For my project, I wanted to make a bojagi tapestry as a way of reconnecting with my Korean heritage. Having lived in Chile ever since I was born, I didn’t have much exposure to Korean culture, traditions, and history, but through this course I was able to learn about bojagi. The geometric shapes and airy translucency of the fabrics used in many traditional bojagi caught my eye. The way the light shines through the cloth also reminded me of stained glass and how it historically was used as a decorative means of storytelling through intricate designs and various colors. I wanted to take that concept and apply it in the form of bojagi, as well as embrace the collage/scrapbook-like quality of the patchworking nature of this artform.
I wanted the overall tapestry to look like separate but connected fragments of my memories of family and home, which I attempted to portray through faded old photos printed onto white fabric. The other pieces of fabric were similarly translucent and of varying “shades” of white or near-white colors. I had also saved a sheet of paper-like fabric with a traditional Korean print on it that, if I recall correctly, came from some sort of packaging for fruit. By including this paper fabric, it really felt as though I was creating a sort of scrapbook, where I decoratively put small artifacts or mementos as part of a whole collection of other memories.
The embroidered portions were meant to be more like symbols as well as decorative. During my gap year in Korea this past year, I learned that Koreans have so many different ways of eating and preparing persimmons, and so there are multiple ways of calling the fruit. Persimmons are also one of the fruits that I associate with a lot of memories of my family, so I wanted to incorporate it onto the bojagi. The lotus roots also hold a lot of significance to me, specifically in the bond I have with my dad, whom I had had some trouble understanding and bonding with prior to my gap year in Korea.
I wanted my tapestry to be larger, both in width and length, but due to time constraints I was unable to reach that size. I underestimated the time it took to assemble the entire bojagi, especially because I did not have a set plan or draft of how I wanted the overall layout to look like. I decided that I liked the more “do as you go” sort of methodology that is often done in scrapbooking. There was still a bit of planning because I had to make sure I spaced out the different fabrics well enough and because I had to make sure the rectangles of fabric would fit together nicely like puzzle pieces. Yet, I did not restrict myself by establishing a defined, detailed course of action in order to hone into the free and calm manner that memories come as they do.
Using the embroidery machine for the first time was challenging, as it took me some time to learn about how and why certain problems arose, like the size of the pattern being embroidered would often cause the thread to break. I also faced a few issues when sewing the bojagi pieces together on the sewing machine. I had to sew very close to the edges, so sometimes I’d stray too far into the fabric or too far out and sew the air instead. Some seams also got too thick for the sewing machine to go through it or the folds of the fabric were not staying in place the way I wanted them to, so I had to hand-sew them. I liked this problem I faced, though, because it made me try out stitching it in the traditional way that bojagi is hand-sewn and also gives it a slightly different look, as part of the stitching becomes visible.
Overall, I am very pleased with how my tapestry turned out. I was afraid I was not going to be able to achieve the airy and clean look that I associate bojagi with, but I was able to sew and piece the fabrics together. There were some wrinkles here and there that arose due to the way I sewed them on the machine, so I think that if I were to do it all by hand, I might not encounter the same issue as much. Or if I more meticulously planned and measured my pieces of fabric, I may have encountered fewer rough seams.
For the past week, I have been familiarizing myself with hand embroidering and brainstorming/sketching designs that I would like to hand or machine embroider onto my bojagi piece. Most recently, I began sketching branches, leaves, and persimmons on Adobe Illustrator to potentially use it for machine embroidering. I’m waiting to see how machine embroidering may or may not work on more transparent fabrics like ramie to see if machine embroidering is a tool that will be useful for me.
I’m still brainstorming ideas for the overall layout of the bojagi. I feel like my mind has been very scattered with this idea, so I need some more time to sit down and focus on painting a better picture of what it is that I ultimately want to create.
Until my fabrics arrive, I will fully develop my bojagi layout and finish drafting the illustrations for embroidery.
]]>Having lived in Chile for most of my life and then moving to Pittsburgh for college, I have always felt a sort of distance and estrangement from Korean culture. My parents have always made huge efforts to teach my brother and me Korean and about Korean culture, traditions, history, etc., but there is still so much that I don’t even know that I don’t know…
Prior to taking this class, I had seen bojagi before but never knew what it was called, what it was used for, its history. But upon learning more about this familiar-looking piece of Korean culture, I became more interested in it. For my final project, I want to explore the craft of making bojagi and make some designs that tie in my bonds and memories with my family together through bojagi.
