A Comparison of the Patterns Formed by Primary Textile Structures and Their Photographic Abstraction
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Rochester Institute of Technology RIT Scholar Works Theses 9-22-1976 A comparison of the patterns formed by primary textile structures and their photographic abstraction Pamela Perlman Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/theses Recommended Citation Perlman, Pamela, "A comparison of the patterns formed by primary textile structures and their photographic abstraction" (1976). Thesis. Rochester Institute of Technology. Accessed from This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by RIT Scholar Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of RIT Scholar Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Thesis Proposal for the Master of Fine Arts De gree Collee;e of Fine and Applj_ed .Arts Rochester Institute of Technology Title: A Comparison of the Fatterns Formed by Primary Textile structures and their Phot ographic Abstraction Submitted by: Pamela Anne Perlman Date: September 22, 1976 Thesis Co mm it te~: Nr . Donald Du jnowski I-Ir. I,l az Lenderman hr. Ed 1iiller Depart~ental Approval : Date :-:--g---li6~-r-71-b-r-/ ----- ---------~~~~~'~~~r------------------------- Chairman of the School for American Craftsme:l: ___-r-----,,~---- ____ Da t e : ---.:...,'?7~JtJ--J7~i,-=-~ ___ _ Chairr.ian of the Gr3.duate Prog:rarn: ------------------------~/~~/~. --- Date: ___________________~ /~~,~~;j~~, (~/_' ~i~/~: 7 / Final Committee Decision: Date: ----------------------- Thesis Proposal for the Master of Fine Arts Degree College of Fine and Applied Arts Rochester Institute of Technology Title: A Comparison of the Patterns Frmed by Primary Textile Structures and their Photographic Abstraction My concern in textiles is with structure and materials. I v/ould like to do v/all hangings based on primary textile structures such as knotting, looping, pile, balanced weaves, and tapestry. They will be done in textured fibers with high contrasts of nega tive and positive areas. These pieces will be photographed and (photographically) silkscreened onto commercial or handwoven fabrics. The printing will involve dyeing, distortion of repeats, and painting. The pieces will be hiing as a series of two causing a comparison between the patterns formed by the techniques and materials of the original pieces and their abstraction in the second. The written thesis will be a developed statement of ideas, research and documentation of techniques and materials, and bibliography . ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY A COMPARISON OF THE PATTERNS FORMED BY PRIMARY TEXTILE STRUCTURES AND THEIR (PHOTOGRAPHICALLY) PRINTED ABSTRACTIONS A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE COLLEGE OF FINE AND APPLIED ARTS IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS DEPARTMENT OF WEAVING AND TEXTILE DESIGN BY PAMELA ANNE PERLMAN ROCHESTER, NEW YORK APRIL, 1977 wYi- #> a ky:?- oy TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: MATIERE - THE INNER STRUCTURE OF MATERIALS k TWO: THE STRUCTURE OF CLOTH 7 THREE: THE STRUCTURE OF A ROOM '. 10 FOUR: THE STRUCTURE OF HANGING SILK 11 CONCLUSION 12 GLOSSARY Ik SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 18 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS LENGTH BY WIDTH BY MEDIUM DEPTH DIMENSIONS 2k" 18" Xerox #1 . .. figure drawing, craypas x 22" 22" Xerox #2. .paper and cloth collage, acrylics, colored x pencils 22" 2k" 2" Xerox #3. .handmade felt/handspun cashmere and alpaca x x 35" kk" Xerox #k. .printed silk; halftone photography, cushing x dyes, procion dyes, pencil drawing 35" 70" Xerox . .printed #5. silk; halftone photography, cushing .... x dyes, inmont inks Xerox #6. .RIT Graduate Thesis Show Installation Shot with black and white photographs 36" 2k" Xerox #7. .figure drawing, black pencil, acrylics x k5" k5" Xerox #8. .woven cloth, hemp ikated with indigo, black .... x and white photographs, RIT Graduate Thesis Show Installation Shot 6" 6" Xerox #9. .detail of Xerox #8, illustration of the Log x Cabin color effect 22" 25" Xerox #10. .handwoven and printed cloth; silk, cotton and... x linen, halftone photography, cushing dyes, inmont inks 6" 6" Xerox #11. .detail of handwoven cloth; silk, cotton and x linen, cushing dyes kk" kk" Xerox #12. .printed silk; line photography, tie-dye with.... x cushing dyes, procion dyes 36" kk" Xerox #13. .printed silk; line photography, tie-dye with.... x cushing dyes, procion dyes 36" kk" with.... Xerox #14. .printed silk; line photography, tie-dye x cushing dyes, procion dyes 33" k6" x Xerox #15. .printed cotton sateen; line photography, tie-... dye with cushing dyes, procion dyes Xerox #16... RIT Graduate Thesis Show Installation Shot with black and white photographs LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (CONT.) MEDIUM LENGTH BY WIDTH BY DEPTH DIMENSIONS 36" 2k" Xerox #17. .figure drawing, black pencil, acrylics x 36" 2k" Xerox #18. .figure drawing, black pencil, acrylics x Xerox #19...black