Michael Radyk Textiles

Student Work Kutztown University

2012-01-06T12:09:00.000-08:00

Student Work SCAD Undergraduate Winter, Spring, Summer Quarters

2012-01-06T11:30:00.000-08:00

Student Work SCAD Graduate

2012-01-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

RISD Holiday Alumni Sale, Providence, RI

2011-11-12T08:50:00.000-08:00

RISD Holiday Alumni Sale, Providence, RI
December 3, 2011
Rhode Island Convention Center

Fibremen International Exhibition

2011-10-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

Kherson Local Lore Museum
Kherson, Ukraine
October 18-29, 2011
Opening Recption October 18, 2011.

Exhibiting a new cutting of the textile "Swan Point".

Hoffman Gallery, Artist In Residence Exhibition 2011

2011-10-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

Oregon College of Art and Craft
Artist in Residence Exhibition, 2011
Hoffman Gallery
October 6-26, 2011
Opening Reception-Thursday, October 6, 4:00-7:00.
http://www.ocac.edu/#/about-ocac/campus/galleries/hoffman-gallery/

Exhibiting 2 new plastic corduroy woven and manipulated wall pieces.
"Wormsloe" & "Corduroy 1"

Also, a series of handwoven scarves from my "R" collection will be sold during the exhibition.

Faculty Exhibition Kutztown University

2011-10-02T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Marlin and Regina Miller Gallery
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
Faculty Exhibition
http://www.kutztown.edu/acad/artgallery/

Exhibiting: Zeus's Game, handwoven, pieced and embroidered, silk, mohair, cotton, hand dyed silk ribbon. 75"h x 68"w

Michael Radyk SCAD Student Work, Images on Fabric Final Projects

2011-07-23T17:29:00.000-07:00

Students were asked to choose a place or landscape which they find inspiring and to which they have a strong visual connection to for a quarter long investigation.

The work of Katie Logue.

The reference images students explored were rich and varied in pattern, color, surfaces, texture and form.

For the Final students were required to create a yardage based on their place, reference images and contexts of apparel or home textiles, using the many dyeing and resist techniques which they have been learning and exploring.

Oriole Mill and The Jacquard Center Visit

2011-07-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

Images from The Oriole Mill.
See the Jacquard Center web site for more information.
http://www.thejacquardcenter.com/index.htm

Exhibition Images From New Weave: Five Contemporary Weavers

2011-04-10T06:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.designgallery.wisc.edu/exhibits/NewWeave/index.html

Above exhibition images of my work and below, Claudia Herbst-Tait.

Photography-Lisa Franks

Above the work of Katie Glusica.

N[e]W[e]ave: Five Contemporary Weavers

2011-04-03T22:57:00.000-07:00

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADISON

Common Wealth Gallery

APRIL 5, 2011-APRIL 27, 2011

http://www.designgallery.wisc.edu/exhibits/NewWeave/index.html

This invitational exhibition features the work of Katie Glusica, Claudia Herbst-Tait, Bethanne Knudson, Christy Matson and Michael Radyk. It will be held at the Common Wealth Gallery, 100 South Baldwin St., in Madison, WI.

NEW WEAVE: FIVE CONTEMPORARY WEAVERS

SCAD Fibers

2011-04-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

Images from SCAD Fibers Department where I am starting my second quarter as Professor of Fibers. Above the Fibers Building-Pepe Hall.

The beautiful dye lab where Images on Fabric is taught.

Images of student work from Images on Fabric, a course dedicated to color research and dyeing on fabric. Also images from Three Dimensional Fibers or Nonwovens, exploring felting, texture and surface application and form.

Michael Radyk YELLOW PROJECT 33 Oregon College Of Art and Craft: Portfolio Exchange and Collaborative Woven Series

2010-12-09T13:41:00.000-08:00

For this piece for the Portfolio Exchange and Exhibition, I wanted to produce an edition of textiles that employ an array of techniques inherit in weaving, garment making and textile manufacturing. The techniques in this collection include: designing, warping, weaving, embroidering, washing, stitching, trimming, clipping, ironing, finishing and finally labeling or branding with a printed label. In this collection, I hope to draw attention to the many processes involved in the manufacture of the textiles and clothing we encounter everyday.

The project has two components: my initial production of 33 yellow pieces of cloth for the 20th Anniversary Portfolio Exchange and a project inviting participants to weave 33 textiles on my loom, exploring the relationship between weaving and agitation.

Project: Production of 33 yellow textiles.

Each research participant will weave an 10”x 8” piece of yellow cloth. The material, structure, color will remain constant. The participants will be asked to arrive in either an agitated or relaxed state of mine. They will be asked to weave 2 inches of plain weave, than insert a line of satin weave when they feel a change in mood or state of mind. The cloth uses the structures of plain and satin weaves, which are the ground weaves for many textiles. Instruction will be provided.

Research Question

Will the weavers/participants experience a neurological change?

Labeling/Branding/Completion

After the participant has finished I will embroider a mark of completion, a label that authorizes each piece for the Edition Portfolio.

Time/Place

The Project will be conducted in the weaving studio at scheduled times, through out the week.

Project Ideation

The project will bring together and question some of the research into the production of woven cloth and its connection to the agitation or calmness of the weaving process and its relationship to color and neurological responses.

I have been interested in histories of weavers, both fictional and real, and the conditions they lived and worked, many times in solitude and hardship. The writer George Elliot in the novel Silas Marner describes the life, landscape and work of the weaver.

Also, Van Gogh found and documented the lives of weavers and their living conditions in Belgium. There he passed through villages of weavers and was deeply impressed by what he saw as the craftsmen’s almost meditative aura. In Nuenen, the Netherlands he encountered that the weavers were actually hardworking poor and not figures of dreaminess. What Van Gogh foundthere was often something agitated and restless about them and the grim
reality of their lives.

