it’s almost here!
the FiberPhiladelphia 2012 biennial is gearing up. i will be curating a group exhibit during this festival, called NOT A STITCH. there’s lots of info at the exhibit blog, and you can also LIKE FiberPhiladelphia 2012 on facebook as a way to get updates sent to you.
"graffiti, london" by tildy bayar
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Posted in exhibiting and curating
it has been the most exciting holiday season i can remember — between sinterklaas rhinebeck and krampuslauf philadelphia, also the most original!
you might think it’s just holiday sentimentality, or blogperbole, to say that krampuslauf philadelphia changed my world, gave me new purpose in life, and made me want to stay in philadelphia after a few years of thinking about leaving. but the fact is — it did all of this. i feel like our krampuslauf — and indeed, grassroots festal culture, is a calling for me.
of course, i had never even heard the term “grassroots festal culture” before finding that an organization called many mouths one stomach, in tuscon, AZ, had congratulated us on the lauf after hearing about it on national public radio. after i checked out their site, i could see that what i was feeling, and what i wanted to do more of, was no one-shot deal — it was a real need, and a need i felt my community — the community in which i raise my children — was feeling deeply.
the interview i did for the many mouths one stomach blog puts it all together — and i mean all of it. it was the best opportunity i had to speak to someone who understood what i had wanted to do, WHY i had wanted to do it, and who helped me see that the stumbling blocks i had come up against were almost archetypical. using the only definition i know of a “fulfilling experience”, this was one of the most fulfilling of my life.
why do i continue to think a CHRISTMAS DEVIL PARADE is good for my kids? well, it’s all right here, in InCultureParent magazine.
and here’s our quickest, easiest, cheapest krampus craft! and that craft is of course permanently linked here as well.
and, if you’d like a more audio-ish experience, listen to this WHYY radio piece, in which janet and arun and i talk about krampuslauf philadelphia.
we were pretty amazed when this piece aired on NPR’s “weekend edition” the morning of the lauf.
it had been shared over 8,000 times on facebook before we even got in the car to go to liberty lands, and over 10,000 on that day alone. wow!
check out the krampuslauf philadelphia flickr pool for shots of the event.
did i mention that joel came?
continue to follow along at krampuslaufphiladelphia.com.
Posted in amber, family, holidays, inspiration, knitting, textiles, publishing
last year, i got excited about martenitsa — a beautiful bulgarian tradition with pagan roots, which marks the coming of spring with the relinquishment of small red-and-white trinkets — handmade or storebought, bracelets or little figures, usually — which are given between friends, and to those one wishes to know better. people exchange martenitsa on the first of march, and wear them until they see a first sign of spring — and then hang their martenitsa on the tree or bush where this first bud has been spotted.
google’s even gotten in on the act.
here’s a great blog post with videos about the tradition. here’s another and here are some more beautiful images via flickr.
the idea of making and sharing martenitsa has the perfect storm of virtues from my viewpoint. they are small and easy to crank out if you want them to be, or you can be incredibly fastidious and detailed. i love cultural iconography that allows for interpretation. and i love the idea of giving small tokens to friends… and to people you hope will be come friends. that’s very innocent and vulnerable and sweet (things we don’t all get in our every day commerce).
and i love the idea that martenitsa create works of public art — hung in public spaces, and placed there by the public. collectively. one at a time. martenitsa are a version of the people’s microphone, in that if a person is waiting to hang their martenitsa until they see the first bud of spring, if they see a martenitsa before they see a bud… they know just what that means!
oh my gosh, those ones on the sticks are killing me.
so here’s my thought. i’d like to (surprise!) make martenitsa, to give to people on march 1. i would like to exchange martenitsa with those who have also made martenitsa, and i would like to give some to unsuspecting people i have seen around town who look like they’d like some.
i am wondering who else would be down with this idea. we could have maker events and make martenitsa of different styles, together. i’m willing to do a kid workshop or two, as well — i think this is just the kind of tradition i want to share with my kids (who wore little knitted martenitsa that i’d made them last year.)
and i invite you to join me. i’m leaving comments on here, so we can discuss it. and yes, i realize it’s not even christmas yet… but it’s good to have a head’s up and this is an excellent way to PREPARE to combat the post-holiday emptiness and blues… with red and white!!
