Strathcona SloFem event

IMG_2932 3


IMG_2932 3

Last Saturday, the Slofemists were inside the Strathcona Field House listening to feminist stories.

We heard about how the closure of the Textile Art Prgam at Capilano University  is unfairly biased against women: the enrollment in recent years has been 100% female; and, the faculty members who are facing layoffs are female, whereas the male faculty happen to be eligible for retirement...

We learned about how the Bunka Shishu or Thread Painting archive of a Japanese needleworker/berry farmer grandmother wants to be brought to light.

We heard about the formidible clothing design skills of a Jamaican aunt who was a career role model and inspiration.

And, we learned about an elderly woman in Saskatoon who formed an artist in residence program that is still operational, in the nursing home which housed her husband who had dementia.

 

Launched at the Strathcona embroidery circle: Slofemists's two new patterns, by Lori Weidenhammer!

 

  • Slofemist_Gopher2013
  • Slofemist_Pollen2013
  • Slofemist_Pollen_01
Slofemist_Pollen_01

 

 


Sung

IMG_2928 3

Inside this year's year-end greeting cards is the rubber-stamped word "Sing." It should really read "sung" since the edition's envelopes employ every piece of sheet music that have been stashed in a "Christmas Music" binder, since my teenage, choir-singing years. Cropped pieces of the reproductions in an old book about "Les Tres Riches Heures Du Duc De Berry" (Book of Hours) provide the colour. 


"Tea & Cozy" at Strathcona Field House Ensemble this Saturday

Screen shot 2013-11-27 at 9.33.24 AM

The Strathcona Field House Ensemble will be hosting a Slofemists embroidery cricle on Saturday afternoon. In keeping with the Ensemble's on-going practice of exchange, participants are invited to bring a personal feminist story in exchange for a take home feminist embroidery pattern... and in exchange for an afternoon of embroidery. The details are here - Download SFHE Flyer and here - http://fieldhouseensemble.tumblr.com/

 Also stay tuned for Slofemits events at the Yukon Studio (Vancouver) in the new year: January 25, Febrary 22, March 29...


slo... feminismS

“Small groups of people coming together to engage in feminist discussion, in dialectical struggle make a space where the ‘personal is political’ as a starting point for education for critical consciousness can be extended to include politicization of the self…” bell hooks, 1989

“As the crisis of late industrial capitalism unfolds and the tide of popular protest is on the rise around the world, the radical potential of feminist, gender, and queer politics must be actively engaged as the ongoing legacy of feminismS. Acknowledging the specificities of individual embodiments enables us to begin to trace and intervene in our own complicity within the multitude of repressions, both historically and at present.” Randy Lee Cutler and Magnolia Paulker, “FeminismS Without End…” FUSE (Summer 2012).

 


Slofemists at SDA Alberta!

 

 

 

  • Slofemists 3
  • Slofemists 4
Slofemists 4

 (PHOTOS - A. Barr)

Thank you to Linda Hawke, Karen Millison, Arlee Barr and everyone involved in the Surface Design Association of Alberta for hosting the inaugural Slofemists event at John Snow House in Calgary (October 17, 2013).

 

There were a number of questions during and after about how the project works (will work) and about how to get involved outside of Slofemists events. So here to set the record straight:

The Slofemists advocates for unhurried attention to feminism now. Slofemists believe that embroidery enables slow and enduring discussions and thinking, to awaken or reawaken, and to circulate, feminisms in lives lived now.

So Slofemists are making embroidered squares that will become a patchwork Slofa cover, as a prop to support future Slofemist events and performances. If you would like to make a patch for the Slofa, the specifications are as follows:

  • The patchwork will be made up of about 200 embroidered linen squares (16x16"). If you need a square to work on, contact me. You can also source your own fabric square. Linen is best, but good quality cotton will also be accepted.
  • Embroider onto the square a new feminist embrodery pattern that you have designed or developed. Make something that reflects your connection to feminism. It could relate to someone's work (a tribute?), or it could be a way of visually marking an important event or fact, for example.
  • Or, embroider one of the patterns that are already developed for Slofemists. There are 3 so far. Contact me if you would like one of these patterns.
  • If you make your own pattern, let us know if you want it to enter the Slofemist archive. If we get enough patterns we will try to produce them as a book. Patterns can include stories about the subject in the patters, including references to other texts or sources. All patterns in the Slofemist archive are subject to a creative commons license, described at the end of the post. We will help to make the pattern ready for printing and circulation.
  • Patterns and finished squares can be mailed to: Slofemists, #204-2075 Yukon St., Vancouver Canada, V5Y 3W3.
  • Patterns and completed squares can be mailed in at any time. The deadline is August 30 2014. Before that, watch this website for notice of more Slofemist embroidery events.

 

 

  • IMG_2897
  • Slowfemist_Dahl2013
  • Slowfemist_Margaret2013
  • Slowfemist_ILD
  • Slowfemist
Slowfemist

 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Announcing - Slofemists

The start of something slow ....