What I hope to accomplish with this project is a look at how people, relate to the process of weaving, does it bring about agitation or calmness?

RISD Alumni Holiday Sale, San Fransisco, Fort Mason December 4, 9-5

2010-11-30T20:16:00.000-08:00

I will be showing scarves made from my fabric "Luz" for the first time, which was woven on the Jacquard loom at RISD.

Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show November 11-14, 2010

2010-11-03T19:56:00.000-07:00

I will be exhibiting my new collection of scarves and shawls, as well as my woven and manipulated wall pieces. I was accepted to present both bodies of work for the first time at a show. The Philadelphia show will highlight the connection between the jacquard weaving techniques and my handwoven textiles. I have produced a "special" collection of scarves woven on the Jacquard loom at RISD, which can only be purchased at the Philadelphia Museum Craft show.

Scarves

The “R” series of scarves combines a hand woven plain weave textile of silk and cotton with hand embroidery of merino wool, silk ribbon or silk fringe yarns. The embroidery is integrated onto the woven cloth, activating and engaging the textile with twisted, brushed and dimensional surfaces.

Shawls

The “R” series of shawls uses the hand woven plain weave textiles of silk and cotton with hand embroidery of merino wool, silk ribbon or silk fringe yarns. A second series of shawls is woven in gauze and corduroy weave structures. The corduroy shawls are hand cut and manipulated.

Two colors of "corduroy" shawls will be shown. Coral and Citronella.

The new materials include a chunky, think, soft merino wool, that is embroidered onto the scarves and shawls. Also a new silk eyelash yarn is woven and brushed.

The show will feature a grey collection of scarves and shawls that have been embroidered with silk ribbon.

Michae Radyk Awarded a Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation 2010 Grant

2010-10-28T11:07:00.000-07:00

I am the recipient of one of six 2010 Chenven Foundation Grants. Past winners in the Textile/Fiber media include Sonya Clark, Virginia Davis, Bhakti Ziek and Michele Brody.

chenvenfoundation.org

"Sow" exhibited in New Fibers 2010

2010-10-22T12:44:00.000-07:00

New Fibers 2010

Fiber Arts Network of Michigan University Art Gallery Eastern Michigan University Ypsilanti, MI October 28 - December 10, 2010

FAN sponsors a biennial juried exhibition of contemporary fiber art. The fourth biennial New Fibers 2010 is a juried exhibition at the Eastern Michigan University Gallery in Ypsilanti, Michigan, featuring contemporary fiber art in a broad range of forms. Works include textiles rooted in traditional processes and materials, sculpture, conceptual and installation art as well as non-traditional fiber art. Tracy Krumm of the Kansas City Art Institute was the juror.

My series of Jacquard cloths, called “Sickle and Sowed,” are the first cloths where the technique of cut floats was employed. In these textiles I challenged myself to create a sustainable fabric using wool, recycled polyester, polylactic acid and bamboo. The Van Gogh drawings I saw at the Kroller–Muller Museum in the Netherlands and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC informed my own drawings that became the source for the cloths. I was also looking at the images of Millet and other artists of the 19th century who painted farmers planting and sowing seeds.

The first cloth "Sow" has been clipped and shorn as if the growth of threads is a weed like substance, unwanted, pulled and haphazard.

Images From Binary Fiction Digital Weaving 2010

2010-10-10T20:07:00.000-07:00

Eisntrager-Howard Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
October 4-29, 2010.

"Visions of Gerard" shown next the work of Vita Plume.

The masterful textiles of Catherine Ellis.

Isimini Samanidou textiles inspired by images of water.

The work of Chai-Hai Lu.

More Vita Plume.

The graphic textiles of Pauline Verbeek-Cowart.

Laurie Addis.

The textiles of Melissa McCourtie with hand inlays of paper.

A "Score" jacquard from Christy Matson.

Ruth Scheuing magical textiles. "Cyborg in the Garden"

Detail of textile of Vita Plume.

And Bhakti Ziek.

The digital collages of Gail Kenning.

Michael Radyk, Accepted to Yaddo Residency Program

2010-10-04T15:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.yaddo.org/

FROM THE YADDO WEBSITE:

Founded in 1900 by the financier Spencer Trask and his wife Katrina, herself a poet, Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400-acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.

Yaddo offers residencies to professional creative artists from all nations and backgrounds working in one or more of the following media: choreography, film, literature, musical composition, painting, performance art, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video. Artists may apply individually or as members of collaborative teams of two or three persons. They are selected by panels of other professional artists without regard to financial means. Residencies last from two weeks to two months and include room, board, and studio.

Left without immediate heirs by the deaths of their four young children, the Trasks decided to bequeath their home in Saratoga Springs, New York, to future generations of writers, composers, painters, and other creative artists. In a vision, Katrina Trask saw generations of talented men and women yet unborn walking the lawns of Yaddo, "creating, creating, creating."

The results of the Trasks' legacy have been historic. John Cheever once wrote that the "forty or so acres on which the principal buildings of Yaddo stand have seen more distinguished activity in the arts than any other piece of ground in the English-speaking community and perhaps the world." Collectively, artists who have worked at Yaddo have won 64 Pulitzer Prizes, 27 MacArthur Fellowships, 61 National Book Awards, 24 National Book Critics Circle Awards, 108 Rome Prizes, 49 Whiting Writers' Awards, a Nobel Prize (Saul Bellow, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976), and countless other honors. Many books by Yaddo authors have been made into films. Visitors from Cheever's day include Milton Avery, James Baldwin, Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, Aaron Copland, Philip Guston, Patricia Highsmith, Langston Hughes, Ted Hughes, Alfred Kazin, Ulysses Kay, Jacob Lawrence, Sylvia Plath, Katherine Anne Porter, Mario Puzo, Clyfford Still, and Virgil Thomson.

