Activity

In this class we will create a long spiral-shaped book using playful and unusual textile materials to transform fabric into a colorful and soft artifact that will allow us to write and illustrate narratives inspired by the cyclical quality of this book.

Along with the creation of this book, students will learn about color properties, lettering and embroidery techniques to enhance text legibility and composition in small format works.

Date & Time

Wednesday, July 10th, 2024

4 pm – 8 pm ET

Location

Tatter Textile Library

505 Carroll Street, #2B

Brooklyn, NY 11215

Cost

$150

Class Materials

The following materials will be provided by Tatter. You are welcome to bring your favorite notebook for sketching along with special materials that you hope to incorporate in your book.

• Assortment of sewing threads
• Assortment of cotton color fabrics or light weight canvas with patterns or without patterns (preferable if these fabrics are on the longer side to tear into longer strips)
• White cotton fabric (preferable if these fabrics are on the longer side to tear into longer strips)
• Pins
• Sewing and embroidery needles
• Floss
• Assortment of colored pencils
• Shears

Our Teacher

María José Durán is a Chilean Fulbright alumni, visual artist, textile researcher, and art teacher with an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. She explores embroidery and natural dyes on fabrics to create landscapes and fabric books of poetic, playful and painterly sensibility that reflect on the natural world. She has guided community and female collective projects funded by Fondart and the FNDR funds in Chile as well as projects funded by private local and foreign commissions. Her researched-based embroidery workshops aim to rescue women’s memories around local ecosystems, rural living and traditions. Her work has been exhibited at museums and galleries in the US, Colombia, Canada and Chile and it has been published in magazines and film. Her textile work is part of private collections in New York, Miami, Vancouver, Berlin, Beirut, Mexico City and Santiago.