Protest Banner Lending Library
Wednesday, 27 January 2021
Friday, 22 January 2021
1-2-3 Indigo Fructose Vat
This is the vat we made in class.
Directions on Botanical Colors website. You can also purchase all materials needed from Botanical Colors.
Go to link below for directions.
https://botanicalcolors.com/2013/02/09/make-an-easy-organic-indigo-vat/
And this link.
https://botanicalcolors.com/fructose-indigo-vat/
Friday, 15 January 2021
Silence=Death
Note:
The image below is of a a lithograph. The use of color, shape, composition and text be adapted to textiles.
Read on for images and info on the significance of the pink triangle.
1987
33 9/16 × 21 15/16 in.
In 1987, Avram Finkelstein, Brian Howard, Oliver Johnston, Charles Kreloff, Chris Lione, and Jorge Socarrás founded the SILENCE=DEATH Project to support one another in the midst of the AIDS crisis.
Inspired by the posters of the Art Workers Coalition and the Guerrilla Girls (both of whose work is on view nearby), they mobilized to spread the word about the epidemic and created the now-iconic Silence=Death poster featuring the pink triangle as a reference to Nazi persecution of LGBTQ people in the 1930s and 1940s. It became the central visual symbol of AIDS activism after it was adopted by the direct action advocacy group AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP).
HIV and AIDS remain a global health issue, with nearly 40 million people living with HIV at the end of 2017. Communities of color continue to face disproportionate effects of the disease as well as barriers to treatment. Today, ACT UP remains dedicated to their original 1987 slogan: ACT UP! FIGHT BACK! FIGHT AIDS!
The trailblazing activist and artist Keith Haring wearing a t-shirt printed with the above image.
Above graphic was originally produced by the curatorial team; they contain images and research (with permissions granted) from USHMM, Yad Veshem, Jewish Virtual Library, The Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (1990; I. Gutman, ed.). Information and data in the infographics were fact-checked by Dr. Geoffrey Megargee of the USHMM. For more information, contact Dr. Cary Lane.
The Jacket from Dachau: One Survivor’s Search for Justice, Identity, and Home
Survivors of the Holocaust frequently attribute their ability to avoid death to one main variable: luck. For Benzion Peresecki, the 15 year-old son of a delicatessen owner from Radviliškis, Lithuania, surviving the Holocaust was indeed fortunate, but came at an immense cost.
Within a span of 10 years, Benzion’s father died from a stomach ulcer, his brother was murdered by the Nazis, he was forced into a ghetto, and was imprisoned, beaten, and subjected to forced labor at the Dachau concentration camp. After liberation, Benzion spent five years in a displaced persons camp with his mother, Chiena, who herself survived a death march at the Stutthof concentration camp.
After immigrating to the United States, Benzion fought to re-establish his identity, find justice for his family’s suffering, and create a new home. Throughout his postwar years, no matter where he lived and how many times he moved, he always kept his jacket from Dachau.
Benzion never explained to his family or friends why he brought the jacket with him to New York; in fact, he never told his children that it even existed. However, keeping his jacket is consistent with other resilient actions on his part: his immigration to the United States; his search for a new, meaningful identity despite underemployment and several iterations of his name (he formally changed his name to “Ben Peres” soon after his immigration); his courage coping with the emotional and psychological stress from his traumas; his tenacious search for justice through a decades-long reparations campaign with the German government; and, his determination to support his wife, mother, and two children in New York.
On July 4, 2015, Ben’s jacket, which had been in his closet for 65 years (and 37 years after his death), was discovered at the estate sale of his home in Bellmore, Long Island by a vintage clothing collector named Jillian Eisman. Ms. Eisman’s grandfather served in the Soviet army during World War II, and her brother was killed on 9/11; so, she immediately recognized the jacket as an object of pain, understanding, comfort, and reflection with which the public should engage. She subsequently donated the jacket to the Kupferberg Holocaust Center to ensure that students and the broader community could view the jacket and understand its significance.