Posted in holidays, knitting, textiles
no knitting at all this year — and, the first year they chose what they were going to be. which made it extra challenging for me — because i was not excited about making glinda the good and wicked witch of the west costumes.
and, for anyone who sews, i’m sure this wasn’t much of a feat — it was just the simplicity pattern for these costumes, but it was a lot of machine sewing for me! i had help from a friend who had made the glinda dress a few years back (and quite a few fun trips to jomar with her as well), and working with all that glittery tulle was just… nervewracking. and the satin too. oy.
i used linen for béla’s dress and peplum. since i love linen, i really did want to know what sewing with it would feel like. i was happy with it and feel confident about using it again. and nicer than just a cotton dress. the hat and cape are just craft felt.
what’s the best prop for the witches of oz to take with them on a VERY busy trick-or-treat evening down 13th street? how about a barnyard cousin dressed as dorothy? they didn’t even have to have a grownup hanging on them the whole evening — from where i stood, they were clearly having a very memorable evening.
a big move forward in my sewing confidence. and, second to knitting, machine sewing is the thing i want to concentrate on most. happy halloween!
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Posted in family, holidays, knitting, textiles
that’s me. by some stroke of synchronicity, the submission limit for fiber philadelphia’s juried exhibition was for three recently-made pieces — exactly as many pieces as i was knitting for krampuslauf philadelphia.
fiber philadelphia’s submission deadline, however, came at the incredibly inconvenient date of halloween. so i had to finish up the kids’ costumes and these pieces at the same time.
i did it, and it feels good (although i feel like it should feel MORE good — i mean, i’ve had some sherry and it’s not like i’m in the mood for cake or anything, but this has always been a theme for me — wanting to finish up multiple projects, both knitting and writing, at a simultaneous moment, and then reveling in it. i’ve been able to accomplish the first part on occasion but am not as good at the second).
i have very little expectation about whether or not the pieces get into the biennial. they aren’t for sale, i’ll never have ANY to sell, and all i really want to do is use them on krampusnacht. but, for the sake of documentation, here they are, as submitted for fiber philadelphia.
ben’s krampus mask:
this was the first time i tried “knitted maché” — knitting loose swatches, soaking them in glue solution, and stretching and molding them over a form — in this case, that form was a metal mesh one that ben and i had made of his face. when the layers dried, i would then stitch the swatches to one another and do a little more shaping. the mask was then sewn to a sort of lycra/cotton wimple. have you seen ben trying it out, and honing his character?
and here is the krampus-buttnmandl hybrid. this mask is being wired for audio.
same deal — wire mesh form, swatches shaped over it while wet with gluey water. in this case i also used a lot of raffia, which helped with the shaping a lot. and, some of the wonderful used chemex coffee filters. oh, they are wonderful to knit. difficult but wonderful. this MIGHT get another set of horns… and then there will be some wiring.
and — the headdress for frau perchta. and that’s me! i’m going to make a mask as well, probably a foil-and-tape one. no more knitting for krampuslauf (not this year).
“artist statement”? well, i don’t know the protocol, but:
Each of these headpieces was based on the winter traditions of the Tyrol region of Austria as well as other Alpine regions. Krampus, Perchta and Buttnmandl are all cautionary folkloric figures of pre-Christian origin. Krampus often seen as a companion to St. Nikolas, while Perchta visits homes to see if little girls have been keeping up with their spinning and knitting; if they have not, she eviscerates them. Amber Dorko Stopper’s knitting has recently focused on interpreting the ancestral cultures of her children (African and Korean), and is now focused primarily on folklore and pageantry.
so, i am not sure when i find out whether the pieces are “in” or not — end of november — but we DO know where they ARE in, and that’s what really excites me these days!!
