Erwan & Ronan Boureoullec - on Kreo exhibition by Laurence Salmon

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Kreo Exhibition 2008 For Ronan et Erwan Bouroullec, working with galleries is a chance to breathe outside the usual constraints that characterise their enthusiastic contribution to industrial design.

Their need to go “over the top” shows their almost childlike joy in escaping the ties that bind them when working on a brief. The unique proportions of these new pieces are free from existing typologies and domestic conventions. They free themselves from defined and definitive shapes.

The Bouroullec brothers travel between the known and the unknown, moving in an « in-between » space that still leaves plenty of room for practical use.

The disturbing, long black lamp, invents a pivoting principle that leans on the ceiling. It moves like a living organism, like a three-headed hydra. The exaggerated diameter evokes the imposing size of Venetian chandeliers.

The moulded polyester tables, with their synthetic appearance, are huge monolithic shapes that are barely off the ground. Their white and unreal aspect makes them seem like floating ice floes.

The sofa – can we still refer to it as such ? – is a black box, one of the elementary shapes that Ronan et Erwan Bouroullec love so much. The intriguing shape (3m x 2m) makes us wonder about the true nature of the object. Is it a piece of furniture or an alcove? The pile of covers clears any doubts about its function: it is a place of comfort, a shelter for rest and retreat, a sort of spatial parenthesis.

Just as impressive in terms of dimension (4m wide, 2.20m high), the screen is more of a « fabric wall » than a mobile separation. One is seduced by these patches of wool in abstract, geometric, stitched shapes in clashing colours. The design of the aluminium chassis on which these huge wool covers are “placed” reminds us of a saddle maker’s workshop with skins hanging on metal trestles.

These four objects do not constitute a collection by any means as they were all designed at different times. However, they do represent the constant research of the Bouroullec brothers into the notion of the “quality of the atmosphere”. The use of fabric is one answer. In this case, it is a vehicle for colour, and the huge, flat, monochrome surfaces bring to mind abstract paintings.

After having explored a more pointillist and vibrant touch with the fabric tile Kvadrat, the two designers are today experimenting with the strict and lyrical rhythm of collections and fitted shapes, associated with layers of colour. Ettore Sottsass said “Colour is life”. Ronan Bouroullec ironically says that “colour is as complicated as life”. In any case, the two brothers refuse to invent any kind of theory on the subject.

They tame colour with method, letting themselves be guided by their intuition. This is a delight and an open door every time as their aesthetic visibly gathers strength.

Text by Laurence Salmon, January 2008.

http://www.bouroullec.com

European Felt Festival

European Felt Festival
Town centre of Felletin
FELLETIN (Creuse - FRANCE)
May 1st - 4th, 2009


The year 2009 has been declared «the International Year for Natural Fibres » by O.N.U, and the first Felt Festival will be held in Felletin, Creuse (France), from may 1st to may 4th 2009.

A real craze through Western Europe already, this will be the fisrt ever event of the kind in France. Born from cooperation between women felt-makers and the wool industry support committee, it will be the second wool event organized in Felletin. A local group of crafts designers are taking part in the development of the wool industry ans its skills, which involves felting quite naturally.

The felt festival wishes introduce the public to a large range of felt products and to its different uses in textile, art or industrial productions. Due to its varied and easy uses, felt is becoming very popular in creative leisure activities.

The professionnal side of this felt festival will be centred on training sessions and exhanges with other european networks of felt-makers.

“Felt in the House” Challenge (truncated)

Conditions of participation, Techniques and Theme: The challenge is open anyone: Feltmakers, Artists, Craftpeople, Designers using wool felt in their creations. Exhibitor will be selected for the quality of their work. All techniques are accepted. Every exhibitor can present a maximum of 2 works.