New York, a city of immigration, determination, tragedy, and perseverance, also plays a role in this story. Ben and his mother lived and worked in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan after their immigration. They also both received medical treatment from several New York doctors for physical and psychological injuries sustained during the Holocaust. In 1968, with modest reparations payments awarded by the German government more than 20 years after their liberation, Ben and his mother, Chiena, along with his wife, Chaya, and two children, Lorrie and Michael, were finally able to buy a permanent home in Bellmore, NY. Ben lived there until his death in 1978.
This exhibit was compiled from over 1500 documents, films, and photographs left by Ben Peres and his family that contextualize his search for justice, identity, and home after he was torn away from his Lithuanian home. The curatorial team for the exhibit included Queensborough’s own students and KHRCA interns: Peter Bandziukas, Kaitlyn Cicciariello, Gillian Farnan, Abigail Jalle, Alejandro Leal-Pulido, Daniel Nussdorf, and Nitya Ramanathan.
We encourage you to visit the reflection area in the gallery and in the online version of the exhibit, both of which are structured to document your own responses to this compelling story.
―Cary Lane, Ph.D., Curator-in-Residence, KHRCA, Assistant Professor of English
―Dan Leshem, Ph.D., Director, KHRCA
We would like to acknowledge and thank Marisa Hollywood, Assistant Director of the KHRCA, Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Dr. Geoffrey Megargee, Dr. Saulius Sužiedėlis, Jillian Eisman, Sam Widowsky, the USC Shoah Foundation, Kat Griefen, Lorrie Peres, and Michael Peres for testimonies, historical information, fact-checking, documents, images, and films that helped contextualize the artifacts in this exhibit. We also wish to thank Henry Schein, Inc. and Henry Schein Cares for their invaluable mentorship and support.
Source:
Queensborough Community College
Beginning in 1937–1938, the SS created a system of marking prisoners in concentration camps. Sewn onto uniforms, the color-coded badges identified the reason for an individual’s incarceration, with some variation among camps. The Nazis used this chart illustrating prisoner markings in the Dachau concentration camp.
Source, United States Holocaust Museum: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/artifact/chart-of-prisoner-markings
A striped overcoat of the Buchenwald camp.
Jim Crow Laws and Apratheid
JIM CROW LAWS
Source: https://naacpnewbedford.org/2021/04/lynched-yesterday/
Artist Dread Scott
New York, 2016
In 2015, Walter Scott fled for his life, stalked by a policeman who then cold bloodedly shot him in the back. We all saw the video and in response to this murder I made the artwork, “A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday.” This simple banner, printed with the eponymous words, is an update of an iconic flag that the NAACP flew from their national headquarters window in New York in the nineteen-twenties and thirties the day after someone was lynched. It read simply: “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday” and was part of a their anti-lynching campaign — a national effort to end that scourge.
During the Jim Crow era, Black people were terrorized by lynching — often public and publicized extra legal torture and murder of Black people. It was a threat that hung over all Black people who knew that for any reason or no reason whatsoever we could be killed and the killers would never be brought to justice. Now the police are playing the same role of terro
r that lynch mobs did at the turn of the century. It is a threat that hangs over all Black people, that we can be killed by the police for no reason whatsoever; for a traffic stop, for selling CDs, for selling cigarettes. Shot to death, choked to death, tasered to death. Standing still, fleeing. Shot in the chest, shot in the back. Hands up, hands down. Point blank range or at a distance. And the police never face justice for their crimes. Like lynchers in the Jim Crow era, there can be eye witnesses, and now even video evidence, and yet the police get away with murder.
My art often looks at how the past sets the stage for the present but also exists in the present in new form. This artwork is an unfortunately necessary update to address a horror from the past that is haunting us in the present.