Posted in exhibiting and curating, holidays, knitting, textiles
yarn bombs have bored me since day one. i mean, one ends up having to be polite about it — oh god, the number of times people will e mail me articles about yarn bombs or goddamned crocheted coral reefs telling me they “thought of me” when they saw them — but i’ve never seen much point in going beyond the first of either of those particular enterprises.
but here’s a bomb i can get behind — it’s local, it incorporates found objects, helps clean up litter, and uses actual folklore to transform not just an already tended public area (like a sweater on a statue), but goes into territory that’s in need of a second look — and a watchful eye. marie elcin says it well — she worked on this with her friend johanna marshall, whom i am sure i remember working at rosie’s at one point, but in the blur-of-having-the-kids years of ’08 and ’09.
when i saw on facebook that marie was working on this project, i found a tutorial on shisha stitching online right away, as i had always wondered how that worked… but wasn’t sure how or when i would apply it. amazingly, that evening, as i continued to research perchta for the krampuslauf, i discovered that perchta is sometimes adorned with small pieces of mirror and edelweiss… how is this possible? i never cease to be amazed at how things “come together” for me and how frequently and richly i am rewarded for either chasing down, or holding out for, the things that interest and inspire me most.
working towards krampuslauf has become an exercise in process over product for me. i am, of course, interested in the final “outcome”, but my expectations of how “right” it will be have changed so significantly and gotten so much more serious than i remember my intial impulses being. the ways i’ve been able to incorprorate both knitting and writing into the project, not as a way to buoy the project itself but as a way to understand the krampus folklore, its meaning in general, and its more specific meaning in a world where “enlightned” rich white people believe they have no need for folklore and that “scary” things serve no purpose but to scare, has been a phenomenal gift. as a handworker, as a writer, and as a parent, i have learned more from krampus this year than from just about anything else.
i think our event itself will not be a “performers” and “audience” scenario, nor will it be a resume-builder for anyone — it’s a little too down-home for that. but i love the “stone soup” approach in which the real pleasure comes from creating something WITH people — who know that their fun from the event will be in direct proportion to the fun they want to have with it. it’s amazing to see other people’s renditions and ideas come to life.
and every day seems to add something else to the list of things i am making. i keep trying to “get ahead” but between halloween costumes and krampus and actual christmas gifts it’s never gonna happen and i also now realize i don’t even WANT it to happen. i can’t just “get projects done on time” and then let the clock run out with days or weeks to spare — i really just want to keep going until it’s all over. why be done if you’ve even got a few more hours left to make it more interesting, to learn a new technique, to use a new material?
at a time when claudia’s interest particularly is leading us to read a lot of fairytales and folklore, and we are avoiding disneyfied versions (she’s really into the grimm’s), my own interest is really growing. folk textiles have always been important to me, but now the stories surrounding them is becoming more important to me as well. if i were eighteen again, i’d be about to embark upon a VERY useless degree program, i bet.
maybe we all need a college of one. scott and sheilah’s began with proust, which i am rereading now as well. life is wonderful when you don’t settle. there’s no other way i can say it.
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Posted in amber, family, inspiration, knitting, textiles
have you ever seen nam june paik’s video arbor here in philadelphia?
have you ever seen it working?
have you ever even seen a picture of it working?
do you know who nam june paik is?
whether you know it or not, you are likely familiar with his influence on visuals relating to video. stacks of old-school TVs, robots with cathode ray screen “faces”, things that seem ubiquitous and modern-yet-period — look at paik’s work, and you will see. and, while al gore is credited with coining the phrase “information superhighway”, what are the chances he’d walked by paik’s electronic superhighway, installed at the smithsonian american art museum, before he “thought of it”? (paik had coined the term in 1974; we have a lovely “bill clinton stole my idea” pin from an exhibition called nam june paik in the nineties, but we didn’t see the exhibition — i got the pin on ebay.)
