I went here as a farewell excursion in Vancouver before heading onto a new chapter.

Made Elsewhere for Cheap

Inspired by the photographic and documentary works of Edward Burtynsky and his “manufactured” and “manufacturing landscapes”, I wanted to explore my understanding and relationship to the culture of consumption of cheap foreign goods. Burtynsky’s works reveal our overwhelming pressure on the planet and its people and allow us to take a moment to experience ‘concern’. This ‘uneasy contradiction’ may arise each time one glances at a label reading “made in China (Bangladesh, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico…).”

As a student of textile art, I brought my focus to the textiles we wear closest to our bodies: a t-shirt, a pair of socks, some underwear. These second skins touch our vulnerability; we are ‘drawn by desire’, addicted to the ready-made and cheap to quickly fulfill our unending want. These garments represent economics, politics and power (corporation-controlled governments) and pollution (over ½ lb of petrochemicals were used at one time in these cotton items that were purchased 2nd hand for this work). For all of these costs I wonder what has been achieved, especially when, at the end of a few wears, these cheap items are often disposed of (or sent to a corporation-owned 2nd hand store like Value Village®).

The use of the word “Addict” as a chaotic all-over pattern emphasizes our chaotic pattern of consumption addiction. “Made in China” is an after thought if the look and price are right. Do we know the trail of the cheap t-shirt? We know that it was made elsewhere, by someone else, for cheap. The gold ring symbolizes our western industrial idea of happiness, greed, riches, “bling” and status; in economics, money is the bottom line. What effect does this mass consumption have on the makers?

“China’s youthful peasant population is quickly abandoning traditional extended-family village life, leaving the monotony of agricultural work and subsistence income behind for a chance at independence.”
- Edward Burtynsky

Whereas those in developing nations are becoming privy to ‘a chance at independence’ by spending 10 hours a day making things like t-shirts for the Western market, we in the west (Japan, Canada, US, AUS and NZ) are very attracted to the availability of cheap clothing as a way to fulfill our desire to appear independent, quickly and easily. This is a complex relationship of enablement, fueled by addiction, disguised by ‘empowerment’.
What does our western ‘concern’ look like?

Crash-landed feelings of youth

I was crazy enough to save a bunch of love letters I had for a looong time; some, like the one you can see that says "She's like a mega babe", that was written 15 years ago. I thought about throwing them all in a bonfire one summer, but then stopped myself in a moment of dreamy-egoic past-romantical recollection.

Earlier this year, I made this skirt. I consulted my textile art toolbelt and naturally dyed silk hankies, roving and paper; fusing them all together and attaching them to a tutu, to which I also attached extra hand-dyed tulle. Throughout the whole process, and now too, I explore(d) my relationship to love and romance.

This garment of silk-fused prettiness features and relies on the delicate nature of a love letter, and like the delicate hearts of the boys who wrote them, each fragment is stained a different shade of pink (cochineal). Pink, magenta, dusty rose… pretty, flowery, feminine and passionate; infatuated, but not really Love in all its true redness.

This pretty pink skirt contains crash-landed feelings of youth. And down the road...a crimson counterpart?



If you'd like to see this project up close, check it out on display at CityScape Community Art Space until June 5th.

<< To see the article that goes with this photo, go here.

Back to the source.

Yesterday, at the end of a big moving-boxes-into-storage day, I stopped by FREEGEEK - a sweet spot in Vancouver where some serious technological recycling and refurbishing goes on - to show them the end result of a project I did in January (for my 3D textiles course) using stock from their piles. I decided to lend them the finished product to show in their space. They were stoked! Here are some photos of the wig I made from 100 pieces of ram.

Freshly felted

Successful felting! The scarf shrunk 15% and went from 86 inches in length to 72. That's 6 feet of cozy felted wool and puckered tencel with a hint of cochineal (some of the dye came out in the felting process). The solid blocks of pink wool really stand out on the background of silky tencel, and it has a nice feel to it.

Freshly woven scarf

Here is a scarf I wove just recently - it's made from tencel and blue mountain wool. The tencel is dyed naturally, with cochineal and is woven with the wool in a plain weave, supplementary warp structure. I plan on felting it today, to give it a completely different life. I'll post the after pictures soon.