Tag: Projects

MAGNETICS IN-MATERIAL

Posted on by Rachel Wolfe

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MAGNETICS IN-MATERIAL Objective

Magnetics In-Material weaves aesthetic movements from earth’s history. Magnetic emanations from the earth are woven to form visual representations. The textiles create an earth-based narrative from a geological perspective of time. Demarcated by textures and colours woven based on the recordings from the earth, the invisible forces from within the earth become Visual, Sensual (tactile), and Actual (woven). The textiles reveal understandings in human relationships with nature and present iterative opportunities to make textile(s) of the magnetic records at a variety of sites. Potential themes could be, but not limited to, locations of cultural and historical significance such as shrines, pilgrimage routes, or political and humanitarian organisations such as NATO and UNESCO. 

 

Field of Artistic Research  

Magnetics In-Material is a cross disciplinary artistic research project encompassing embodied cognition, imaging structures, textile, geologic sciences for epistemic investigations. The artistic research aims to look at the way images are both felt and understood, from a bottom-up approach. 

 

Research Question(s) 

How do places make people? Further questions here and expanded later on in Project Summary Goals: 

  • Can creating a sense of place be a viable concept for geographic empathy?
  • Ways touch and subjective experience contribute to quests for objectivity.
  • Creating sites for understanding, intuition, and subjectivity in technocratic culture and climate changes. 
  • Usefulness of statistical data models in evaluating Intelligence.
  • Responsibilities of data science and influences images have on social policy.
  • Art as supporting diversity in cultural rituals and identities. 
  • To what extent can culture support the disintegration of identity politics in favour of earth-based perspectives in the history of human behaviour, environmental fluctuations, social formations.
  • Can materials and production afford reliable alternatives to present-day socio-economic models.

 

Background, Research Context, Goals, Methods

Magnetics In-Material (Mi-M) developed from 6-years Pattern Recognition project. The project looks at the idea of A.I., landscape photography, and 1970’s American Land Art movement. With the orientation of working-with and not over emerges a biologically, ontological question: what creates a body? and the Mi-M question: how do places make people? The project and process looks at ways of working in relationship with nature, instead of using, or looking at, nature as pure resource. 

Gathered rocks from meditative hikes were numbered, archived, and drawn. Rock faces were made into drawings, drawings into choreography, and the feeling of the movements into the template for the visual textile project, Magnetics In-Material. By connecting my background with photography, image making and installation, dance and performance with my interests in geology and dating, the project realises several goals:

  • Giving people a sense of understanding through experience
  • Reprieve from alienation through creating belonging by connecting with nature
  • Temporal and sensorial reminders of wholeness and warmth in relations with nature
  • Realise the impossible act of hugging the visual field 
  • The body becoming in relationship with a place
  • Sharp textures into soft experiences
  • Absolute and brutal beauty of weather patterns into physically engaging comfort materials.

Magnetics In-Material weaves sensorial experience, repairing alienation by making the imaginary tactile. Woven fibres serve as temporal warmth. In creating a cultural way to connect with movements deep within the earth through touch, Magnetics In-Material weaves together traditions in art, technology, and social psychology.

 

Process & Reflexive Documentation

Utilise remnant magnetic data from organisations such as Norge’s Geologiske Undersøkelse and International Geoscience Organsiations, sourcing data to create dimensional textiles, such as jacquards with TC2 Loom technology, to show the top and inside, as interrelated surfaces. 

The process of the artistic research project based on the theory of how places making people, and study of pre-existing natural, magnetic phenomena. Magnetics are related to knowledge production in physics, the ontological question of existence whether or not humans observe the phenomenon. The process therefore involves ideas on documentation to bring human understanding with greater sensitivity with the nature. The fields have become politicised, and so the process and documentation will remain diligent to cite and source facts from peer-reviewed organisations. By exposing observations and facts alongside the project, the research already being done can come into public awareness alongside the textiles, creating site specific visual reference via Magnetics In-Material textiles.

