As a first-time attendee – and brand new SDA member – I didn’t exactly have concrete expectations leading up to the recent 2013 conference.
My flight to San Antonio was late on Thursday night, delayed by a tropical summer storm in the Southeast. I got to the hotel just before midnight, which coincided with the San Antonio Spurs’ victory over Miami in the NBA playoffs, sending celebratory fans honking wildly through the streets.
(A related review by Liz Murray of the Thursday, June 6 Gallery Day tour of in•ter•face Conference exhibitions will be published in Fall 2013 issue of Surface Design Journal. -Ed.)
I groggily made my way to the keynote address early the next morning and was promptly blown away by Janet Echelman’s “Taking Imagination Seriously”, a powerful narrative of adventure, risk, challenge and creative problem-solving. Her work is truly dynamic, taking direction from a series of mishaps and fortunes, just as her large-scale public sculptures are shaped by the whim of the wind. (Read her interview with SDA Journal Editor Marci McDade on SDA NewsBlog here; watch her TED Talk here).
She captivated the packed-to-capacity auditorium with her eloquent concepts and awe-inspiring visuals. The energized audience leapt up to thank Echelman with a standing ovation as she finished, then peppered her with questions when the applause finally died down. The lecture was an unforgettable ringing-in to a conference that would only get better as the weekend unfolded.
This year’s biennial conference title was interface – an abstract theme that proved to be remarkably palpable. It underpinned much of the conference discourse.
There is a concept in materials science termed surface energy which is used to explain different types of interactions between 2 unlike phases. Higher levels of surface energy lead to stronger interactions. Depending on the chemical groups present, various physical processes such as wetting, mixing, or repulsion will occur at the interface between 2 surfaces.
We frequently deal with interfacial phenomena as a community of textile makers, concocting dye solutions to diffuse into a certain polymer, or carefully wrangling a seam between 2 fabrics of various weights. Thus, our catalog of experiences with physical interfaces can serve to enrich the metaphorical interfaces we experience at events such as SDA conferences. There was the interface between seasoned practitioners and emerging artists. There was the interface between new attendees and core SDA members. There were regional interfaces, disciplinary interfaces and personality-type interfaces.
Throughout the panel discussions, the presentations – and especially the member-to-member conversations in between – people were talking about bridging boundaries, although in today’s morphing world, how can you not? The relationship between craft and industry was central to Anne Selby’s presentation Arashi Shibori: Interface Between Making & Manufacturing – A Personal Journey. It also factors into Echelman’s creative practice. In order to invent and source structurally high performance yarns for her large public installations, she has ventured full-force into the industrial world of technical textiles.
The interface between art and nature was evoked by Trish Ramsay’s installation, Interloper, which was subtly camouflaged into the landscape near one of the conference galleries.
Isa Rodrigues and Owyn Ruck from Textile Arts Center (TAC) gave a presentation entitled Textile Entrepreneurship and Community Sustainable Agriculture Model, which spoke not only to the connection between art and nature, but also to the link between textile arts and community activism.
In addition to establishing a center for textile arts classes in New York City, the pair has embarked on a natural dye plant project called Sewing Seeds that dovetails urban gardening with DIY chemistry. I had a chance to talk with Rodrigues after the talk and was fascinated by her personal journey that began with studying textile conservation in Lisbon, then took her to New York to for a prestigious position in restoration at Metropolitan Museum of Art, and finally transported her to Brooklyn to join the TAC staff.
Activism as a practice was brought to life by Swedish visionary Otto von Busch, whose keynote address on Friday morning was extremely well-received. His talk, Interfaces of Design Activism, was a fascinating blend of philosophy, craft history and political manifesto. Delivered with great comedic timing, his scholarship managed to evoke wave after wave of laughter throughout the audience. Between the laughs, we were all madly scribbling down illuminating quotes in our sketchbooks. In mine, for instance, I captured: “learn how to plug into the system rather than break away and raise chickens in an isolated crafty village”, “community repair – fashion becoming a mode of togetherness”, and “shift from commodities to capabilities.”
Von Busch fused cultural references that ranged from the Dharma Punx (a NYC-based spiritual group that manages to blend hardcore punk ethos with Buddhist philosophy) to Amartya Kumar Sen (a Harvard economist and atheist who is known for questioning unrestricted capitalist markets) - leaving us with more than enough provocation to find new ways of changing consumer culture for the better. He presented several projects that engaged participants in making, mending, and modifying garments. For the second day in a row, an outstanding speaker’s talk was followed by a standing ovation – a welcome affirmation that this SDA conference planning committee had made remarkable choices.
Although the Q&A centered on Von Busch’s workshops (with one member even asking whether she could run her own version locally), his post-conference 1-day workshop had been cancelled, ironically, due to under-enrollment. Why didn’t his workshop get the same enthusiastic reception as his talk?
My own experience as leader of a cancelled workshop may lend insight. After learning in April that my magnetic materials workshop wasn’t going to run (also due to under-enrollment), I considered that the content may have been too unconventional for the SDA crowd. I hadn’t ever been to an SDA conference, so I didn’t realize what an unfair assessment this was. When a last-minute opportunity came up to give a demonstration, I took it on. I was pleased to find a room packed full. I had prepared a relatively conventional technique for the demonstration, assuming that there wasn’t interest in the somewhat controversial magnetic printing technique that the workshop had offered. But the audience had all kinds of questions, aimed both at the technical side and the conceptual side of my work.