and white photographs of the room structures and printed silks; line photography, procion dyes 18" 2k" silk on left x 30" Ik" silk on right x 15" 22" Xerox #20. .four cyanotype blues, procion dyes each x 30" 22" Xerox #21. .figure drawing, black pencil, acrylics x 30" 22" Xerox #22. .collaged paper and wax paper with acrylics x and colored pencils 30" 22" Xerox #23- .collaged paper and wax paper with acrylics x and colored pencils JO" 22" Xerox #2k. .collaged paper and wax paper with acrylics x and colored pencils 30" 22" Xerox #25* . .figure drawing, acrylics and colored pencils... x Acknowledgments My graduate studies over the last three years encompasses intensive work in textiles; fiber analysis, structures of fabrics, dyes, printing techniques and figure drawing, painting and photography. My thesis is the culmination of this work. It was not my aim to reproduce historical textile structures nor exact photographic likenesses, but rather to extract from these mediums the means to create a body of work that dealt with the abstraction and comparison of materials and processes. I am sincerely thankful for the individuals on the Rochester Institute of Technology's College of Fine and Applied Arts faculty who encouraged me in this direction; my three advisors, Mr. Donald Bujnowski and Mr. Max Lenderman in the Textile Department and Mr. Ed Miller in the Painting Department. I would also like to thank Mr. Fred Lipp in the Painting Department, Miss Kathy Collins in the School of Photography and Mr. Dan Levine in the School of Printing. 1. Introduction This thesis work is two fold. The first part is a concern with the primary structure of a fabric (the way that the cloth is put together), the materials chosen for the piece and as a result of these two, the tactile effects evoked. Each fiber has a different grain, gloss, smooth ness, roughness and size. These qualities of fiber plus the structure of the cloth are the elements a weaver exploits to achieve nap and tactile sensibility; a desire to feel the cloth between the thumb and fingers and to run the palm over the surface. Through the usage of many different fibers in various cloth constructions I have come to think of the surface characteristics, the tactile sense, as means fully expressive as line and color. The second part of my thesis work is the desire to capture the tactile sense peculiar to a piece and isolate it, disregarding all I considered non-essential to the work, ie. color, length by width dimen sions, etc., photograph this characteristic and silkscreen the image onto cloth. I wanted to work with the original image in a new medium; I wanted to explore the potential of textile dyes and inks. I did three fiber pieces based on an interplay of the fabric structures and materials chosen; a handspun/felt tapestry, a plain woven piece of cloth and wood structures covered with polyethylene. The fourth piece was a drawing. I photographed the essence, that which spoke of the surface characteristics, and printed the image onto silk cloth. I used either line or halftone photography depending on the type of image I was seeking. I did not intend and could not reproduce realis tically what I had sensed in the original piece. The photosilkscreen image is by necessity an abstraction of the original in its reduction of a three dimensional shape to two. This is further compounded by its change of scale, negation of color to negative/positive and loss of detail. The silkscreen image becomes the given. It is a constant around which I attempted to reconstruct the original interplay of structure and material through its placement, choice of the size of the 2. cloth to be printed, dyeing and painting. The flat silk cloth became a base on which to express ideas. I did three or four printed silks for each of the four originals. The two processes are quite different. Whereas the original is an assembling of different materials to form an idea/shape/image, the printed cloth reinterprets the idea using a given shape and image. I was parallelling these two textile processes with collaged paper works and figure paintings (Xerox #1 and #2) . The collaged works were made up of an assembling of different papers and fabrics. The figure paintings are a combination of black line drawing, acrylics and colored pencils within the given format of a rectangular piece of paper. Because the model would change the pose quickly, perhaps twenty-five times in a session, it afforded me the opportunity to experiment continuously with an underlying structure and a combination of different line and paint qualities. I used both paper processes, but particularly the figure drawings, as a more immediate realization of the textile construction and dyeing/printing/painting processes. My original idea was to choose one of the printed silks and hang it as a pair with the original textile. I wanted to compare the shared pattern as it appeared in the two different processes. This necessitates an equal, although not the same, importance from each and commands a tension between the two pieces.