BINARY FICTION: DIGITAL WEAVING 2010

2010-09-30T22:23:00.000-07:00

Michael Radyk included in Binary Fiction: Digital Weaving 2010.
Eisentrager-Howard Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
October 4- October 29, 2010
Reception October 7, 2010 6-9 PM
Curated by Janice Lessman-Moss, " Drawing on various sources of inspiration mediated by digital technology, each artist transforms virtual designs into material form using the matrix of warp and weft."

The Gallery will be the location of a site seminar as part of the 12th Biennial Textile Society of America Symposium on Friday, October 8 from 2:00-4:30.
Visit: www.textilesociety.org

I will be showing and presenting my piece "Visions of Gerard".

The Weaving of Walls Through the Windows of Influence

My work is exploring the use of reflective, stiff, coated or transparent materials into a woven textile. I want the textiles to distort and limit the qualities of light so seeing and vision can be altered, permitting the expression of looking to be activated by distortion and the interaction of interior and exterior elements. The acts of framing and veiling symbolize a way of looking. The goal is to create sensorial moments similar to those found in the quiet spaces of half-darkened rooms.

Looking, Viewing, Making

Channeling different aspects of sight, light and pattern through a collection of interior textiles is the basis of this research. This exploration is a union between my background in handwoven textiles and my current research into machine-made textiles. The connection between wall, window and veiling is the focus of my material and design investigations.

Looking beyond the merely decorative and aesthetic, I want my work to portray my response to the chaos of contemporary image culture and the ways in which our world view is organized and distorted. The acts of framing and veiling symbolize a way of looking. One example is how the burka limits the wearer’s peripheral vision, not unlike the limitations of our current political climate.

Veiling, windows, reflective and kinetic materials offer a carefully considered way of seeing. The goal is to create sensorial moments similar to those found in the quiet spaces of half-darkened rooms. While the surfaces that result are meant to explore materials that arouse the senses, there is a particular interest in the aspects related to light, vision and interaction. The interactive surface comes to life only when the viewer comes in contact with it, discovering what the cloth may hide, distort or frame.

My approach to producing, designing and weaving my work is a continuation of the manipulation of the woven surface. The surfaces I create are indebted to the methods of weaving I have been practicing in my past work. The introduction of the Jacquard loom has changed the flexibility and surface structures while maintaining the basic principles of weaving that form the language of craft and weaving. The various trials and phases of manipulating the warp and weft have brought the integration of the surface from the embroidered panels of my past work into a more visually integrated single cloth. Cloth is like cement. We experience cloth every day. The life of cloth is determined by both its use and non-use. Today the seeming endless uses of cloth or textiles only seem to make its worth or value both mundane and precious. The 2005 exhibition Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance at the Cooper- Hewitt National Design Museum in New York displayed for the first time many textiles of technical innovation. The exhibition brought to light many technical textiles that were developed from a variety of medical, apparel, agricultural and environmental fields. These innovations have begun to eliminate the borders between the traditional language of textiles, while continuing the textile as a kind of foundation or cement that can be innovated in the context of design, art and craft.

The making of woven cloth is at the core of my artistic practice. My investigation into making cloth stems from those dualities inherent in its value, structure, meaning, production, visual impact, craft and history. What I hope to achieve in my cloth is an abstraction formed around dualities. In the work and textiles I produce there is a consistency of influences. As I weave my body around the halls of museums or my eyes around architectural references and words, the layering of their influences start to overlap and under lap, touch and diverge, like threads in cloth. Using a multilayered or mosaic-like approach to research is how I work. Weaving together a sort of atlas of influence and memory, my aim is to demonstrate the evocative power of images which occur/recur, to expose their impact, their nature, to explain how they function, how they infect one another.

“I want to erase architecture, I have always wanted to do so, and I am not likely to ever change my mind.”

“Why do I want to particlize materials and reduce them to tiny pieces? Why do I want to break down stone, bamboo Japanese paper into lower-like particles? Why do I want to punch countless holes in every material? The answer is that I like tactile qualities. Without particlizing materials we cannot appreciate them as materials, nor feel their vibrancy.”- Kengo Kuma

My research subjects are materiality as it relates to the woven structure and the architect Kengo Kuma, specifically three of his buildings: Ginzan Onsen Fujiya (Hot Spring Hotel), Stone Museum and Plastic House. Kuma writes, referring to the process of concrete construction or the actual method of pouring concrete in building construction: “Everything appears structural, but most of it is superfluous and unnecessary structurally.” This view informs my looking at the woven structure of cloth. In other words, I want my woven textiles to be conceived not in terms of their construction, but rather their existence as objects that have relationship and meaning to the final interior or architectural context.

The Ginzan Onsen Fujiya project reconfigured a 100-year-old hot spring hotel in Japan’s historic snow country. Layering space with screens is a traditional Japanese device; but Kuma choreographs a sequence of entry rooms dividing veil-like walls of remarkable materials. He uses over a million pieces of split bamboo, spruce, a wood-grained Chinese granite and glass with a natural and vertical repetition. Handmade paper applied to the walls has uneven surfaces where water was dripped during its manufacture. Kuma, in the renovation, connects the street with the lobby inside, by creating a sense of transparency, inserting larger windows and a new glass entry. The glass was made using a hand-blown glass technique from France called dale de verre. The glass has a subtly greenish-blue surface that infuses the lobby with an almost aqueous character. By introducing daylight into the interior spaces Kuma brings out the materiality of the interior surfaces of the hotel.

