Windy Chien

"The #YearOfKnots gives me many rich things.  It's a daily ritual that allows me to quickly access the blissful state of flow that had previously been so elusive to me. It's my art school, where I learn the elemental building blocks of art: line, form, shape, space, texture, and color.  It's a history lesson, where I learn knots' context in nautical life, the material and physical properties of rope, and how for any given situation there's a knot that is right while all the others are wrong. Most importantly, the knots are a new language. Every new knot is like learning another letter in the alphabet. Alphabets and letters form words, and words communicate. So the knots are a new form of communication, to make, as Rebecca Solnit puts it, "the mute material world come to life." Windy Chien 

Nika Feldman I

 

Nika Feldman's work is all about creative innovative recycling, she takes the discarded deconstructs and reconstructs into her own almost tribal creations and used them for performance and installation.
In these images, she has used the collars of tee shirts to make new textile structures and ring pulls to create embroidered decoration. Her recycling is creating something intrinsically new with incredible shapes and forms and yet it also holds the traditions of handcrafted ancient textiles of India of the Americas.

"When there is an awareness of something made by hand, attention is drawn towards the making process.  The process and its related journey, histories and rituals are a focal point to my work.  Presenting my work as installation (sometimes performance based) allows for me to experiment with various expressions pertaining to process.  The medium of needle & thread permits freedom to work intuitively in the moment without restrictions of predetermined designs, calculations, equipment or studio space.     Working within a contemporary context, my investigations engage these aspects of material identity that are rooted in tradition.  Focusing on clothing and its relationship to cultural identity, my work challenges common perceptions by deconstructing and decontextualizing the visual language that outfits our species." Nika Feldman