VerbWoman01w

Lois Klassen, Margaret is a verb: A Tribute to Margaret Dragu (from a blind contour drawing by C. Mochizuki), 2013

Next Surface Design Association of Alberta meeting: a collaborative project "Slofemists"

When - Thursday, October 17, 7-9pm

Where - John Snow House, 915 - 18 Avenue SW, Calgary, AB

On Thursday October 17, spend an evening with visiting Vancouver artist Lois Klassen. Participate in her new project that celebrates the slow pace of traditional handwork and uses it as a metaphor for the slow progress of feminism.


"Slofemists" (2013), on the inception and under guidance of artists Lois Klassen and Lori Weidenhammer, is a project that enables unhurried production of feminism. Starting with found linen fragments, the project invites participants to materialize through needlework particular feminist voices and feminist moments from  their own experience. A library of supply packets that include material and relevant textual and media resources will be part of sewing events or accessed through a lending system.

This project has just started. By October 17 it will include a small collection of embroidery patterns derived from feminist inspirations, by the hosting artists.  Those patterns will be available on paper and printed onto a few 16 x 16" linen squares. The artists have amassed some "found linen" swatches from a high quality drapery supplier. Many of them already feature machine embroidery and elaborate surface prints. The hand embroidery is like/will be another layer of intervention, making them mixed media collage. Participants can make their own patterns, recommend topics and resources for the kits, or work on the squares that have already started. The materials in the kits can be looked at and discussed during the sewing event or they can be borrowed and taken home by the participants. Lois will have mailing packets for participants to send them back by project end. (Date to be announced.) Over 100 squares will eventually become an ornate patchwork cloth that will serve as a couch cover to form a mobile artwork: "Slofa". "Slofa" is expected to be a prop to enable and engage with the public in discussions and performances about the slow pace of feminism, and the tireless work required to materialize it in one's everyday life.

Lois Klassen is an artist and writer based in Vancouver. She is particularly interested in participatory art in the city, and the social life of crafts. Her on-going social sewing project is documented at comforterartaction.org.

Lori Weidenhammer is a performance-based eco-feminist artist and educator. She prefers to make art in “galleries without walls”, i.e. gardens. She is part of the Second Site Collective and a founding member of the Slofemists. She blogs at www.beespeakersaijiki.blogspot.ca.

Klassen and Weidenhammer are past collaborators on Means of Production Artists Raw Resource Collective (with Sharon Kallis, 2009) and CornerFarm: Repurposed Planters for Avant Gardeners (2008). Lori and Lois have collaborated on a number of projects concerning ecology and sustainable lifestyles.

Embroiderers are invited to bring a hoop, needles and any extra floss they are happy to share. Lois will have more supplies, including drawing paper for patterns, the linen and some patterns. The meeting/gathering will also be a time to talk together and share ideas about crafts and feminism.

It is important that you RSVP as soon as possible to Karin Millson ([email protected]), so that we know how much space we need for participants and for a suitable venue.


Field House Residencies - art in everyday life

Last week I went on a nylon strap foraging expedition with artist Gaye Chan. I learned how those pesky, semi-rigid nylon strips that get thrown to the side and stepped on and tripped over, quickly accumulate into tonnes of industrial waste. In the usual course of everyday operations, after their one-time use, these durable nylon straps get thrown into the garbage or, best case scenario, get stuffed into massive white palette-sized bags and eventually get sent for recycling –somewhere into the great industrial beyond. Maki, Gaye and I spent about an hour reaching into the small collared opening of a recycling bag outside an East Vancouver organic food distributer, pulling out lengths of tangled multi-coloured strapping. Gaye taught us how to process our gleanings by cutting the straps into lengths and bundling them on-site. Extending the lesson, she suggested that we could further the low-impact recycling process by using our shower water for the washing phase. “I put the bundles into the tub and let them get rinsed while I shower. Then I hang the bundles to drip-dry from the showerhead.” Solving the problems of global waste and excessive industrialization need to be embodied and personal, is her suggestion. Producing colourful and barter-able, in other words valuable, baskets from troublesome waste, the action of weaving is confrontational in a social and personal way. So, the utilitarian basket reveals an unresolved industrial problem, and Chan is an artist who puts the know-how for a solution into the hands of others -- thus distributing the responsibility.

Her solution reminds me of the inventive ways that people with experiences of economic depression, war, or some kind of material deprivation are sometimes skilled in similar solutions. In my kitchen, I have a hotplate made from carefully folded and varnished strips of newspaper that someone bought at a fair trade craft boutique; I once had a very durable grocery bag made from flattened juice tetra packs that were sewn together in Haiti, I think –it was a fund raising item in a school drive; even steel drums (as instruments) could be put into this category. Chan’s baskets make me think of the gleaning action that has centuries of history. Agnes Varda in her movie, Les glaneurs et la glaneuse, explained how foragers have through the ages been vital players in France’s food production systems. Her use of the camera echoes their inventive gleaning. She looks for value in what she sees through the lense in the same way that the people who are economically marginalized are continually evaluating the waste they encounter for possibilities: food value? re-sale value?  ‘worth fixing? ‘worth transforming? She asks: image value?