My preliminary idea for my project is multiple hanging sheets of bojagi. Bojagi reminds me of stained glass windows, so I’m considering taking the idea of how stained glass windows historically have been used for storytelling and implementing it to my bojagi sheets in the form of my memories of and bonds to my family and Korean culture. I’m currently also considering including some embroidery onto the sheets.
materials
- ramie fabric
- sewing thread & needles
- sewing machine (?)
- embroidery thread & needles
- embroidery machine (?)
timeline
Tue. 11/23 – Sat. 11/27
- further develop ideas for form, shape, colors
- explore & experiment with techniques
- finalize designs
- gather materials
Sun. 11/28 – Fri. 12/03
- assemble bojagi sheet(s)
Sat. 12/04 – Tue. 12/07
- explore computerized/hand embroidery
Wed. 12/08
- final touches
- Playthings/toys of the future, what is comforting and fun/entertaining for the people of the future and how does that reflect their conditions/stressors
- Stuffed teddy bear, circus animals.
- Voodoo teddy?
- What is considered ornate/expensive in the future? How do different classes differentiate themselves by clothing
- Quilting and using recycled materials
- What do future generations think of us? What objects from now are kept in museum collections and capture the social moment of today?
100 Ideas
- Felted trinkets/money
- Tapestry weaving of overgrown building
- Representing the original object with a material derived from it (corn plant made out of corn based fabric)
- Different stages of a “grown” textile, akin to 3d printing
- The death of the cotton plant in stages, wilting
- Spliced clothing, exchanging parts of clothes for others
- Patchwork quilt depicting overgrowth of nature
- Series of “symbols of power,” objects that are precious in the future that we don’t think about now
- Story quilt of human innovation/all the new technology
- New religions/gods depicted that represent what’s valuable to the people of the future
- Tapestry of a never ending building that continues through the whole thing, apartment complex with windows into the different economic classes
- Depiction of new monuments to corporate overlords
- Punch card used to claim food/resources
- Fragments of old textiles sewn together to be of use
- Story quilt of a new plague/pandemic
- Felted nuclear bomb
- New map of the US with cities underwater
- Story quilt of communication/conversation between two lovers
- Parking lot converted into a community garden, story quilt
- Mended garments
- Cat toys/pet paraphernalia made of wool/felted
- Flag of new nation state
- Flag of surrender covered in blood
- A plate of a regular meal that’s eaten
- Loincloth of a caveman (suggests de evolution)
- Microphone of the people (similar to conch shell in Lord of the flies, vox populi)
- Headset akin to Google glasses/wearable screens
- Soothing blanket for babies, wildly different or exactly the same as blankies today (continuation of humanity despite the conditions)
- extravagant, flamboyant outfits
- because so much of our lives is done remotely & online, going outdoors is less common, so when people do go out, they go all out
- very minimalistic, highly functional clothing
- hyper urban cities do not allow for super large clothing
- literally growing & incorporating plants into outfits; outfits that have parts that can hold plants
- plants literally a part of the weave? or mainly decorative?
- accessorizing outfits with old, nonrecyclable trash
- clothes with parts that move/are responsive to external stimulus
- biodegradable clothes made of natural materials
- packaging of food with complex patterns and prints
- return to old, ancient traditional clothing; incorporating old
- Quilts with recycled materials
- Future way of looking back, retro-futurism
- Recycled packaging
- DIY clothes kit: GIY(Grow It Yourself) Kit?
- Memorial
- What are they remembering in 2070
- Protest in 2070
- What are they fighting for in 2070
- Make a protest banner
- Miniature town of smaller objects
- New evolutions of wild animals/domesticated animals
- Circus/fair, what do people do to entertain themselves? Callback to Roman Colosseum
- Felted/textile fidget spinner
- Normal activities that seem mundane and “everyday” objects of the future
- Increased expression of self in clothing, personalized and return to self-made clothing
- Textiles of the future adapting to a new environment/climate change
- Fashion magazine cover of 2070 (imagining the trend)
- What is the standard of beauty like for fashion? Is it more or less utilitarian?