Photographs/images, videos, writing as documentation of the process, as well as the formation of a visual database. The project can serve as a grounds for establishing a company that can bridge science and art. Organisation and design of the textiles, production, quality control and compiling the artworks to an exhibition. The goal is to eventually one day have designs created by hand at Gobelin.

   

Project Outline

Organisation and design of the textiles, production, quality control and compiling the artworks to an exhibition. The goal is to eventually one day have one of the designs created by hand at Gobelin.

    • Gather and Organise Geographic Data
    • Establish Structure for Project Elements and Publishing
    • Generate a Database of Texts, Sounds, and Visual Translations
    • Converting Geologic Frequencies into Sounds and Colour Spectrums in a Unique Aesthetic Database
    • Experimentation with Textiles for Conductivity, Sound, and Luminance Materials
    • Programming for Machine Output and Materialisation
    • Finalised Textile Production Through Machine Weaving (future goal production at Gobelin, FR)
    • Publishing of Project Elements and Results
    • Public Exhibition and Performance

 

Provisional Time Table and Work Plan

Year One 

    • Gather and Organise Geographic Data 
    • Establish Structure for reflexive project archive in an archive, web and print 
    • Converting Geologic Frequencies into Sounds and Colour
      Spectrums creating a Unique Database 
    • Weave Textile Designs from this Database 
    • Experiment with Materials for Conductivity, Sound,
      Luminance 
    • Produce Digitally Woven Samples 

Year Two 

    • Finalised Textile Production via Digital/Hand Machine
      Weaving 
    • Publishing of Project Elements, Reflexive Documentation
      (including video) and Results 
    • Choreography for the final exhibition 
    • Public Exhibition and Performance 
    • Finalisation & Publishing 
    • Process for therapeutic or social integration

Year Three And Beyond

    • Finalised Textile Production Through Machine Weaving
    • Publishing of Project Elements and Results 
    • Public Exhibition and Performance 
    • Finalisation & Publishing of Pedagogical Methodology (Possible Therapeutic or Social Integration Uses)

Year Four +Beyond

    • After first publication of dissertation and exhibition, repeat the process and production for more sites for exhibition and performance.

 

Budget

Potential Project Related Expenses

    • Workspace for production, shipping, or textile storage
    • Labor (personal or assistants), use of weaving machine: https://www.digitalweaving.no/product/ 
    • Sourcing yarns, fibres, and experimental materials (ex. copper or fibre optics)
    • Scholarships, Embassy Support, private donors, teaching fellowship, public workshops
    • Norge’s Geologiske Undersøkelse data is openly available for use
    • Travel for conferences, exhibitions, professional presentations, necessary networking 

 

Texts, Books, Journals, Research

Remnant Magnetism, https://www.britannica.com/science/remanent-magnetism
Norske Geologiske Undersøkelse, https://www.ngu.no 

Remanent magnetism (Paleomagnetism) or the permanent magnetism in rocks, resulting from the orientation of the Earth’s magnetic field at the time of rock formation in a past geological age is the source of information for the paleomagnetic studies of polar wandering and continental drift. Remanent magnetism can derive from several natural processes. This arises when magnetic minerals forming in igneous rocks cool through the Curie point and when the magnetic domains within the individual minerals align themselves with the Earth’s magnetic field, thus making a permanent record of its orientation. 

A second mechanism operates when small grains of magnetic minerals settle into a sedimentary matrix, producing detrital remanent magnetism. It is hypothesised that the tiny grains orient themselves in the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field during deposition and before the final consolidation of the rock. The magnetism thus introduced appears to persist through later alteration and compaction of the rock. 

Rocks may acquire remanent magnetism in at least two other ways: (1) rocks made up of nonmagnetic minerals chemically altered to yield magnetic minerals, and these newly formed minerals acquire remanent magnetism in the presence of the Earth’s magnetic field; and (2) igneous rocks already cooled may acquire remanent magnetism by a process called viscous magnetization. The difference between these types of remanent magnetism can be determined; magnetic history of a particular rock can therefore be interpreted via 6 basic types of magnetisation: (1) diamagnetism, (2) paramagnetism, (3) ferromagnetism, (4) antiferromagnetism, (5) ferrimagnetism, (6) superparamagnetism. 