The theme of the challenge is: "Felt in the house, felt in all the rooms."
The exhibition will explore the varied use of felt in the house: Decoration, Design, Architecture, Home furnishing ...

http://fiberartcalls.blogspot.com/2009/03/european-felt-festival.html

Handmade Nation - Museum of Contemporary Craft

Museum of Contemporary Craft
presents Handmade Nation
April 3 & 4, 2009

Join director Faythe Levine for the Northwest premiere of Handmade Nation, the documentary companion to the book Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design. Artists featured in the film include Mandy Greer, Jenny Hart, Nikki McClure, Portland’s own Susan BealJill Bliss, and dozens of other crafters nationwide. The companion book published by Princeton Architectural Press features photographs of the makers, their work environments, their processes, their work and discussions of how they got their start and what motivates them. Local contributors include Susan Beal and illustrator Kate Bingaman-Burt.

www.contemporarycrafts.org/hmn/index.html

Handmade Nation:
The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design

By Faythe Levine and Cortney Heimerl
Published by Princeton Architectural Press

Today's crafters are no longer interested in simply cross-stitching samplers or painting floral scrolls on china. Instead, the contemporary craft movement embraces emerging artists, crafters, and designers working in traditional and nontraditional media. Jenny Hart's Sublime Stitching has revolutionized the embroidery industry. Each year Nikki McClure sells thousands of her cut-paper wall calendars. Emily Kircher recycles vintage materials into purses. Stephanie Syjuco manufactures clothing under the tag line "Because Sweatshops Suck." These are just some of the fascinating makers united in the new wave of craft capturing the attention of the nation, the Handmade Nation.

Faythe Levine traveled 19,000 miles to document what has emerged as a marriage between historical technique, punk culture, and the D.I.Y. ethos. For Handmade NationAmerican Craft Magazine, Garth Johnson of Extremecraft.com, Callie Janoff of the Church of Craft, Betsy Greer of Craftivism.com, and Susan Beal, author of Super Crafty, supply a critical view of the tight-knit community where ethics can overlap with creativity and art with community. Handmade Nation features photographs of the makers, their work environment, their process, their work, and discussions of how they got their start and what motivates them. Handmade Nation is a fascinating book for those who are a part of the emerging movement or just interested in sampling its wares. (along with the documentary film of the same name, coming in 2009) she and Cortney Heimerl have selected 24 makers and 5 essayists who work within different media and have different methodologies to provide a microcosm of the crafting community. Participants in this community share ideas and encouragement through websites, blogs, boutiques, galleries, and craft fairs. Together they have forged a new economy and lifestyle based on creativity, determination, and networking. Twenty-four artists from Olympia, Washington, to Providence, Rhode Island, and everywhere in between show their work and discuss their lives. Texts by Andrew Wagner of

www.contemporarycrafts.org/hmn/book.html

Knitted Worlds by Design nl

No longer just the domain of old ladies, knitting can be expressed as a political, cultural, social and ofcourse artistic form as seen in the exhibition KNITTED WORLDS.

By Editor Design.nl / 05-03-2009

Knitting is persistently associated with leisure activities of elderly ladies. The exhibition KNITTED WORLDS in the Audax Textile Museum Tilburg shows another side by presenting installations and objects, experimental fashion, photographic and video work by artists and designers from Europe and the United States. The theme of the exhibition is the visualization of political, social and artistic questions.

Artists like Rosemarie Trockel from Germany and the American Elaine Reichek, but also a younger generation opted for knitting in order to target clichés concerning cultural identity, sexuality and the position of women in the visual arts.

Trockel became known with her knitted paintings and conceptual dresses. In the machine-knitted canvas Cogito, ergo sum (1988) Trockel subtly plays with quotations from art and philosophy. Reichek mainly expressed critical comments on the representation of socially marginalised groups. Also politically biased is the work of the American sculptor Dave Cole and the German artist Annette Streyl , who investigate the meaning of political symbols. The work of the British artists Jayne Parker, Kelly Jenkins and Jimini Hignett concentrates on the body as politicised and sexualised entity. With the aid of computer guided machines Jenkins produces brightly coloured knitting, inspired by advertisements in porno magazines. Hignett visualises the twisted image of sexuality developed by women under influence of the media.