In Kuma’s work transparence alludes to the capacity of seeing through, of proceeding from the outside to the inside, with the goal of recovering a depth of vision that is also psychological and introspective. For Kuma the space of architecture is a “continuous sensory experience.” There is an element of directness is his work that is both subtle and overt. Seeing the Stone Museum built of stone is obvious; however the museum takes the viewer on a journey through the walls, using the stone not as wall, but as window into other spaces of the museum and beyond. Another of Kengo Kuma’s museums with simultaneous phenomenon is the Adobe Museum for Wooden Buddha, built in 2002. The museum holds one work of art, the wooden statue of Amidabha Tathagata, Buddha. The small museum has a reliquary quality, but the museum holds something both very aesthetic and static simultaneously. The Buddha is placed in a box with large glass doors both containing and emitting the prescience and force of the “object.” The Adobe museum, with one object on view, one visual item behind the definition of smooth glass, makes the gaze of the viewer more focused and direct. Luigi Alini writes about Keno Kuma in his essay, The Warp and Weft of Architecture – Weaving, Joining, Overlapping, Folding. “He cuts, splices, superimposes, weaves and folds, replicating ad infinitum a principle of construction that in his works turns into a narrative that unfolds by polarities, by ”archetypal pairs”: light/shadow, simple/complex, opaque/transparent, temporary/permanent, massive/light, surface/depth, single/multiple, warp/weft, continuous/discontinuous, repetition/variation, high/low.” These are associated with one another with the aim of showing that a relationship of necessity holds between the part and the whole. Kengo himself writes “the most interesting experiences of architectural space take place through contact with materials, when their texture, their depth, is revealed.”

“I want to create weak buildings” says Kengo Kuma in his essay Weak Architecture. He goes on to ask the question, “Do sturdy buildings really protect human beings?” Buildings must be strong in order to function as shelters—that is the reasoning for creating them. Kengo began to question that idea after the Awaji Earthquake of 1995. Given the events of 9/11, are we really better off with the presumed monumentality of these so-called sturdy structures? To question the materiality of windows and walls is also to question their use,placement, need and structure. I can imagine walls of woven plastic or walls of other sturdy woven materials becoming a new interface between the durable/delicate balance of the environment and human body.

Jacquard Work

“Only this hand seemed to have a vital and immediate memory of the woman he was going to see. The more he tried to call up a clear picture of her, the more his memory failed him, the farther she faded away, leaving him nothing to catch and hold. In the midst of the uncertainty only the one hand, and in particular the forefinger, even now seemed damp from her touch, seemed to be pulling him back to her from afar. Taken with the strangeness of it, he brought the hand to his face, and then quickly drew a line across the misted window. A women’s eye floated up before him. He almost called out with astonishment. But he was dreaming”…

- From “Snow Country,” by Yasunari Kawabata

“Luz” is my first Jacquard cloth inspired by the shape of the half open meditative eye and the slowing of time. The woven structure is an event where texture and smoothness collide. I wanted to create the mistiness of slow time Chimes creates in his White Paintings. The final fabric has a quietness that is more the result of the sloping shapes and coloring of grey. While struggling with the structure of the cloth and wanting to achieve effects of veiling and dimensional light I felt the elements needed not to be woven into the surface.

The second series of Jacquard cloths, called “Sickle and Sowed,” is the first cloths where the technique of cut floats is employed. The Van Gogh drawings I saw at the Kroller–Muller Museum in the Netherlands informed my own drawings that became the source for the cloths. The first cloth has been clipped and shorn as if the growth of threads is a weedlike substance, unwanted, pulled and haphazard. The second cloth has been cut with more care. The cloth woven with linen, nylon and fine black metallic yarns synthesizes into a strange garden of threads that seem to have been grown from the surface. Both of these trials with cut-floats needed to be refined. The curving shapes of the imprints did not accept the cutting, regularly causing small gaps that can be distracting. Learning that the floats work best in linear patterns, I realized the Jacquard cut float technique could be utilized to create surfaces that within their structure and design could achieve dimensional effects with a dramatic simplicity. The size and scale of the new Jacquard pieces needed to be large enough to create a wall of surface, like Kengo Kuma’s “Great Bamboo Wall” house of 2002 or his Museum of Hiroshige Ando of 2000. The surface materiality combines with the long extended walls to create an overall effect of beauty and strange weakness. The first Jacquard wall piece is called “Swan Point.” The discovery of Swan Point Cemetery’s refined grounds and its surrounding mess of thickets is the visual reference for the piece. Unlike Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, which is surrounded by the city, Swan Point Cemetery invites discovery from the outside, while peering into its timeless suspended interior from the vantage point of an outsider caged in the thickets of the present.

The yarn used for “Swan Point” is vinyl coated polyester, which has a stiffness that allows the cut floats to protrude with branchlike quality. The piece hovers above the viewer, almost ten feet, while inviting inspection into its flowing structure. Veiling is achieved by the overlapping cut threads and shows emerge from below as light is softened.

The next Jacquard wall piece utilizing the technique of cut floats is titled “Visions of Gerard” after the Jack Kerouac novel about his brother. The setting is a New England winter in Lowell, Massachusetts. The piece is an investigation of drab color set against the high/low shine of metallic material. The long floats of the piece are limp but move and subtly sparkle with a breeze or breath. The diagonal movement of the piece references the factory roofs of Lowell and the roof of Kuma’s Museum of Hiroshige Ando. “Visions of Gerard” has a subtle/strong reflectivity that changes with the intensity of the light source, darkening overall with the reflectivity being reduced and with a soft pale green pattern emerging from the ground.