- edible clothes
- wearable currency/credit cards
- The end of gendered clothing
- wearable perfume
- Stuffed teddy bear/stuffed animal that’s more futuristic/ornate
- Formal wear/what is considered fancy and expensive for this environment
- Possibly some materials become more rare in the future and more ostentatious to wear
- construction materials (e.g. bricks, tiles, etc.) made of recycled textiles
- Billboard with recycled materials (what are people enjoying as an entertainment)
- Graphical representation of poverty/inequality
- Story quilt about increased integration of different cultures and people
- Dunce cap/embarrassing clothing
- What is uncool?
- Restrictive headwear/blinders to block out the senses and reduce overwhelming information and stimulation
- Toy loom for children to learn to weave their own clothing, focus on the handmade
- Fashion accessories for extreme weather
- Work uniform of a new type of job
- Military garb/insignias
- Water filters made from natural textiles
- Extraterrestrial map quilt, other planets humans have been to and colonized
- World map quilt (how does the border change)
- Superstitious toys
- gas masks due to poor air quality
- bags — what are people carrying these days?
- hats to protect against severe UV light
- Celebratory clothing, graduation cap and gowns
- Futuristic wedding dress
- Protective textiles (kevlar or other advanced textile materials)
- Supersuit of the future
- Halloween costume, what’s scary in the future?
- Ultra-lite packed clothes (have an extra mylar sweater in your back pocket)
- Crown/royal garb, how do we identify leaders
- Someone’s 150th birthday cake/hat
- Playthings made of advanced textiles
- Invisibility cloaks
- What textile art looks like, a mini museum display
- Curiosities of the past/nostalgia that’s now in galleries and museums
- Something made out of a recycled current fast fashion trend that doesn’t last long
- Body modification/extension jewelry
- Quilt made up of just tote bags
- pieces of fabric that feel cold and uncomforting to the touch, opposite of how we tend to think of fabric now
- Mini natural robots with sensors/lights embedded
- Something made of littered face masks from the almost forgotten covid pandemic
- Stress-relieving textile that produces positive brain chemicals
- Fall leaves with the date they fell on them, much later in the year like december or january
- “The last fall leaf”
- Piece of a sunlight reflector to decrease heat/warming
- Met gala 2070
- History book about 2021
- noise/smell cancelling device (future is smelly and loud)
- LP for musics from 2021
- Something with newspaper from 2070
- Handspun newspaper into yarn and weave?
- Newspaper print fashion
People build around and/or with nature, more so than building over it. For instance, with sea levels having risen significantly due to climate change, more coastal cities build homes, offices, parks, etc. on water. Previously predominantly grey cities incorporate much more greenery into their buildings and streets, like through vertical farming or through decorative means. Also, since so much of our services will have become virtual and gone online –such as malls or shopping malls– the physical spaces that used to provide their respective services are obsolete and abandoned. More of these spaces have been overtaken by nature. Mother nature is reclaiming her space by spreading itself and growing over buildings, statues, public transportation, cars, etc. Unfortunately, we still have a lot of non-recyclable trash (e.g. old computers, car tires, many plastics) that litter our spaces. But there is a sort of “acceptance” of these things that were useful once to let them be as they are now; not everything has to or even can be upcycled/recycled/modified in order to be useful again. Some things just exist and blatantly remain as waste in our environments, but we still don’t stop trying to find beauty hidden within them.
2. Changes in How Consumers Buy & How Companies Sell & Manufacture
For far too long, consumers have been restrained by how companies design, manufacture, and sell their products. Companies for far too long had been designing to sell rather than to last or renew. Legally, companies are required to design with the disposal or a product in mind, design for it to be easily discarded, reused, recycled, or upcycled. The same goes for packaging. This empowers consumers to be able to choose what to do with the products they buy when they have served their useful purpose and need to be disposed of. Consumers are also empowered because more individuals can make their own products, such as furniture, houseware, clothing, etc. at home. Technology on 3D printing, growing plants and other organic, natural materials, and many other kinds of manufacturing methods has significantly progressed such that it has become available to the general public. Consumers now depend less on how big corporations design, sell, and manufacture their products.