Responding to the recent police killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, this updated flag was a last minute addition to For Freedoms at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York (July 2016). It was an unusual, bold, courageous and fitting decision for the gallery to decide to include “A Man Was Lynched…” The art was displayed on the outside of the gallery in a highly visible manner in a way that was evocative of the NAACP presentation. Immediately people responded and initiated a much needed wider conversation, leading to coverage in the New York Times, PBS Newshour Magazine, Fox News, Hyperallergic, Artnet.com and on social media.
There is an epidemic of police killing people. 1,134 stolen lives in 2015 alone. Around the country, people are deeply concerned and taking action—from determined protest shutting down streets to respected athletes, musicians and artists are making powerful statements and art. This is inspiring and needs to grow. I’m glad for A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday to be part of the growing dissent and ferment as people act to end police terror.
Source is artist website: https://www.dreadscott.net/portfolio_page/a-man-was-lynched-by-police-yesterday/
BOYCOTTING APARTHEID
The Anti-Apartheid Movement’s local groups gave it a presence all over Britain. Some groups had hundreds of members and links to trade unions, churches and community organisations. Others were kept going by a few dedicated activists.
Anti-apartheid groups campaigned to end British links with South Africa within their local communities. They asked shoppers to boycott South African goods and pressed local branches of supermarket chains like Tesco and Sainsbury’s to stop selling them. They handed out leaflets outside Barclays Bank and Shell petrol stations explaining how the companies supported apartheid. Source link: https://www.aamarchives.org/who-was-involved/local-aa-groups.html
The People’s History Museum in Manchester, England, is the UK’s national centre for the collection, interpretation and study of material relating to the history of working people in the UK and it has a fabulous collection of protest banners from the last 150 years. For any Union members considering how to activate support for radical action in fashion, banner making might be the perfect place to start… It is also an activity that can potentially be combined with a Local Assembly and with the upswing in marches and school strikes, there may be plenty of opportunities to take it onto the streets or certainly adorn our studios, offices and classrooms.
The protest banners at the People’s History Museum combine fabric, stitch, paint, iron-on interfacing, fringe (lots of fringe). The base cloth varies from silk to polyester and cotton. Some are huge, some small.
Below is one image from the website. Website also has banners representing organizations. Go to link to see more. https://concernedresearchers.org/protest-banners-at-the-peoples-history-museum/
Colchester apartheid group, 1960.
Black cotton, lettering and design in iron-on polyester interfacing
Black cotton, lettering and design in iron-on polyester interfacing
Hackney and Tower Hamlets AA Group protesting outside an exhibition sponsored by Barclays Bank in Tower Hamlets Town Hall, east London in 1985. Barclays was the biggest high street bank in South Africa. Copyright © Petite Barbara
Allison Davis, Student Work, 2020
Personal Banner
that was incorporated into a large scale personal project.
In-process photo of final solution.
Approx. 5' x 7'
Cotton fabric, paint, gesso, thread,
cotton stained with berries, turmeric and black tea.
Breonna Taylor
George Floyd
Photos of each person. Use Illustrator to block out the design.
Print out and use as stencils.
Links for Materials and Resources
Dharma Trading Company
Take the time to explore the website for materials and ideas. If you are new to textile/dye, I suggest calling before you purchase to make sure the materials you selected are the correct choice for your project. The phone number appears on website. I have also included below.
- https://www.dharmatrading.com/
- (800) 542-5227
A few suggestions for fabric from Dharma Trading Company.
- Kona Cotton PFD. Prepared for dyeing, no pre-washing, ready to place in dye pot (with a pre-soak in clean water). Also available in 60". Link to 45" below.
- https://www.dharmatrading.com/fabric/cotton/kona-cotton-pfd-45-inch.html?lnav=default.html
- From the website:
- Generally speaking, a PFD item:
- Has had no optic whiteners added and is off-white in color.
- Is sewn with cotton thread (so the stitching dyes the same color).
- Is usually cut oversize because it is understood that the garment is going to be dyed and will shrink.