“Komako 1 and 2” are the third and fourth Jacquard woven wall pieces. I wanted to make a piece that had a remoteness and surreal quality. The title “Komako” is one of the main characters in Yasunari Kawabata’s novel Snow Country. In the novel, Komako exhibits both a shadowy like beauty, as well as, strange moth like existence. Kawabata’s novel uses the dim light of the interiors in contrast with the bright flashing light of trains, the winter sun, Milky Way and moon. I wanted this piece to use the floats to represent something human and inhuman. The floats made from nylon are contrasted with the surface ground, made with retro–reflective yarn that flashes with the light. In trying to achieve simultaneity and a piece with dualities, “Komako” has an overt, direct surreal stance.

Conclusion

The Jacquard wall pieces capture the veiling and dimness of light I had hoped to achieve. The scale is important to their effectiveness. The plastic woven pieces capture and hold their color and atmosphere. Although the material investigations in each piece differ, each piece pushes the surface qualities further into an assemblage of structure and chaos. By removing the concreteness of cloth and making the viewer connect with their individual characteristics, the pieces erase themselves as objects and become walls.

More Michael Radyk Student Thesis/Degree Project Work

2010-09-28T13:25:00.000-07:00

The first student I am showing here is Lauren Bullock. Her project was inspired by memories of childhood. Lauren's collection of printed textiles was inspired by pillow forts and fights, finger painting, lollipops and images of candy.

The second student project shown here is by Rachel Higgins. Rachel produced 2 large felted pieces and large drawings inspired from the images of cliffs. The felted pieces were first felted onto hand knit rectangles, than the felt was removed from the knit backing and the small pieces were than needle felted together to make the larger pieces. One of Rachel's pieces sold during her thesis show.

More student work to come.....

MICHAEL RADYK: ARTIST IN RESIDENCE, OREGON COLLEGE OF ART AND CRAFT

2010-09-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

August 30-December 20, 2010.

http://www.ocac.edu/

I am attending my second residency of 2010 at OCAC in the Fibers department in Portland.

The campus sits above the city and has a charming and beautiful natural setting. The college was founded in 1907, by Julie Hoffman, an artist and weaver.

I will be able to interact with students, faculty and also complete some of the projects and work started at my Hambidge Residency, including work for The Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, Binary Fiction in Lincoln, Nebraska and my work incorporating my new corduroy plastic pieces.

The Fibers department is headed by Jiseon Lee Isbara (www.jiseonleeisbara.blogspot.com) along with the help of 3 enthusiastic instructors, Judilee Fitzhugh teaching wearables and dyeing, Kate Troyer teaching surface design classes and Shelly Socolovsky teaching weaving.

The college has a gifted and thoughtful new president, Denise Mullen and a new building, designed by Massachusetts based architect Charlie Rose and local/international firm Colab.

Michael Radyk Textile Installations at Hambidge Center for the Arts: Summer Fesival

2010-07-18T13:48:00.000-07:00

I was invited to reinstall and present some of the projects I worked on during my residency at Hambidge in May and June. The pieces I presented were at Hambidge House and on the trail to the old pottery shed , along with two new pieces presented on the side of Brena Studio and the garden shed near the Garden Studio.

The textile shown here is a prototype for a proposed project at Eastern States Penitentiary. I call this textile Orange Plastic Prison. The inspiration for this piece is from the orange jump suits worn by prisoners I saw laboring along side a road, juxtaposed by the orange sky setting behind them on my very first day in Georgia.

The large scale version of my cut and manipulated textile Swan Point shown on the side of Brena studio at night. The reflective materials really come alive in the dark, light by the spots from above and the moon.

The piece shown in the morning with the shadows from the surrounding forest.

The Hambidge Summer Festival gave the public the first opportunity to visit the studios, grounds and to talk to the many fellows and current artists, writers and musicians in residence at Hambidge.

For the Hambidge House installation I added to new textiles on either side of the original piece.

The textile Summer Screen installed in a different configuration on the trail to Hambidge House and the pottery shed.

Michael Radyk Converstion with Light, Shadow and Stanton Forbes. Hambidge Summer Festival, July 17,2010.

2010-07-12T21:31:00.000-07:00

This chair, by Stanton Forbes, dances, captures light, shadow and speaks a unique conversation between craft, design, art and Dynamic Symmetry. I will always remember the moment my conversation with this object began, seeing it covered in dust and light on the porch at Hambidge House. This chair and its material and construction have a presence, unforgettable and haunting. I was told that there were originally three of them. In my imagination I see Mary Hambidge, Stanton Forbes and Jay Hambidge sitting on the chairs having a conversation on its form and function.

Begin your conversation with Hambidge, its grounds, architecture, objects, history and artists at one of their festivals. The next one is July 17, 2010. I will be recreating two of the installations from my residency in and May, as well as two new pieces.

http://www.hambidgefestival.org/ or http://www.hambidge.org/

UGA Visiting Artist Collaborative Project: Exquisite Patterning or Good Neighbor Patterning with Piper Shepard

2010-06-22T07:34:00.000-07:00

In the next two posts I will be presenting the projects with visiting artists and students from my Fabric Manipulation and Material Futures courses at UGA. The first one shown here was with artist and MICA faculty Piper Shepard.

On Monday February 22, 2010 visiting artist Piper Shepard arrived at the University of Georgia in Athens to begin a three day workshop titled:Exquisite Patterning or Good Neighbor Patterning with students. The project engages Fabric Design students in the design, material manipulation, construction and presentation of a piece made from cut gessoed canvas. The final piece was hung in the South Lobby of the Lamar Dodd School of Art new building in April across from the Sock Project presented in the following post.

From Piper Shepard:
In this studio lead activity, we will make a large-scale cut pattern based on the collective contributions of all participants. Here, the sum of the parts is greater than one individual. Based off the idea of the Exquisite Corpse, each person will create a drawing/pattern. These patterns are linked together through collaborating with your neighbors (left and right) in a method of adjoining your work together through drawing and discussion. Once collaborated, merged and joined, the artists will decide on what will be positive and negative space in their artwork. From there, everyone will work to create a large cut pattern or stencil.