3. 3D Printing, AR, and Growing Your Own Clothes
3D printing has already been a growing area in technology, but the most recent development is the commercialization of 3D printers for clothes. People can order clothing designs online rather than the physical garments themselves and make their clothes at home. Several more industries have incorporated 3D printing into their businesses, making this technology commercially available and accessible to a great majority of the population.
Inevitably, more technology has become embedded into our lives, and one way it has been done in fashion is by making use of AR technology. Consumers can try on clothes through AR by looking through a screen how different garments would fit over their bodies without having to try the clothes on physically. This can be done in the comfort of one’s home, rendering physical shops even more obsolete but remain more as “the vintage way of shopping.” In addition to changes in how we shop for clothes, the garments themselves have codes that can be read to show animations and special effects through your phone screen as a way of merging the endless possibilities that the virtual world can provide and that the real world cannot.
However, because of growing concerns of climate change, people have been incorporating more nature into their lives every day in any way possible. As technology improves and further permeates through our lives, growing our own clothes has become an equally large presence in our society. Through biocouture, for instance, people can more easily grow full pieces of clothing or parts of garments.
4. “Nostalgia” for the Past
Regardless of the remarkable progress made in technology thus far, there is still a sort of “nostalgia” for how things used to be several decades, or even centuries, ago. There is a “conflicting” dynamic between a desire to return to how things were in the past versus the fast-paced developing technologies of today (i.e. the future). Fashion shows in virtual reality worlds are juxtaposed with individuals returning to hand sewing, knitting, weaving, etc. their own garments. New clothing lines using the latest, newest, revolutionary, sustainable materials emerge while other smaller businesses sell handmade clothes made from upcycled, nonrenewable materials.
Even our cities feel too new, too current, too modern, so there has been a growing trend where people start living further away from cities towards more rural locations. Since so much of our world is online and virtual, it is easier to stay remote while still being connected and “in the loop” with everything that is happening around the world. The high-stress of living in such fast-paced, densely populated cities has reached a point where people crave how spaces used to in the past: more green and natural, less grey and artificial. As such, living in more rural locations where there is less city noise, artificial lighting, pollution, etc. has become more desirable.
Process
One of the biggest inspirations for my weaving is one of the weavings from a past student of this course, which we saw in class. It is the one with the red warp threads and metal pieces at the bottom. This weaving made me think of wind chimes. This then made me think of how fabric moves when wind blows on it. The flowing movement reminded me of water, the ocean, so I decided to draw inspiration from the sea and everything related to it. For instance, the more obvious inspirations came from the colors –blues and some greens and white. But I also thought about water caustics –the way the bright, warm sun causes those irregular, dancing reflections of light underwater. I wanted to find ways to incorporate all of those aspects of the ocean to turn the weaving into more of an immersive experience than just a piece of fabric to look at.
Regarding that “immersive experience,” I initially pondered about how it would feel like to walk through an installation of tall, long, flowy weavings. However, due to time constraints, I realized that that project idea would be too ambitious for me to accomplish, so I decided to keep my weaving small but still incorporate that 3D aspect that I originally thought of.
The first few inches of my weaving were purely an experimentation and familiarization process, not thinking much about color or form; it was more for skill-building and practice. But as soon as I constructed an image of what I wanted to make for my final weaving, I split up the warp threads into 5 sections to make 5 different weavings that I would later assemble into a “wind chime.” This part of my weaving was also highly experimental. I realized that I often get too caught up in my own perfectionist tendencies, so I decided to let my fingers weave fluidly as ideas came to me, rather than planning every detail of my weaving from the get-go. I figured that if I wanted to portray the fluidity and calm of the ocean, maybe I should also try to adopt the same sort of mindset while weaving.
What Worked Well
Because of how highly experimental my entire process was, I feel like I was able to embody that acceptance of fluidity and slightly messy experimentation that resembles the fluctuating nature of the ocean. The fact that my warp thread increasingly got looser and looser the further down I went along my weaving also contributed to the irregularity of my weaving. Moreover, because I was weaving five separate sections simultaneously, I could vary the “patterns” and shapes I weaved along the lengths of the weaving and beat them with my fingers rather than with the shuttle. Something else that helped me convey the flowy nature of the sea was the not-spooled wool that I used. I really liked the texture and diversity in volume it added to my weaving, as I tried to keep as much of the texture intact as possible. I also realized that instead of applying it in a regular weave, using it with soumak made better use of its voluminous shape.