Knitting as a second skin and experiments with materials and texture play a major role in the work of Nanna van Blaaderen, Daniera ter Haar, Maria Blaisse and Karin Marseille. The Sunflowers (2004) by Maria Roosen and the bright red Kitchen (2007) by Désirée de Baar are powerful, poetic images demonstrating the sculptural possibilities of the knitting technique. A hushed beauty is to be found in the monochrome knitting by the Norwegian artist Heidi Kennedy Skjerve and the spatial objects made of knitted copper wire by Karin Marseille.

Material and texture are striking aspects in the work of Dutch designers in KNITTED WORLDS. For her graduation at the Design Academy Eindhoven Greetje van Tiem under the title Recycling Daily News (2007) spun newsprint into yarn, from which to construct a knitted hassock. Christien Meindertsma used inch-thick yarns for the production of her vegetable-dyed Urchin Pouf (2006). The knitted cylinders by Bauke Knottnerus´ Phat Knits (2008) form large seating elements. For the Pillow Pouf (2008) by Petra Vonk & Janneke Hooymans the former developed delicate knitting in the museum’s Textile Lab. The knitted, three-layered fabric HOLOknit (2007) by the designer duo Yvonne Laurysen and Erik Mantel, together LAMA Concept, is fine-meshed and elegant with three-dimensional effects under a special lighting.

Knitting is not only a source of inspiration for artists and designers but is also booming in popular culture. In Europe during recent years tens of Stitch´n Bitch knitting cafés after American example have come into existence, staging discussion evenings and happenings. In the exhibition and on the website of the Textile Museum visitors can acquaint themselves with these activities through selected sites. There is also a weblog, where news and contributions by artists, designers and museum staff can be found. All visitors are invited to react on the weblog and the exhibition.

Artist Anne Reijse has been asked to develop a project for visitors, which will take shape in the museum as work-in-progress parallel to the exhibition. The starting shot will take place during the opening.

Two participants in the exhibition Knitted Worlds will give inspiring workshops on knitting. On 12 May Petra Vonk will conduct the workshop Layering in knits. Knitted fabrics will be combined with transparent and lace fabrics, creating new, special fabrics. The second workshop Folding knits will take place on 14 June. Under supervision of Karin Marseille the participants will experiment with knitting made of wool and copper thread. For more information see: www.textielmuseum.nl.

In the Textile Shop of the museum knitted accessories are for sale, including a product specially developed by designer Christien Meindertsma. Visitors can also find books on knitting and the publication Knitted Worlds. The design for the exhibition and the accompanying publication are by C. Henkdrikx/ SuopuLab and Annemarie van den Berg.

Image 1: Daniera ter Haar, Soft Intensions, 2007
Image 2: Nanna van Blaaderen, Wool (serie In movement), 2007. Photography: Nanna van Blaaderen

http://www.design.nl/item/knitted_worlds

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum to Present “Fashioning Felt” by 7th space

The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum will present the exhibition “Fashioning Felt,” a comprehensive overview of the varied uses of felt in contemporary design, in the first-floor galleries from March 6 through Sept. 7, 2009. The exhibition will feature more than 70 felt works from a range of fields, including fashion, architecture, product design and home furnishings.



Organized by Susan Brown, assistant curator in the Textiles Department, the exhibition will begin with historic examples of felts, showcase innovations in handmade felts, present the issue of sustainability through the re-use of waste wool and felt and explore the recent adoption of felt by a wide variety of architects and designers, from Gaetano Pesce to Tom Dixon.

A highlight of the exhibition will be site-specific installations by two of today’s leading hand-felters, Janice Arnold and Claudy Jongstra, who create an incredible range of surface textures through the inclusion of wool from sheep with different coat qualities and experimentation with natural dyestuffs and other techniques, such as felting through silk. At Cooper-Hewitt, Arnold will create a palace yurt, inspired by the traditional dwelling of the tribal leader, in the museum’s conservatory. The yurt will have a ceremonial entrance, and the surrounding glass walls and ceiling of the conservatory will be draped in a soft, felted material of Arnold’s creation. For the exhibition, Jongstra, a Dutch designer, will create two distinct semicircular environments out of her renowned handcrafted, long-haired felt, made with wool shorn from her own herd of sheep.