As with Von Busch, people were genuinely interested in the content of the cancelled workshop. Could it be that the workshops approach requires a level of commitment that discourages participation in the unfamiliar?
In addition to 1-5 day long workshops, it would be great to see more hands-on hybrid lecture/demo/workshop events introduced in the future that run concurrently with other conference programming and are included in the fee – or of low cost. This type of session option would attract more students and emerging artists – especially if part of the conference package.
To return to the literal significance of interface as a physical boundary between two unlike phases, oxidation featured prominently in the work of Naomi Wanjiku Gakunga (exhibited at and sponsored by Southwest School of Art). Her medium of choice is galvanized steel, a material whose physical appearance is radically transformed through the chemical process of iron oxide formation. She uses the line between polished metal and unruly rust to represent the juxtaposition between tradition and future.
Ana Lisa Hedstrom’s demonstration of dyeing with persimmon tannins/kakishibu gave additional food for thought on the topic of material interfaces. It turns out that the kakishibu molecules actually polymerize on the fiber surface like a coating, rather than diffusing into the surface like a typical dye. When I spotted some proactive learners whipping out their smart phones and iPads during her demo to do some deeper research into dye chemistry, this relationship between traditional and emerging forms of knowledge again reminding me of the metaphorical significance of interface.
During the Fabricate fashion show, SDA members’ appetite for experimenting with new materials really showed its face. The garments were wildly different from one to the next and all were beautifully crafted. Sadly, the unprofessional staging and production of the show (i.e. designer names were never in sync with their garments) overshadowed the pieces themselves. The buzz afterwards seemed to be mostly about the disappointing quality of the show rather than all the wonderful qualities of the members’ designs.
Although absorbing the words of the speakers was empowering, it was interacting with other members on a personal level during the conference that was essential. I left with an array of new connections and a welcomed sense that the boundaries of my demanding day-to-day world as a technical textile PhD student (at Nonwovens Institute) had been broadened.
There was, in fact, a strong current of conversation regarding student participation circulating among attendees. My regional meeting was dominated by this topic, with most members expressing their desire to see a greater proportion of younger participants. SDA made a strong effort to spotlight this by both organizing a student panel and scheduling a student member meeting. The student panelists, Chesley Williams, Katherine Soucie and Meghan Urback, shared their stimulating work and impressive success stories with the SDA community. During the student meeting, we discussed ways to keep up contact between conferences. As someone who has formed textile collectives along the way and then uprooted myself from them, I was happy to discover this group of digitally-connected textile practitioners meeting together under SDA’s umbrella.
And then, there were all the features of the conference with which I did NOT have time to interface. My morsels of free time were absorbed by fascinating products at the Vendor Fair, so I never made it to the silent auction or conference bookstore. For future first-timers, I recommend mapping out your schedule as soon as you arrive.
Also, when the next conference rolls around, be sure NOT to leave on the morning of the last day – no matter the trepidation you feel about taking a break from your studio as you book your flight. You don’t want to miss featured speakers like art historian Elissa Auther and sculptor Nathalie Miebach, whose presentation wrapped up the conference.
I made this mistake with regret, but am consoled by the fascinating article on Miebach in the Spring 2013 issue of Surface Design Journal and am reminded that the conference is not the only forum for interfacing with the SDA community.
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Jennifer Leary is currently a PhD student at NCSU College of Textiles in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is researching how non-woven materials can be made to store energy. Her most recent design research was an investigation of magnetism as a material for textile fabrication. The outcome was a hodge-podge of new materials for art, product design, electronic music, experimental fashion and performance.
She enjoys disclosing these new techniques through workshops. Find out more about her work in this SDA NewsBlog story about her workshop entitled Magnetic Fields and Textiles: Making the Invisible Tangible (offered as in•ter•face pre-conference option but cancelled due to under-enrollment).
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Editor’s Note: For other SDA member’s impression of in•ter•face, check out these 5 conference-focused posts on Cameron Mason‘s (WA /USA) blog that include great close-up images of a selection of members’ show entries. 1) San Antonio y’all! (Fiber/Fiesta Study Tour) 2) Gallery Day (Selected Impressions of Conference Exhibitions) 3) SDA Members’ Show (Great close-ups) 4) SDA Conference Presentations (Review of Speakers) 5) Fun Was Had (Overview of experience)
Terri Illingworth (AL /CAN) used her blog to share 2 extensive photo essays about the conference experience in San Antonio. 1) Surface Design Conference – Let the Fun Begin! (Shows Trish Ramsey’s outdoor installation + Naomi Wanjiku Gakunga’s talk 2) SDA Conference (Great shots of San Antonio local color mixed with conference events)
Check out Kansas SDA on Facebook for good variety of images from exhibitions and conference program.
Check out Florida SDA on Facebook for good images of SDA Members’ show at SAY Si Gallery.