I did not want to use the first few inches of weaving where I was mainly practicing different techniques, but this portion was too close to the 5-sectioned portion that I did want to use, so I had to needle-felt that intersection in order to keep both portions of my weaving intact after separating them. I fortunately had the perfect amount of plain weave at the starts of each of my 5 smaller sections of weaving to needle-felt and then loop to fit a dowel through for hanging. This almost felt miraculous to me, as it worked out so much more smoothly than I thought it would prior to Olivia advising me to needle-felt.
Improvements & Changes
I would have liked to have woven longer, wider strands, because my weaving felt very small and could not, therefore, really induce much of an “immersive experience” as I would have liked. Scale could improve how much viewers can sense the feelings and experiences I wanted to portray through my weaving.
I also would like to vary the lengths of each weaving section more to further lean into that theme of irregularity. The fact that I had to needle-felt one edge of all 5 sections of weaving did feel a little limiting in how I wanted to vary the length at which the weaving would hang from the dowels. I would still incorporate needle-felting for some pieces, but having a few other pieces hang from the dowels through the warp threads instead would have also been an interesting way of adding irregularity to my weaving.
What I Learned
Because I was initially intending to make my weaving a wind chime, I wanted to embrace the ocean theme and use recycled glass for the chime portion of my weaving. I initially thought of breaking a tinted glass bottle and sanding the pieces myself, but due to time constraints, I did not manage to do that. I also considered somehow incorporating a “DIY” ocean drum into the wind chime to further embody the sea in an auditory sense. In order to make my weaving an immersive experience and not just a visual installation, I wanted to incorporate sound.
However, after hearing what my peers commented on my (“mute wind chime”) weaving, I realized that maybe not having incorporated any sound-causing components was a better choice. Someone mentioned that despite my weaving being very silent, they could still somehow “feel” sound coming from it, which was very interesting to me. I had not intended to instigate that sort of experience from anyone viewing my weaving. I really like that notion of being able to incite feelings or senses that are not actually explicitly present but that can be just felt from other external cues that the piece of work contains. I hope to further explore different ways to achieve this in future projects.
Five Directions
- Large-scale (bigger than human-scaled) installation of weavings taller than the average person, placed in a large room with a tall ceiling.
The weavings in this case would have to be much lighter in order to be able to flow similarly to how my final weaving did, though. - More weaving pieces in a larger/wider “wind chime” conformation, hanging at different lengths.
This would likely include maybe one more dowel to also vary the angles at which the pieces hang. - Use of vertical and horizontal weaving pieces and light source above to play with lights and shadows.
This would be more of an exploration of how I could portray the way light reflects and shines through the ocean onto a tapestry weaving. I could also explore with different kinds of materials that would allow for more light to pass through. - Ocean drum put together by weavings.
Since the common shape of ocean drums is circular, I could imagine a ring on the outside being the “ocean drum instrument” portion, while at the center would lie weavings going across the length of the ring, almost like a web. There could be some pieces that hang over the ring and flow down to keep that imagery of “flowy water.” - Actual (non-silent) wind chime with sound-making materials naturally found in the ocean and/or beach (e.g. sea glass, seashells), but also with human-made trash polluting our oceans today.
This would delve more into the current state of our very polluted oceans and how the beauty of the sea is tainted by our human-made pollutants.
The Woven Cosmos exhibition presented work by the artist and industrial designer Hella Jongerius earlier this year in Berlin, Germany. Jongerius’ work examines the possibilities in which the textile industry can become more sustainable and thus poses the idea of using weaving to create 3D structures that can be used in architecture and even in sustainable energy technology. Using a multiaxial loom, she has woven several prototypes, such as bricks, foldable cubes, and solar fibers that can unfurl when the sun shines. The kinds of materials used are not listed. However, the focus of these works shown is more on the possibilities this new way of weaving brings and on the exploration of how the weaving itself can provide enough strength and rigidity without the need of additional structural support. Although 3D weaving is still a newly developing practice, these woven structures show a lot of promise and hope that the ancient art of weaving can still be transformed and adapted to address our current, ever-changing society.