In preparation for the workshop, Piper asked everyone to bring their sketchbooks or any paper which has their drawings/doodles on them…the stuff on the margins of paper where you unconsciously draw, or the doodle drawing you create over and over again while sitting in class or on the phone. The students used these drawings as starting points for the cut piece.

UGA Visiting Artist Collaborative Project: Sock Project with Liz Collins

2010-06-22T06:13:00.000-07:00

On Monday March 23, 2009 visiting artist Liz Collins arrived at the University of Georgia in Athens to begin a three day collaborative project with students from my Fabric Manipulation class. The project engaged all students in the research, design, material manipulation, construction and presentation of a piece made from donated and collected socks. The final piece was presented in the Main Lobby of the Lamar Dodd School of Art new building on March 25, 2009 and than reinstalled outside the Fabric Design studios in the South Lobby in 2010.

Liz Collins writes,“In the interest of addressing issues of excess and transforming waste, the sock project aims to take used objects destined for the landfill and make them into beautiful, compelling objects of art. We will start with old, used
(but clean, please). After the initial collective and individual brainstorming, everyone will set to work making the pieces, and plans will be made along the way about how to show and present this work. Stitching, stuffing, sorting, knitting, crocheting, sculpting, fitting, transforming....we will do it all!”

Research Questions for Michael Radyk's Fabric Manipulation classs.
-Look at the Textile metaphor implied by the use of an everyday material.
-What techniques can be used to manipulate the materials?
-What will the piece become?
-How does time, come into play in this project and the design and manufacturing of products and objects?
-How will the quantity of material alter the outcome?

ESSAY: Thinking Big: Deconstructing/Constructing the Textile Wall, Michael Radyk

When I think about the great textile art of the 70’s and 80’s, I think of the large, expansive, textured, emblematic pieces. Those massive works of textile art always seem to devour all the bad work and clichés associated with some fiber art from the same period. The work of Magdalena Abakanowicz and her research into the “countless” and the timelessness of her work and the walls and spaces she created remain shockingly alive and organic in their vastness. She says: "I feel overwhelmed by quantity where counting no longer makes sense.” Abakanowicz, in those early pieces, created many metaphors through the liberation of meaning, material, scale and quantity. Abakanowicz and many of her Eastern European artist colleagues repurposed and reused lowly, earthy ropes and the remains of war and agriculture—materials waiting for an artist to reinvent them.

Early in the semester, the Fabric Manipulation class viewed Christo’s Valley Curtain, a film by Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Ellen Hovde. I have always been amazed by the film’s drama and portrayal of community, craft, skill and Christos’ calculated execution of the project. Our project would call upon our student community to come together to collect the materials, design, construct, craft and manufacture a textile wall. Within the contexts of material repurposing, scale, space, community, manufacturing, the project would bring together the visiting artist Liz Collins and the Fabric Design students of Lamar Dodd School of Art to engage in a joint project that could fill the open, light-filled main lobby of the new art building, a large space waiting for students to reinvent it. Liz Collins was asked to purpose a material that could supply and meet all of our needs regarding reuse and availability. Her suggestion of socks provided an everyday material the students could easily collect and ultimately repurpose into a piece with energy, movement and a life beyond the three day project.

I began by asking five research questions relating to the context and project. What is the textile metaphor implied by the use of an everyday material? What techniques can be used to manipulate the materials? What will the piece become? How does time come into play in this project, and in the design and manufacturing of products and objects? How will the quantity of materials alter the outcome? The questions were influenced by contemporary textile practices, as well as, early discussions between Fabric Design Area Chair Clay McLauren and myself on what the outcome of the “Sock Project” might be. Along with the questions students were asked to draw, sketch and research. Those questions and early ideas sparked many discussions among the students, both expressing concern and excitement.

Recently, in my own research I have been obsessed with the work and writings of architect Kengo Kuma, especially the image of the main room in The Ginzan Onsen Fujiya Project, a 100-year-old hot spring hotel in Japan’s snow country. In the building the veil-like walls are constructed of remarkable materials, over a million pieces of split bamboo. The bamboo stem is split by a craftsperson expanding both the material and the tactile qualities of the wall. This splitting or “particlizing” is used in and the construction of our “Sock Wall”. Kumo writes in his essay, The Relativity of Materials, “Without particlizing materials, we cannot appreciate them as materials, nor feel their qualities.” The change of material expression by cutting expands the material quantity or mass, as well as the expressiveness and charm. As I witnessed the students turning a very modest bundle of the collected materials/socks into countless scrapes and pieces by cutting them apart, I knew this material manipulation or “particilizing” would be the key to the outcome and the starting point for the manufacturing of the piece. While the surface dimension was increased, the expressiveness of the material was maintained. Rescaling, re-contextualizing and responding to the materials led directly into the manufacturing.

With an atmosphere of industry and the sewing machines churning furiously, the students constructed the wall, transforming the bits and pieces of those rescued socks, those lonely socks with lost mates, those silly children’s socks they outgrew, those socks that never fit quite right, those socks with holes, those socks pulled and stretched out of shape, those socks with too many colors, those socks that kept us warm, those socks that were part of our everyday experience—all those socks, transformed into art. MR

Michael Radyk Images from Hambidge, Foxfire and Bartram Trail

2010-06-20T21:14:00.000-07:00

Alice Serres: Odegard Competition

2010-06-17T09:10:00.000-07:00

Alice Serres,a student from my Textile Concepts class at the University of Georgia won First Place in the Odegard Rug Competition. Alice will receive a $1500 prize, an internship at Odegard in NYC and her design will be woven and sold through Odegard showrooms.