 

Bibliography

Batchelor, David, Chromophobia, Reaktion Press, 2000.

Batchelor, David, The Luminous and the Gray, Reaktion Press, 2014.

Dragesund, Tove, and Alice Kvåle. “Study protocol for Norwegian Psychomotor Physiotherapy versus Cognitive Patient Education in combination with active individualized physiotherapy in patients with long-lasting musculoskeletal pain – a randomized controlled trial.” BMC musculoskeletal disorders vol. 17 325. 5 Aug. 2016, doi:10.1186/s12891-016-1159-8, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4974790/

Eco, Umberto, The Open Work, Harvard Univerity Press, 1989.

Eco, Umberto, Travels in Hyper Reality, Gruppo Editoriale, 1983

Eco, Umberto, Chronicles of a Liquid Society, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.

Ghezzo, Marta Arkossy, Solfege, Ear Training, Rhythm, Dictation, and Music Theory: A Comprehensive Course 3rd Edition, University Alabama Press, June 2005.

Haugeland, John, Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea, A Bradford Book, 1985.

Johnson, Don, The Protean Body, Harpercollins, 1977.

Klempe, Sven Hroar, Cultural Psychology of Musical Experience, Information Age Publishing, 2016.

Mansoor, Asma, De-Anthropologising the Human and its Impact on Racism: A Third World Perspective Proceedings of A Body of Knowledge, Embodied Cognition and the Arts Conference CTSA UCI, 8-10 Dec 2016, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ds0r585

Mate, Gabor, When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection. Wiley, January 2011.

Mate, Gabor, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction, North Atlantic Books, 2008.

Noë, Alva, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, Hill and Wang, September 2015. Noë, Alva, Varieties of Presence, Harvard University Press, 2009.

Noë, Alva, Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness, Hill and Wang, February 2009.

Sapowlsky, Robert, (neuroendocrinologist, author, professor of biology, neurology and neurological sciences) Stanford Lectures, published by Stanford University on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA

Scarry, Elaine, The Body in Pain, Oxford University Press, 1984.

Scarry, Elaine, On Beauty and Being Just, Princeton University Press, 1999.

Scarry, Elaine, Thinking In An Emergency, W.W. Norton & Company, March 2014.

Scarry, Elaine, Resisting Representation, Oxford University Press, 1994.

Scwhenk, Theodore, Sensitive Chaos, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1965.

Van Der Kolk, Bessel A. M.D., The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Penguin Random House, September 2014.

 

Artists

Ingrid Aarset’s work with textiles and technology.

Lygia Pape and Lygia Clarke, for their contributions to performances using textiles and groups of human bodies.

Pedro Gomez-Egaña for the spiritual in the technological age.

Amanda Steggel’s, Mind the Gap, work with synthesia and for mapping the way sounds relate to colors and energy centres of the body.

Dorothea Tanning’s surrealism to make the invisible but felt senses of lived experience tactile, formal, pictorial and spacial. 

Live Bugge’s, The Other Wild, for investigations on the boundaries on behavior and transgressions. 

Katrine Koster Holst’s work on the landscape changing over time.

Geir Harald Semuelsen’s work with light. 

Francesca Capone’s direct, literal, blocks discerning patterns.

 

Ethical Considerations

Privacy, GDPR, internet laws and regulations to access and storage of data, legal consent, public information, and privacy of individual contributions will be considered.

Translating data must be understood from the perspective of artistic choices, underlined by the effort to maintain elemental integrity. Considering subjectivity in processes borrowed from scientific methodology, actual realised results cannot be considered wholly objective. This shall be acknowledged, questioned, written, and shared in presentations, publications, and future developments from the Magnetics In-Material project.

The research methodologies to be considered as critical or negotiable features for future research methodologies and with the possibility for other institutional use, pedagogical developments in the realm of private or government institutions, or public domain.

