By Remi Adeoti
The first weaving I attempted was inspired by the idea of natural vs synthetic. As I started the process I wanted the synthetic/plastic materials to look like they were choking the plastic. One surprise was how many methods I had to try in order to use the natural items, that ended up being my biggest challenge. The biggest challenge I had was manipulating the natural items in order to weave it through, whether that was bending them beforehand, tying them together or folding them. I think I did get the look of nature not having room to flourish because of the presence of synthetic materials and I was also able to play around with the materials at the same time, fo example I used bottle caps to put the stems of leaves together and I used a chopstick wrapper to tie around a leaf.
Materials
- pre-bloomed flowers
- leaves
- loose branches
- plastic water jug
- chopstick wrapper
- plastic bags
- dead/loose plat stems
- dead plant
- roots brown paper bag
- weeds
The second weaving attempt was intended to be more traditional with the use of paper. There were some elements I tried to explore like using quotes regarding misogyny in Hip-Hop but unfortunately they did not make the final piece. The intended effect of this project was to emphasize the clash in hip hop, specifically rap, between artists. The rap industry has notoriously welcomed and celebrated vulgar and hyper-sexualized messages from male artists but then have also turned around to chastise female artists who have done the same. A challenge and a surprise was trying very hard to not be confused by the weavings. There are about 3 layers of weavings and I got lost a few times because it was more than just one weaving I was trying to do correctly. A discovery that I made was that I needed more materials for how ambitious I wanted to be. I believe the use of so much paper was making it very flat and one dimensional, that is why instead of using paper as a border I tries to crochet one that wasn’t uniform. And is also why I attempted to weave the outline of the female genitalia through the entire project upon. A success I had was getting some of the more vulgar words to stick out, however I wish I did more of bolding them and increasing the font size so that those words could be seen more.
Materials:
- Paper
- Yarn
- Foam sheets