MICHAEL RADYK: Scarf Collections

2010-06-16T17:08:00.000-07:00

My woven collection of scarves and shawls that I worked on at Hambidge will be shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft show in November. Working on the collections at Hambidge was especially productive, given the uninterrupted studio time and being in a place where weaving had a powerful presence thanks to Mary Hambidge and the weavers of Rabun Gap, more on that later.

The color in this collection of silk stripes was inspired my trip to the Netherlands last May and the many early Mondrian paintings and color rooms at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. Also, an incredible exhibition in Amsterdam: Van Gogh and The Colors of The Night.

My new hand embroidered scarves have simpler shapes and are inspired by the trails and roads in and around Hambidge, including Route 246 and the Bratram trail to Highlands, North Carolina.

New materials include twisted merino and hand dyed silk yarns.

New stuctures including corduroy, made from merino and silk.

The fabrics are light weight, airy and ready for wrapping mutiple times.

All the work will be available in November at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show,

November 10-14, 2010 www.pmacraftshow.org

And coming to a museum gift shop near you!

Michael Radyk: Hambidge "Summer Screen" Rock House Hill & Garden Installation Project

2010-06-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

For the proposed installation I placed the 3 Summer Screens on the lawn in front of Hambidge's main building Lucinda's Rock House and in the Garden on metal chairs.

For the actual installation 11 stripes, representing the eleven looms used in the weaving shed when Mary Hambidge's studio was active, would be designed and woven. Each striped textile would be woven in 2 lengths, creating 22 pieces. The width of each textile is 33 inches.

The project could involve the community or local schools in the design of each panel or the selection of the stripes woven, dividing the 33 inch width into either symmetrical or asymmetrical patterns.

I would invite the community to interact with the pieces by helping in the placement and bringing in their own used or recycled lawn furniture for the garden installation.

The beautiful symmetry of the Rock House's facade makes a terrific backdrop for the glowing stripes.

Michael Radyk: Hambidge "Summer Screen" Installation Project

2010-06-03T11:06:00.000-07:00

Foxfire Trail: Hambidge Artist Residency

The piece Summer Screen was created with the glow of summer days and nights as the inspiration for the textile.

The installation is a temporary location on Foxfire trail at Hambidge. Using the textile to mark the trail in intervals of 20 feet.

The material is handwoven plastic tape or gimp, with day & night glow possibilities because of

the acid green color, gold and phosphorescent tapes.

Janelle Rivard Degree Project UGA

2010-06-03T10:50:00.000-07:00

Janelle designed and screen printed three fabrics inspired by garments in the Dress and Costume collection at UGA.

Including this print based on a beautiful smocked dress from the 1930's.

Day 3 Hambidge House Installation

2010-06-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

The rain continued to fall and transform the paper into a slippery wet skin that continued to erode through the night.

The chairs on the porch started to have a conversation with the piece.

At night the retro reflective yarns, woven at the bottom of the textile reflected up, causing a hazy glow onto the porch.

The storms and rain cleared the paper from the steps, leaving some left over for the ants to enjoy.

The three legged chair ( 3 legs always a good idea) wanted attention. This chair is one that I will remember most from Hambidge House.

The chair is sometimes still and other times ready for a dance.

Hambidge House Installation

2010-05-31T16:07:00.000-07:00

DAY 2- By the second day, the ants, slugs and rain started to devour the paper. The weight of the wet paper cast itself unto the steps, slowly allowing the stone and moss to tear and pull the temporary covering.

The water began dripping from the textile and down the steps.

The paper began to curl and form random clumps of pulp.

I was thinking the paper would dry and curl and become brittle, but heavy rain is falling.

The water dripping and marblizing on the steps continues.

Michael Radyk Installation Hambidge House Day 1

2010-05-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

This is a three day installation over Memorial Day Weekend, paying homage to Mary Hambidge and the history of weaving here in Georgia and North Carolina.

The piece utilizes the porch and steps to the garden at Hambidge House. I wanted to create a contrast between the front and back of the piece and the architecture of the setting.

The textile is woven from night glow plastic tape, vinyl coated recycled polyester and retro reflective tape at the bottom. The other material is drawing paper and the house, porch and steps.

A temple like atmosphere is created in both directions. The view from the bottom of the steps:

Detail of textile, with the forest behind.

Michael Radyk Eastern State Penitentiary Art Installation Proposal

2010-05-30T13:12:00.001-07:00

The installation Weaving Walls consists of two rooms housing a sculpture made from a loom that will have two textiles each woven and inspired by the history of weaving done at Eastern State Penitentiary and its founders attempts to combine labor, weaving, craft and solitary confinement. One room, with the textile, Orange Plastic Prison, questions the actual failure of the weaving act to bring the inmates redemption and penance.

I have been interested in histories of weavers, both fictional and real, and the conditions they lived and worked, many times in solitude and hardship. The writer George Elliot in the novel Silas Marner describes the life and setting of Silas. Elliot also addresses Silas Marners quest for redemption and peace, ultimately succeding in his transformation not from weaving or labor but from other events.

Also, Van Gogh found and documented the lives of weavers and their living condtions in Belgium and Nothern France in1879. There he had passed through villages of weavers and was deeply impressed by what he saw as the craftmen’s almost meditative aura, not focusing on the weavers actual circumstances. In Nuenen, the Netherlands he encountered that the weavers were actually hardworking poor and not figures of dreaminess. What Van Gogh found there was “often something agitated and restless” about them and the grim reality of their lives. The romantic vision of weavers and the associations of solitude, redemption and peace through weaving is one that I have questioned and wondered way such a connection exits at all.