The research and pedagogical approach developed during the project are free to be used for running workshops and courses alongside the project. These courses can be used for enriching local cultural exchange, as an educational resource and site for additional funding of the project.

Resourcing local production to minimise international shipping or travel expenses.

Insurance for the artwork, machines, materials, and data, to be purchased and maintained throughout the duration of the research and productions thereafter.

Language, writing and documentation will be reviewed for facts and technical accuracy. The number of unforeseeable ethical considerations will be consulted through the advisory team, faculty, and staff, considering international copyright and intellectual property laws.

 

 

AFJORDANCE 2019

Posted on by Rachel Wolfe

 

 

AFJORDANCE, 2019, single channel video, soundtrack composed by the digital armature joint movements referencing an open source audio library of wind. The video looks at the new complexities emerging in Artificial Intelligence, the ways humans create mirrored structures, and affordances in the notions of Intelligence itself. Exhibited in California, Norway, and Italy.

February 2020, Corwin Pavilion, University of California Santa Barbara for AWMAS Conference.

March 2020, Arteriet, Kvinnekroppen Utstillingen, Kristiansand, Norway.

October-November 2020, LoosenArt at Millepiani, Rome, Italy.

 
Norwegian: AFJORDANCE, 2019, er i enkeltkanals video, med lydspor komponert av de digitale armaturleddbevegelsene som refererer til et lydbibliotek med åpen kildekode for vind. Videoen ser på de nye kompleksitetene som dukker opp i kunstig intelligens, måtene mennesker lager speilvendte strukturer og overkommelige i forestillingene om intelligens i seg selv. )
 

Performance & Edit, Rachel Wolfe www.rachelwolfe.com

Affordance Technologist, Harald de Bondt www.movingmaking.com

Videography, Børge Indergaard www.indergaard.net

 

 

FULL TEXT

AFJORDANCE, 2019, Approximate run time 13:50 minutes, single channel video (with audio).

Affordance is what the environment offers the individual, and refers to all action possibilities depending on users’ physical capabilities. For example, a chair “affords” being “sat on,” “thrown,” “stood on,” and a continuing use of probabilities. James J. Gibson, coined the term “affordance.” The video portrays a dance at the fjord as movement research for technology lab-work.The project developed from the Solfège Souche video performance. The relationship between the human body and the natural world remains full of misunderstandings and spaces for insight. As Artificial Intelligence becomes part of human life, and human relations are increasingly dependent on technological screens and interfaces, the question of what is knowing and the way Intelligence is understood comes into question in the video. The wind sound in Afjordance are from open source libraries. The composition is made by refercing the joints in the wire frame armature. This armature positioned antagonistically opposed to the fully covered body. The body becomes a form without much identity other than it shows the proportions of a female body. The wire frame of the body becomes the composer, making a track of wind sounds as an echo of the movements of the body. The feminine as a figure of the earth or “mother nature” in certain instances is faced with the exorcised image of itself which can scarcely mirror the motions from the limited human body. The video is intended to be projected with sound, to create an immersive experience for viewers to consider the themes of technology, the body, nature elements. The experience provides a multi-sensory meditation on the possible meanings and implications of the emergent technology.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ARTISTIC RESEARCH: DRAFT FOR JOURNAL

 

 

 

SOLFEGE SOUCHE 2018

Posted on by Rachel Wolfe

 

SOLFEGE SOUCHE, 2018, single-channel video, sound composition and arrangement.

February 2019, Palazzo Michiel, Strada Nova, 4391, 30121 Campo Santi Apostoli, Venezia, Italy

June 2019, CICA Museum,Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA), Gyeonggi-do, South Korea

October 2020, “The Performer”, LoosenArt, Millipiani, Rome, Italy

“I love the way the figure is emerges then blends back into its surroundings, it is how I feel in the wild parts of Skye as if I am the landscape. The light is beautiful. It isn’t like Bill Viola’s work, but it has the same emotional effect on me.” -Joan Foye, UK

 

 

A Solfège Souche is by definition the root of a forgotten connection with nature.