I am evaluating: how much time and labour do I put into gleaning and up-cycling?  When will I weave last week’s gleanings into baskets? and to whom I will gift the outcome? But the attitude of Chan’s project is more urgent and demanding than my decision of whether or not to take up a new hobby. How are we going to fix this problem of over production of packaging goods that have no value after their one-time use?

In the past week, I have encountered through the Vancouver Park Board’s Field House Residency Program not just Gaye Chan’s Basket Weaving Workshop, but also Maggie Winston’s People’s Potluck Performance Picnic (with the Something Collective at the Moberly Park Field House), Lori Weidenhammer’s Hummingbird and Herb Garden (Moberly Park), Debra Zhou’s Debraella exchange-based hair salon, Cindy Mochizuki and Janice Wu’s Bow Wow Saturday exchange-based dog portrait service, and Makiko Hara’s gardening (all at the Strathcona Field House).  These highly varied participatory activities are owing in part to the Park Board’s “arts policy objective of arts in everyday life”. Thus, in everyday life of this past week, besides learning to weave industrial waste into baskets, I have spent some glorious hours in two less-celebrated neighbourhood parks; I’ve enjoyed the unpressured company of artist colleagues, friends, and neighbours –who I would not likely have met otherwise; I’ve learned more about gardening; I’ve even gleaned hair clippings for my garden compost at home.

But by positioning these communal activities as arts in everyday life shouldn’t they be considered as symbolic, representational, canaries-in-the-coal-mine, even? In choosing basket weaving, potluck performances, hummingbird habitat building, bartering of low skilled work over more intellectual and critical art making, are the artists and the park board programmers suggesting that there is an essential lack in the everyday culture of Vancouver?

Similarly -

Gaye Chan will be performing Sweat at Kiosk in Burnaby in July.

(This image, from Eating in Public.)

73553_10151686428744899_761401413_n


Craft of Use

Kate Fletcher, a UK researcher of fashion and sustainability gave a public lecture at Emily Carr University this week. She is a proponent, and analyst, of alternative fashion systems. In particular, she advocates for something she calls “craft of use.” Fletcher believes that if we consider the properties of clothing –what we find necessary and beloved, as well as the skills that we need to make, re-make or maintain clothing, as well as the impact of our clothing decisions on others and the environment, we might be able to mitigate the fearsome global impact of the fashion industry.

Her story telling about the clothing trade in the UK (echoed around the middle class world, one assumes) is shocking. Over the last 10 years there has been a 26% reduction in the cost of clothes in the UK. This doesn’t mean that people have redirected their saved consumer dollars into other things (education, health, community development, arts & culture??) --instead, they have bought a greater quantity of –lesser quality—clothes! It is estimated that about 2 million tons of clothing are purchased annually in the UK; but only about 1 million tons are discarded. Which leads one to wonder, what kind of hoarders have people become? As one of the oldest industries, second only to food, clothing/fashion has one of the longest supply chains. The environmental and social impact of production is felt all along the way: from the production of the resources needed to make the fibers; to the transport of the materials in and out of textile and clothing processing facilities; to the garments’ appearance inside a complicated marketing system; to your closet; and eventually into your garbage bin or into yet another supply chain of clothing recycling processes (thrift stores, and eventually recycling facilities which turn the fibers into other textile products – such as shoddy). The UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) estimates that in order to avoid a tripling of resource extraction by 2050, the developed world needs to cut consumption by a factor of 5 – about 80%. Fletcher made a convincing argument for the dire environmental implications of fashion and the urgent need to take on dramatic changes in how we cloth ourselves.

Unfortunately Kate Fletcher’s concept of “craft of use” is a complicated proposition that seems hard to pin down to concrete or realizable solutions. But, the outcomes of the concept can be very simple, and very beautiful. Her current research project called Local Wisdom is one such manifestation. It is a growing web archive of the experiences that people already possess for making individual pieces of clothing enduring and endearing. In this project, she asks participants to attend a photo shoot, in which they are asked to discuss and demonstrate the way their craft of use makes their objects more useable. The website is becoming populated with photos and stories that quote people who have modified out-of-shape items; or who share with other wearers wardrobe pieces that only get used ‘once in a blue moon’; or who have such commitment to a garment’s fit and function that they continually have replicas made each time the item becomes worn out.

By coincidence, the Vancouver-based performance artist, Margaret Dragu – none other than the Mending Aktion persona, just this week completed the video How To Be Old – Chapter 3: get thrifty !!! If you need a few practical “craft of use” lessons that anyone can take up, see Margaret Dragu on Vimeo.