“Felt has played an important role in nomadic cultures for millennia and this exhibition will explore its origins and bring the material fully up to the present,” said Director Paul Warwick Thompson. “By examining both the conventional and nontraditional uses of felt over time, the exhibition will spotlight its unique characteristics and provide an extensive look at this ancient material with modern appeal.”

Made from a renewable resource, the manufacturing of felt is low-impact and virtually waste-free; it is made simply by matting together wool fibers with humidity and friction. The methods of matting felt vary widely, from handmade versions created by violently slamming a fleece roll against the ground to industrial felt produced by mechanically rubbing together wool fibers, but all involve extreme agitation and pressure in order to compact and shrink the felt.

Unlike other fabrics made from wool, which are built up stitch by stitch and row by row through practices such as knitting and weaving, felt has no internal structure. The manufacturing process is readily customizable, and the finished product has a versatility rarely found in other materials—it can be made flexible and translucent or very dense and hard; it can be cut without fraying and molded into three-dimensional forms. Felt also provides protection against extremes of temperature and is naturally water repellant, windproof and fire retardant.

Known since at least the Neolithic period (9000 B.C.), felt is believed to be the first man-made cloth. It was the single most significant material for the nomadic tribes of Central Asia and was used to make everything from clothing to the flexible, collapsible dwellings known as yurts. To illustrate the diverse uses of the material, as well as the continuity of the felt-making technique throughout history, the exhibition will feature animal trappings, carpets and shepherds’ cloaks.

As a raw material, felt offers endless possibilities for designers today. The past 15 years have been a period of intensive experimentation and innovation in the craft, and the use of felt has expanded outside of traditional areas to include everything from fashion accessories and costume design to architecture, home furnishings and product design.

Fashion designers such as Yeohlee Teng and Christine Birkel have embraced felt as a material because it can be manipulated into three-dimensional forms, while still maintaining a soft, textile-like surface. On view in the exhibition will be seamless dresses from artist Andrea Zittel’s “A-Z Personal Uniform Series,” which are formed directly from fiber in three-dimensions, with all color, shape and ornament being executed in the felt-making process; as well as works by Birkel, who creates forms organically by felting through sheer, lightweight fabrics and controlling shrinkage to create necklines, armholes and waists in a process known as nuno felting, rather than constructing garments using traditional dressmaker techniques such as darts, pleats and gathering.

In furniture design, textiles are typically relegated to use solely as upholstery, but a dense felt can be firm enough to provide support and structure, while maintaining soft surface qualities. Highlights of the works on view in this area include Søren Ulrick Petersen’s “Swing Low” cradle, whose cocoon-like shape muffles noise and keeps out drafts; Louise Campbell’s origami-like “Bless You” chair; and Pesce’s “Feltri” chair, wherein the back and arms of the chair take shape entirely from the thick, sculptural quality of the felt.

Industrial felt has emerged as a popular construction material in recent years due to its performative qualities of thermal protection, vibration absorption and sound damping, which make it ideal for use as acoustic tiles and wall and floor coverings. The exhibition will spotlight a number of innovative works in this area, including Tord Boontje’s “Little Field of Flowers” carpet, in which six different leaf shapes are die-cut from felt and loomed into a woven carpet, and LAMA Concept’s “Cell LED” carpet, which features LEDs inserted behind the felt nodes in the carpet to provide a long-lasting, low-energy and visually pleasing light source.

The exhibition also will address the issue of sustainability, featuring felts made from partially or fully recycled materials. Felt makes a very short trajectory from raw fiber to finished product, creating fewer opportunities for material waste, and with the burgeoning interest in green design, this most primitive textile is emerging as an exciting “new” material. Among the works on view that are created from recycled materials are Odegard’s “Striped Felt” carpet, which is created by embroidering together the waste from various solid-color, cut-edge felt carpets, and Molo’s “Felt Rocks,” a by-product of a process for hardening high-density industrial felts.

The final gallery of the exhibition will feature videos that document the felt-making process, as well as a variety of touch samples.

http://cooperhewitt.org/EXHIBITIONS/Fashioning-Felt/