In our time of rapidly increasing use of technology in everyday life, we face incessant streams of new questions mirroring the ethical and moral lines. This space framed in the video asks the body questions of identity and presence: Is it dangerous if we do not know what we stand to lose? The body itself dances with the nature, merging and emerging from shadows and light. The body becomes a form for drawing lines, through movements. Binaural beats compose the soundtrack, reminiscent of tinnitus or ear trauma. The pitches register as psychological markers of physical events.

 

In an effort to portray a dynamic relationship with nature, instead of a dominance over nature, the Butoh-dance inspired movements recreate the way lifeforms which are cut down in the forest continually find a way to reach towards light. The Solfège Souche video performance is the foundation in the development of an affordance technology research project.

 

Solfège refers to a music education method developed to teach sight-singing and pitch accuracy. Originating in 11th century, music theorist Guido of Arezzo assigned six syllables (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la) recognized now as the major scale.

 

Ut queant laxīs resonāre fībrīs; Mīra gestōrum famulī tuōrum; Solve pollūtī labiī reātum, Sancte Iōhannēs.

 

Much later, the “ut” was changed to the open syllable “do”, “sol” sometimes to “so”, while “si” (later changed to “ti”) was added for the seventh scale-note, giving rise to the modern solfège. Souche is stump (of a tree), and in Latin means root while simultaneously referring to genealogy. Souche was also a name of an unknown virus claiming the lives of at least twenty people  (une souche virale inédite a fait au minimum vingt morts).

 

Affordance is what the environment offers the individual, and refers to all action possibilities depending on users’ physical capabilities. For example, a chair not only “affords” being “sat on,” but also “thrown,” “stood on,” and so on. James J. Gibson, coined the term “affordance.”

 

 
NORSK: Solfege Souche, 2018, enkelt kanel med lyd, filmet i Maridalen, Oslo, Norway
 
En Solfège Souche er per definisjon roten til en glemt forbindelse med naturen. I vår tid med raskt økende bruk av teknologi i hverdagen, står vi overfor kontinuerlige strømmer av nye spørsmål som speiler de etiske og moralske linjene. Dette rommet innrammet i videoen stiller kroppen spørsmål om identitet og tilstedeværelse: Er det farlig hvis vi ikke vet hva vi vil miste? Kroppen selv danser med naturen, fusjonerer og dukker opp fra skygger og lys. Kroppen blir en form for å tegne linjer, gjennom bevegelser. Binaural beats komponerer lydsporet, som minner om tinnitus eller øre traumer. Banene registreres som psykologiske markører for fysiske hendelser. I et forsøk på å skildre et dynamisk forhold til naturen, i stedet for en dominans over naturen, gjenskaper de Butoh-dans inspirerte bevegelsene måten livsformer som skjæres ned i skogen kontinuerlig finner en måte å nå mot lys på. Solfège Souche-videoopptredenen er grunnlaget for utviklingen av et teknologiundersøkelsesprosjekt.
 
Solfège viser til en musikkundervisningsmetode som er utviklet for å lære synesang og tonehøyde nøyaktighet. Musikkteoretikeren Guido fra Arezzo, som stammer fra 1200-tallet, tildelte seks stavelser (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la) anerkjent nå som den viktigste skalaen.
 
Ut queant laxīs resonāre fībrīs; Mīra gestōrum famulī tuōrum; Løs pollūtī labiī reātum, Sancte Iōhannēs.
 
Mye senere ble “ut” endret til det åpne stavelsen “do”, “sol” noen ganger til “so”, mens “si” (senere endret til “ti”) ble lagt til for den syvende skalaenheten, noe som ga opphav til den moderne solfège. Souche er stubbe (av et tre), og på latin betyr rot, samtidig som det refereres til slektsforskning. Souche var også et navn på et ukjent virus som forlangte minst tjue menneskers liv (une souche virale inédite a fait au minimum vingt morts).
 