and we have a piece of paik’s work here in philly, and it’s not in a museum. video arbor was dedicated in 1990, and paik had even then expressed concern about exposing the video components to the elements. this indeed has been a problem. that, and disinterest. or poor archiving of video source material on the part of paik himself and his foundation. depends on who you talk to, and maybe it’s a combination of all of those things, but i think out of those three possibilities it’s pretty easy to pinpoint which of them can, and should, change for the better.
shortly after visiting the arbor in 2006 — the year paik died, as the first time i ever heard of him was in reading his obituary — i began knitting an homage to what i thought the piece would look like if it was operational. the “screens” all came together easily and quickly (maybe because they were exactly what was missing from the actual piece in real life)… but, like real wisteria, the knitted wisteria in my piece has been slow to grow. in fact, the piece has become “that pillow” in claudia’s room for some years. which is not to say i won’t finish it.
in 2010, i was inspired to see if i could get the actual video arbor running (not by any clever means, but by sticking my beak in and continuing to follow up on every brush-off bit of info i was fed). art critic and creative connector, the wonderful roberta fallon, suggested i contact the philadelphia redevelopment authority. the RDA were very responsive and prompt in sharing my concern, and they communicated directly with the property management company that runs the condos where the arbor lives. they say the screens are turned on every evening, but that’s not what we see. so, this story is not over, but hear a little about it from the residents of one franklin town (and from me!) in this fascinating piece about philadelphia’s orphaned public art, by peter crimmins.
as dave kim says, “nam june paik 4 lyfe”.
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Posted in amber, knitting, textiles, korean
i spent more time on the machine than i often do this summer.
first, i made a couple of kitchen aprons for the kids. i had started these in february but then they got put on the back burner. the kids love doing the dishes in them, and using the “cherry chomper”, the kid-friendly cherry pitter we got at h-mart. claudia’s is in mid-century kitchenware, and béla’s, of course, in robots.
my friend jaime came to visit and give me a tutorial in circle skirts. claudia and i bought some fabric at odunde, printed with djembes. i also put some chartreuse and pink ball fringe on the bottom of it. a friend and owner of a local coffee shop also gave claudia a vintage crinoline, to help the skirt stand out. brilliant!
the most ambitious thing i made was this little dress. i used a favorite free knit-and-sew combo pattern, summerlin, but changed the dimensions somewhat, so that it had more of the look of an outfit we had seen on the staff of a favorite sushi restaurant — a little on the bananarama side. i bought the fabric from the national museum of the american coverlet, and i think that some of the fabrics there have a distinctly african influence and speak to that influence in early america, which i like.
adding the lace edging was a challenge, but a fun one. since it’s in cotton/modal, washing is no problem (already done it!)
the kids have been working on needlework projects as well. in addition to the small plastic canvas pieces (both of them are doing them; smallest, lightest thing i have ever thrown in a bag to successfully keep them busy; they love handing them out as gifts when they are finished, i never even got to scan béla’s first one because he gave it away so fast!), i also set them down at the sewing machine recently. i had bought some plain t-shirts at AC moore and was just letting the kids choose thread colors, and fancy auto-stitches on my machine, and letting them press the power button. they called this “sewing”, so good enough for me.
we hit a rough patch when the machine ate some of claudia’s shirt and i had to cut it free. oh, the look when she saw what had happened to the shirt we had been working on! i told her i was SURE it could be made better than ever! she picked some fabric from my stash, and we cut out a heart shape, and i battened down the hole… and we sewed a beautiful heart. she loves to show people the hole beneath it, which is all stitched down, but is a nice peek-a-boo effect on the inside.
once béla saw claudia’s heart, he wanted to cut out a robot from our apron fabric — and have a robot shirt. but of course!
"mom, it sunny here."
i have been incorporating machine-sewing into hand knitting lately, but more on that later. the machine is staying out on the kitchen table for awhile, as it’s time to get busy on those halloween costumes…
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Posted in knitting, textiles
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