ACTIVITY

Personal shapes abound. One need only glance around the home environment to recognize forms which repeat, objects of meaning and association. Our interiors are filled with sculptural gestures we have chosen to live with: a rock found on a beach and kept, a favored mug for morning coffee. 

Embroidery, an art-form of embellishment, exists to enhance already serviceable cloth, making it a perfect medium to signify the importance of an object. Embroidering a favored mug is to say: this object, now memorialized in thread, is of specific, heightened value. 

This workshop lies at the intersection of drawing, drawing with thread, the devotional gesture of embroidery, and identity as found in personal shapes. 

Students are encouraged to bring two small, personal objects to class. Found objects will also be on hand. We will open this class with a discussion about drawing and about personal objects and personal, visual vocabularies. We will warm up by sketching the objects and quickly developing your own vault of significant, familiar shapes.

Finding the shape that each student is most attracted to, we will work towards different ways of articulating the object with thread. 

We will discuss using this shape as a compositional unit to build upon, ways that the shape can be used to create ‘visual space’ on the fabric, as well as repeated in pattern.

A discussion of choosing materials in specific relationship to our objects will also be explored.

Time
12 pm – 4 pm ET

Location
Tatter Textile Library
505 Carroll Street, 2B
Brooklyn, NY 11215

BLUE, The TATTER Textile Library is located in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Serving as both an interactive, ongoing art-installation as well as an academic research library, BLUE is an ever-growing home to 6,000 books, journals, exhibition catalogs, and objects that examine and celebrate the global history, traditions, makers, craft and beauty of textiles.

Cost
$100

MATERIALS

All class supplies will be provided.  Participants are welcome to bring any materials they might be interested in experimenting with. Participants are encouraged to bring two small, personal objects to class.

This class is suitable for all levels.

Our Teacher

Jordana Munk Martin, MFA RISD 2001, is the founder of TATTER, a cultural arts organization in Brooklyn, NY, which explores the medium of textiles as a means to cultivate human connection and understanding. Tatter is home to a public textile research library of 10,000 books and objects on the subject of textiles, and through 100+ classes and programs annually, serves 5000+ students, globally.

Jordana is also founder and Editor-in-Chief of TatterJournal, a semi-annual journal surveying textiles within contemporary practice in Fine Arts, Design and Culture. She is the former Board President of the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY, as well as the founder of its Artist in Residence program. She served as a trustee of the Craft and Folk Art Museum (Craft Contemporary) in Los Angeles, CA from 2012-2018. Most recently, Jordana published a book entitled Material Cultures, in conjunction with an exhibition she co-curated at Bric Arts Media in Brooklyn, NY.