Affordance er det miljøet tilbyr den enkelte, og refererer til alle handlingsmuligheter avhengig av brukernes fysiske evner. For eksempel, en stol ikke bare “gir” å være “satt på”, men også “kastet,” “sto på,” og så videre. James J. Gibson, myntet begrepet “affordance.”
 
 

FIBERS

Posted on by Rachel Wolfe

Ongoing fiber art projects and commissions. The fibers are sourced from shops in Norway. A wool/acrylic blend is often knitted with Alpaca and/or silk/mohair threads. The fibers used are naturally anti-microbial and can be aired-out, spot or dry-cleaned. 

For commissions contact Rachel at: rachel@rachelwolfe.com

 

 

Kjerringøy Scarves, 2020, single colour wool with mohair/alpaca/acrylic accent. Sold.

      [INSER SLIDER]

 

 

Out of the Blue, 2020, single colour wool/acrylic blend with silk mohair accent, Sold.

 

 

 

Sedona Woolie, 2020, single colour wool/acrylic blend with silk mohair accent, Sold.

My super duper cosy and SOFT woolie made by @rachelwolfeartist makes me feel luxurious.

-Tonya Hansen, Colorado, USA

 

 

 

 

Mustard Woolie, 2020, single colour wool/acrylic blend with silk mohair accent, Sold.

 

 

 

Butterscotch Scarf, 2020, single colour wool/acrylic blend with silk mohair accent, commissioned.

 

 

 

Neapolitan Woolie, 2020, single colour wool/acrylic blend with silk mohair accent, commissioned.

If you’re looking for a gift @rachelwolfeartist is amazing to work with. We designed this to match my winter coat. Absolutely adore her and her work.

-Tracy Goodheart, Evanston, Illinois, USA

 

 

 

 

Nordic Lys Scarf, 2020, single colour wool/acrylic blend with silk mohair accent, commissioned.

 

 

 

Desert Sands Woolie, 2020, single colour wool/acrylic blend with silk mohair accent, commissioned.

My WOOLIE is soft and cozy; the perfect thing to keep my neck warm on cold days and nights. Rachel took the time to choose colors that fit my taste and personality. Thank you!

-Jonathan Skurnik, California, USA

 

 

 

 

Nordic Sol Wrap, 2020, single colour cotton with two-wool, collected by an artist in Italy.

 

 

 

 

Denison Borealis Blanket, 2018, dip-dye alpaca, wool bland.

Delicious and soft wool plaid, which can warm even on the coldest days and it does not scratch.

I use it both as a blanket, bedspread and plaid and since wool is unique in being able to insulate against both heat and cold, it is in use all year round. Wool is nature’s own choice of clothes, and therefore also my choice. -John Wagner, Denmark

The knitted scarf we received was crafted of fibers balanced just right together.  Not just the colors but the combinations of material working in harmony and creating a piece that is timeless!

Glad to know you have been working more with the knitted pieces.  It seems to me different types of materials will have a different energy to them even and I don’t think many people get that like you do. I like to think about how the very small things in life such as a wool thread or microbes inside and outside us all are such valuable neighbours. It seems many times we think that only certain aspects of our mind or statuses are what matters to one another, but there is so much that makes us each up and weaves together. In fact so much more than we likely know about our own being let alone each other. Life is a precious and good thing and what an opportunity we have each day we wake up.

 -Kurt, Michigan, USA

 

 

 

 

Cake Comfort Pillow, 2019, multi-coloured wool, pillow, sold to collector in Los Angeles.

 

 

 

 

Ovalo Woolie, 2019,  single colour wool/acrylic blend, commissioned by an artist for a family gift.

 

 

 

 

Bellarus Woolie, 2019, single colour wool/acrylic blend, single colour alpaca. Commissioned by a client as a gift for a family member abroad in Bellarus.

 

 

 

 

Stein Scarf, 2019,  single colour wool/acrylic blend, single colour alpaca. Commissioned by a muscian, educator, and public service professional in Los Angeles, California.

 

 

 

 

Rock ‘n Roll Woolie, 2019, single colour wool/acrylic blend, multi-colour alpaca, commissioned by a designer and business owner in Oslo, for his daughter.

