Pojagi-Inspired Textiles

Our first assignment in the Printing, Dyeing, Painting textiles class I'm taking at school was to make a pojagi-inspired piece (pojagi is a type of Korean textile used as a wrapping cloth, traditionally made in patchwork style out of silk organza).

The panels I made were created through a multi-step process: silk degumming with clamp resist, light indigo bath, tied resist with tiny rubber bands, dyeing in a deep rust color, tied resist, discharge of color using theox. The final result was incredible, especially when the discharge solution took the warm rust color to a teal hue and then a light green. Some of the panels remind me of aerial maps.

To finish the project, I stitched the seams using a flat-felled technique so that they lay flat and the piece is essentially reversible. I am so glad I learned to sew over the summer. It makes textile work so much more gratifying because I can make exciting final pieces instead of just having many beautifully dyed and printed raw pieces of cloth. These particular pieces became scarves and were gifted to some lovely ladies in my life.

Body of Work

I have to apply for a big fellowship, as required by our department at school. There is a huge amount of work that goes into these proposals, and even if I'm not chosen it's still been useful to get work finished, photographed, edited and titled.

Here is the body of work I'm submitting. I'm really pleased with how it's all coming together.

Seven Years and Still Going

I just read through the October entries of my blog archives from 2005 to present. Some of the posts I remember writing, and the moments described therewith are clear as day. Chimoio. Pria and Parceiro. Hugh Marlboro. Others I don't recall at all, and it's as if I were snooping through someone else's diary and life.

A lot has happened in the past seven years. I am glad I kept a written record of it, even if incomplete or edited for public consumption. Similarly I am happy I started writing paper journals when I went for my student exchange to Brazil in 1997/98. I wrote diligently every single day that year, a perfect record of events and feelings and adventures. I kept writing afterwards, filling volume after volume of blank-page books well after I'd graduated college. I have them all, stored in my desk shelves, waiting for the day when I have time to digitize the years and years of words.

I like to read my old journals, to look at how my handwriting has changed (or not, as it is the case), to remember the specific pens I used, how I had mastered the art of writing in a straight line while on a bus through the back roads of northeastern Brazil. I also enjoy reading my blog archives, but there is something about tangible paper and ink that makes the digital journal seem lacking.

Regardless, I feel satisfied in realizing that I've blogged over 1,200 entries. Something about that persistence makes me want to keep writing despite the decrease in frequency since moving to California and starting school.

So I will.