- Silk. Option to purchase with hand-rolled-hems (this means the edges of the silk are not rough cut (not frayed, have a finished edge).
Botanical Colors
In-person students - the dyes we use in class are ordered from Botanical Colors. The website is a wonderful source of information and included dyeing instructions. I also suggest signing up for the newsletter. Check out the site in case you want to order your own.
Stony Creek Colors
Purchase natural dyes, recipes, tutorials.
https://www.stonycreekcolors.com/
Fab Scrap
You can order bundles of recycled fabric.
Spoon Flower
This company will print your design on fabric.
Catherine Ellis
She is our guru of North American natural dyes. Catharine teaches and travels internationally in order to gather as much information as she can, and is eager to share. Blog link:
https://blog.ellistextiles.com/
Turkey Red Journal
Sunday, 13 September 2020
Aboubakar Fofana, Artist
Les arbres à bleus
First exhibited: Chapelle Saint Maudez-Lesneven, France 2012
handspun and handwoven Malian cotton, natural loofah sponges, fermented vegetable indigo
In West Africa, trees are considered like ancestors. They live for such long times and they see so much – they bear witness and hold secrets for the communities around them. They provide nourishment, protection from the elements, and many other essential things. This work is about the reverence we have for trees, their power and presence, and their wisdom. It is also about the alchemy of indigo. Held in the leaves of the indigo plant is a blue pigment that can only be made visible under certain conditions. The magic of how green leaves can make so many shades of blue is a tangible example of how plants nourish us on so many levels, not just providing food and shelter, but even clothing us in their fibres and colours, and linking us spiritually with the natural world.
Artist Website. https://www.aboubakarfofana.com/artists#/abres-a-bleu
Friday, 11 September 2020
Kirsten Perrotta, Student Work
Ball point pen and pencil on fabric dipped in turmeric.
Ball point pen and pencil on fabric.
Thursday, 10 September 2020
Kate Barker, Student Work
A collection of pieces made for the Personal Project Assignment.
Cotton soaked in red onion skins, personal letter sewn inside.
Sewing machine stitched.
Thinking of You
There are moments and memories in one’s life that you wish could remain forever, safe and untouched in their purest form. Pleasant Memories hold a softness to them they are fond and comforting to go back and revisit in times of unrest, but like most things time can take its toll and memories can be forgotten or a new event may take place and ruin the once pleasant memory and turn it into something painful. The desire to preserve what we love is natural, we as human beings do not handle loss in a positive manner, it can be raw, it can hurt, but in this work I wanted to hold on to that desire to preserve what makes us content. The letter itself is significant to me in a way only I will understand, but by wrapping it in a soft semi see through fabric it blurs that personal nature to suit any viewer in hopes to evoke the memories they associate with the item to overcome their subconscious.
Fragile is Feminine
Shattered Tea cup and Plate, Fabric Stained with Blueberries
In a symbolic form of mending as a transformational experience, I mended broken china in an attempt to make the cracks themselves more beautiful
Handstitched on cotton stained with ink.
Vascular
Inspired by the organic marks found within the body, mainly the veins that make up the Cardiovascular system. The image of veins has always reminded me of unraveling threads that trail throughout the body, so it came naturally to me to desire to convey this imagery through my work. For this piece I used watercolor to create a blending color field in the background and followed the marks with stitching as to replicate the veins in the body as they would follow the paths made by tissue.
Fugitive
A fugitive item is one that will not hold permanence in this world, decay and destruction comes for all things. The many holes create a sense of fragility.
Saturday, 25 July 2020
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
Clare Cassidy Rhys Conner Gem Hansen Hayley Harris Julia Hewitt Sophia Johnston Laurel Koschal Owen Lindsey Colin Locatell Alaina Medina E...
-
Hannah Garrido Personal Banner Garrido Details of Personal Banner Hannah Garrido Club Banner Socialables Club Members with Banner Miranda...