 

 

 

 

Hauge Bliss Wrap, 2019,  single colour wool/acrylic blend, single colour alpaca. Commissioned by an Osteopath in Oslo, Norway.

 

 

 

 

Silverberg Tree Scarf, 2016-2017, dip-dye brown wool, white and maroon alpaca.

Scarf with poem purchased by nature scientist and geographer. “As rings on a tree, this soft wrap grew, knitted, unearthing, mighty threads of soft white into rounds, encircling, a body warm.”

 

 

 

 

Wagner Vein Blanket, 2017,  two-colour wool. Purchased by an artist & collector.

 

 

Keeping warm. The relationship between the mind and the body can be most directly understood by experience. As feeling and sensation are subjective, individual territory, the Vein Blanket uses colours to visualise pathways in which circulation travels around the body. The weight of this blanket makes carrying and transport something considered, to not take lightly. As the body and its contents and discontents worth weighing. The warmth of this blanket, producing a by-the-fire experience in the frigid Norwegian winters.

 

 

 

Yun Bundle, 2016, dip-dyed acrylic, cotton blend baby blanket. Gifted.

 

 

Keeping cool. Transitioning from the body into the world marks quite often a change in temperature and a temporary change in temperament. The dyed yarn symbolises the transitioning from one space to another, and is knit in a loose manner to allow air to circulate freely when wrapped around the body. The blanket was made for a friend in the early stages of second gestation. The blanket was made to be a shared item between the siblings, to keep cool and also protected in the humid Korean summers.

 

 

 

Gottardo Florence Mohair, 2016, single coloured mohair. Gifted.

 

 

A mother and her daughter will share so much. This wrap was made to function both as blanket, as scarf, shawl, and represent the bond between a mother and daughter.

 

 

 

First fibers materialise dreams and psyche-textures.

 

  • First project in high school art course.

 

Waterfall Tapestry.  A failed art class assignment from a dream: A waterfall flowing from a forest, stones at the bottom.

Stop Smoking Swath. Early days, learning the basics as a means to stop smoking. Seems obvious in the result.

Handmade Pillows. Working with found materials from Oma. Fabrics and buttons from another time.

Red Scarf in the Sun.  A scarf thick enough to protect the neck and hold up the head.

Fog Blanket. Working with wool from Ukrainian sheep, dyed in the color of the foggy nordic sky.

Various Scarves. Two material and single material scarves.

 

 

SECURITY BLANKET (TROUBLEWEED)

Posted on by Rachel Wolfe

 

Installation with Security blanket (troubleweed), 2015, installation, Bolsky Gallery, Los Angeles, California, traveling object. Materials: Photographic print on bathing towel (troubleweed), wooden monkey, dried roses, clear plexi, twine, golden clamps, cotton bags of salt labeled “take me.” A few left with visitors to the exhibition.

 

The installation explores symbolic and literal functions of narrative. Symbolic objects specifically arranged to materialise ideas, or cognitive “things”: Boundary, Grief, Security, Transparency, and Choice.

Troubleweed (photographic print on bathing towel) was sent via USPS & photographed by artists, continuing the installations thematic elements: Trust, Transparency, Choice, Cooperation, Resource. The tumbleweed, as an associated symbol of the western desert, found its way into the Los Angeles River during a drought. During a time of environmental drought, the representation of a prickly ball on a soft surface continued to travel across the United States, depicted by artists in their location and within the relationship of their praxis of art and ways of living.

The traveling Troubleweed bathing towel looks at the question: Can an inanimate object traveling through space and time, via the interdependent wills of artists offer insight into the values which constitute a nation?  

After the installation transformed into an ongoing body of work, the archive became an accumulation of bodies of labor, in the time of the internet, where communication and the quality of sincerity is questioned to exist and critiqued as sentimental. The travel archive and final resting place of the work, extends the original metaphor and metaphysical propositions of the original installation.

