an image was created that roughly (really roughly) approximated the first embroidered strip of film. My group and I also played with a bunch of filters laid on the light table, which is where all those crazy colors come from.

Electrolyte Enhanced Doritos

More pages from that old sketchbook. That is a cutout from a Doritos bag in the middle. The brown coffee stain occurred later but I think it really helps with the overall what-is-this-shit aesthetic.

Scroll

In the spring of 2007, in my Intro to Fibers class, I conducted my first experiment in beading in approximation of organic material.


I can't clearly remember, but I think that the only guidelines for our first assignment was that we had to bead or embroider something, and also incorporate felt. I never got around to the felt part, because beading an entire scroll takes a really, really long time.



To start, I took a 22'' x 30'' sheet of thick soft etching paper, roughly scored and tore it into strips about 3'' in width, painted in watercolor pale yellow lines down the length of the strips, laid them out on a wooden board, soaked them with water from my kitchen sink, and began scraping and hacking at the non-watercolored side of each strip until they had been satisfactorily decimated. I then stitched together the ends of each strip with a zippered blanket stitch, as well as sutured the most gruesome of my inflicted wounds.



After drying, I then attached old chopsticks I had covered in fabric to either end of the scroll, and began the decorative/decaying process of beading around the stitches and open holes in the paper.


I started at the left end and worked my way to the right, progressively darkening the color of the beads I was using, from whites, silvers, and yellow, through oranges and reds, and then to purple and black. I also increased the amount of beading, the spread of the mold.





The stitches that healed the paper were white, but the thread which bound the beads was gold. On the opposite side of the paper, you can see all of the stitching, and when the scroll is wound, the layers of beading and thread peek out.


I was thinking a lot about religion and spirituality that semester (as usual). I was interested in the boundaries between artificial and natural, and organic and inorganic, and the place that human religion and language take within those differences. What does it mean for us to worship documents created by our ancestors, and how does that practice compare to the worship of the natural world? When it is understood that all Bibles will eventually rot and turn to dust, all Torahs eaten by worms, and all our Qur'ans mold and disintegrate, what then is the highest power? As a species so inspired by beauty, we represent the holy in gold leaf and complex geometry; is there a better way? All of our most sacred documents are reproduced and represented in text. I find this to be limiting and unnessecary.

For class, I first suspended this piece, unfurled, in front of a light source, and then took it down to be laid on a long table. When light shows through the paper a completely new texture is revealed. You can see the ravaged fibers and the beads stand out like dark growths around the sutures and gaping holes.

House Panels

I built a house in my freshman year, fall semester, that was six feet tall and collapsible, made up mostly of found materials; I built four 3' x 4' wooden frames and two 3' x 3' ones, stretched mesh across them, and stitched found fabric, found paper, and in the case of the the roof panels, discarded CTA cards over all the surfaces.


After the semester ended, I didn't really know what to do with the house. Each panel was connected by hinges but even in its flat aspect it took up a lot of room. So I dismantled it and discarded every piece but my two favorite walls, and the ornament I had hung inside.



I've kept those two favorite panels since then, and now they hang in the entrance to my apartment.

Home Sweet Home

This hangs on the wall in the entrance to my apartment. I made it in my first semester of freshman year, out of a photograph I found on the street in San Francisco and a sock that was abandoned in the dorm laundry room.


We were assigned to create something sculptural out of found materials, and relating to home or house. So I put this together, stretching it over an abandoned cardboard container I found on the street in Boystown, and was then inspired to construct my final project, a collapsible, portable, six foot tall house also made (mostly) out of found materials. I hung this inside.

Buttons

I have a button maker that makes buttons about 1" in diameter. I use it to make buttons out of materials generally not intended for the machine, like fabric and beads and such. The two above were made of extra linoleum prints I made into cards last year, and are some of the only buttons I've made as intended, with paper and a plastic cover. Here are some examples of the other kinds:



And for fun, below is the first button I ever made, before I even had a button maker. There was a booth at the Oregon Country Fair that let you make buttons. I used a contact print of the first sheet of B&W photos I'd ever taken. That girl in the middle is my best friend Zella.


I'll be making a lot more buttons in the next week in preparation to sell at the Holiday Art Fair. Wish me luck!

Fiber Portfolio 2

Some other techniques we had to demonstrate for our portfolio in Intro to Fibers were crochet:


And knitting. Below is some standard knit/pearl/knit/pearl, and checkers made by alternating ribbing.


One of my favorite techniques we had to exercise, and which I still use to a great extent today in my work, was embroidery and beading.


This is a found piece of fabric with an old screenprint on it. It has been appliqued to the muslin and then stitched around with backstitched rings, a few stitches I made up, and julienne stitches (the little loops). Satin stitch colored the women's lips and eyes, and made their speech bubble.


The beading around the edge is actually two colors of gold, making a little pattern of Venusian symbols.

Felted Labyrinth

Back in spring semester of my freshman year, I was in a class called "Intro to Fibers". We learned all kinds of things, including felting.


This was a product of an experiment in felting yarn in between thin layers of white wool. I laid out black yarn in the shape of a labyrinth, felted over it, and later embroidered on top. The inner yarn is more visible when held to the light.


I surrounded the black yarn with backstitching, and julienne stitched across the top. I'd like to eventually finish this, perhaps as a light fixture (in some non-fire-hazard set up) or as a window hanging.

Peep Show Envelope

I made this envelope in 2005. I had a crush on some boy and wanted to send him a letter, but in the process of creating the envelope I fell more it love with it and less in love with him. (A familiar story.) I was obsessed with envelopes in general, mainly creating them out of found paper and materials, and this was one of my very first sewing with paper experiments. There are so many things going on here, like suspension:

And, as a solution to not wanting the suspending thread to travel across the surface of the paper and instead remain on the unseen side, beading:


I wanted a hint of this structure to be visible with the envelope closed, so I mirrored the suspended disk in the circle cut out on the flap, and finished the edges with a blanket stitch:


You can see here as well the functional edging of the flap itself. I took black carpet thread and braided a strand somewhere between two and three feet, stitched the middle segment to the envelope with an even blanket stitch, and left substantial length on either end that may be wrapped and tied around the envelope in a number of different fastening methods.


As a final step, and probably because I don't know when to stop when I ought to, I carried the delicacy and curves of the aesthetic into the inner, penned design:


And then decided that this was one envelope there was no letter for, and didn't send it.

Embroiderphant

Combining paper and fibers has always been a fascinating practice for me. Here is a piece of paper on which I wiped my fingers after inking this and subsequently enunciated (you know, in the visual sense of the word. Also known as the incorrect sense of the word). Like people seeing Jesus in oilstains, except productive.