There were no time constraints on the project. The premise of not having a time constraint looks at the line or levy of personal will. The USPS, once carried by horse and now by horse power and machine sorting assistants, still require the human as critical points within a functional system. The project works as an aggregate of an experiment. At each destination, the towel encounters photographic documentation. The act of imaging as a personal motive and labor are made as free choice.

As much as records provide proof, the archive seeks to underline the existence of motives rooted in: care, play, trust, and free-will, within systems of commodity and capital. Connecting people across Time (zones) and Space (geography), factors often considered to destroy human bonds, the Troubleweed bathing towel project reveal the peculiar value ascribed to an inanimate object is not in the object itself, but in the intangible values that constitute its traverse through Space and Time. As Douglas Adams once described in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: a towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.

In 2020 the Troubleweed bathing towel, hitchhiked through the labors of artists, found its resting place in Santa Rosa, California, where the towel found a home. Alas the story inevitably continues, though outside the parameters of surveillance the record of archives the traveling component of this work imposed .  

 

 

Original film image of an Ojai tumbleweed in the Los Angeles River at Culver City.



 

Troubleweed bathing towel photographed as hypothetical bathing towel at Bygdøy Sjobad, Oslo, Norway, 2016.

 

 

 

 

Troubleweed bathing towel by Mark Uhalley, Los Angeles, California, 2017. Mark’s Vimeo channel.

 

 

 

 

Troubleweed bathing towel by Bryan Bankston, Richmond, Texas, 2017. Bryan’s Photography page on Facebook.

 

 

 

Troubleweed bathing towel by Stephanie Larson, Fort Myers, Florida, 2017. @wellspringwonder

 

 

 

 

Troubleweed bathing towel by Christina Song, Chicago, Illinois, 2017. @softycreamy

 

 

 

Troubleweed bathing towel by Maggie Meiners, 2017. @maggiemeinersphotography

 

 

 

Troubleweed bathing towel by Justine Genevieve Bianco, Palo Alto, 2017.

 

 

 

Troubleweed bathing towel by Brett Manning, Royal Center, Indiana, 2018.

Brett’s Instagram & Etsy Shoppe.

 

 

Troubleweed bathing towel by Maren’s Celest, Chicago, Illinois, 2018.

Maren’s Instagram and her new album on Spotify.

 

 

 

 

Troubleweed bathing towel by Yulia Morris, Los Angeles, California, 2019. Yulia’s Instagram.

 

 

 

FINAL RESTING PLACE

Troubleweed bathing towel by artist Peter Alan, Santa Rosa, California, 2020.

 

 

SUSPENDED PLANES 2015

Posted on by Rachel Wolfe

 

 

SUSPENDED PLANES, 2015, Installation, Configurations 1.0-4.0, Culver City, CA

Two square planes, one clear and one glossy black paint, suspended by tension from which nails affix twine to the wall. Painted gold clamps grasp each corner, as twine slips through. A projection of light passes onto, through, and around the planes as a meditation on words written by Kafka, “We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds.”  In a single-reflex system, such a quote appears articulated from observable reality, as each configuration assigning a new variable, shows the limits of such a system. Viewers are able to physically navigate this single reflex system, with the aim to point to multiple systems of the their bodies to enable and dismantle a singular-reflex system. The final configuration 4,0 leading to a direct experience of the single-reflex planes obfuscation of bodily projection.

 

 

Materials 1.0 Twine, nail, clamp, gold and black gloss paint, two panels of acrylic 40.64 x 40.64cm 2.0 Same as above with projected light 3.0 Same as above with projected video 4.0 Same as above with projected video

 

 

RachelWolfe_TwoPlanes_web-2_1750

RachelWolfe_TwoPlanes_web-4_1267

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POWER PLANTS PIANO 2015

Posted on by Rachel Wolfe

 

 

 

POWER PLANTS PIANO, 2015, Installation, Culver City, CA.

“Death of the Artist” installation involving: Blue paint, two square mirrors, 8 potted palms, 7 potted mums, tree bench covered in epoxy, Casio piano on stand, skylight.

Note: Play the video with sound on to receive the serendipitous conversation.