Having discovered the history of weaving and craft at Eastern State for me it is an interesting contrast to the Hambidge cummunity of weavers and Hanbidge Artist Residency in the Georgia mountains where I have been given time and funding to write this proposal. The founder Mary Hambidge, in the 1920’s founded a collective of weavers to produce her work. The work and philosophy of Mary Hambidge has a connection to the early prison reformers, as they both have addressed the need to be, or work in solitude.

The second room is a contrast to the chaos and explosion of color in the opposite room by using grey, black and white striped textiles. The textiles will be striped to recall the use of striped fabric on inmates. Also, the second room utilizes the textiles Blind Vision, made with cut outs or openings that serve as reminders of the spaces that food would be passed and feeding aperatures, as well as, the openings for eyes of the hoods worn by new prisoners. In each installation additional sections of the textile will be attached to the back and front of the looms causing the expansion of textile in the cell and making the loom unable to function, as well as, a section either hanging in space or placed on a bed frame.

The textiles are made from non toxic plastic tape, vinyl coated polyester, recycled, polyester and retro reflective materials that are strong, mildew and uv resisitant. The vinyl coated yarn is used in outdoor flooring and furniture and is made in Alabama at one of the last large scale textle operations. The fact that the yarns and materials are used in everday objects connects them to the fabrics woven at ESP, to the very nature of labor and craft that was performed everyday in the cells. Retro reflective yarn is used for safety related items, but is also used in uniforms on comtemporary inmates and guards. Given the hardy nature of the materials the the pieces will require little maintenance

Kelly Ambrose Degree Project

2010-05-30T12:34:00.000-07:00

Presenting another Degree Project

Kelly Ambrose works with hand dyed and cut multi-layered sheer fabrics.

Hambidge Residency: Michael Radyk

2010-05-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

Hambidge, Artist Residency Program
Michael Radyk
Resident May 25-June 13, 2010

www.hambidge.org

At Hambidge I will be making and designing the work for the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show in November, as well as finishing pieces for my shows at the University of Nebraska, Oregon College of Art & Craft, and an installation proposal for Eastern State Penitentiary.

Daisy Whelan Degree Project UGA

2010-05-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

I am showing the work of Daisy Whelan, one my students at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. Daisy's work is based on her interest in horses and their markings. She created a large, manipulated stitch & slash on a large hide, as well as, a striking felted horse blanket.

2010-04-30T14:16:00.000-07:00

Michael Radyk included in ART: Healing Lives. Joan Mondale Gallery. Minneapolis, MN

ART: Healing Lives is an international, juried exhibition associated with an Arts and Health Community Celebration hosted by the Midwest Arts in Healthcare Network (MAIHN).Textile Center's Joan Mondale Gallery in partnership with the Society for the Arts in Healthcare presents ART: Healing Lives from April 28 – May 22, 2010.

This compelling exhibition showcases mixed-media fiber works from artists who have transcended health related hardships through the healing powers of art. Laborious and often painful, yet meditative and ultimately regenerating, the work of these twenty-six artists serves as a spirit of hope to those traveling a similar road.

Opening Reception: Friday, April 30 from 6–8pm

Shipwrecked Sailor Series #2 2008

72” h x 66” w

Wall piece made of handwoven silk and cotton fabric, sewn, pieced and hand embroidered with mohair, silk yarn and hand-dyed silk ribbon.

Inspired by the short story “The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I wanted to create the balance of possibility and fatalism which I was feeling as well as the theme in his writing.

Blue Peninsula 2008

76” h x 66” w

Wall piece made of handwoven silk and cotton fabric, sewn, pieced and embroidered with mohair, silk yarn and hand-dyed silk ribbon.

This wall piece was inspired by the calming and ecstatic images of water and an Emily Dickinson poem of which Joseph Cornell inspired one of his boxes.

Artist Statement for Art: Healing Lives

The embroidered symbols I used in those pieces were inspired by my experience and recovery from a traumatic injury that nearly severed my right arm. Using the oddly X-shaped scar on my forearm as the starting point, I slowly developed the symbols and surface embroidery in conjunction with the regeneration of the nerves, tendons, arteries and inner workings of my arm. The injury to my arm was the biggest challenge I have faced, both physically and artistically. While having three surgeries and many months of physical therapy and encouragement from my hand therapist I found myself trying to understand and explain the injury, rehabilitation and disability in visual terms.

My work and weavings evolve spontaneously, as I explore the unlimited possibilities of color, pattern and texture through the deconstruction and reassembly of symmetrical lines. In musical terms, I think of those weavings as a raga, a traditional pattern of rising and falling notes in Hindu classical composition around which creative improvisations can dance and play. In this approach there is a feeling of passing through a visual barrier that encompasses and expands the sensation of seeing, sound, rhythm and meaning, which is another element in my current work.

After weaving many yards of the fabric, all my preconceived ideas of color, texture and material began to fall away and I started to make connections with textiles that inhabit a sense of depth. The woven fabric began to function less as pattern and began instead to serve embroidered motifs, in the foreground, increasing the levels of distance and space. . The process of using the handwoven cloth as a kind of “found” canvas is what moved my series of 10 wall pieces titled “05/05/05” into a rediscovery of what can occur on the surface. I remember being shocked by how the cloth was able to merge and meld together the elements of color and texture.

As an artist I wanted to find a way to represent a simultaneous lack of sensation and painful regeneration, as well as the, electrical rejuvenation and constant energy shifts of recovery. The ten wall hangings I completed after my injury have an ecstatic and illuminated quality that provides a window into my experience. The embroidered images and symbols I employ acknowledge both my personal history and my investigation into the slow spill of time, memory and space.

MICHAEL RADYK TEXTILES: Materials Hard & Soft

2010-02-21T20:36:00.000-08:00

Exhibition
Materials: Hard & Soft, Greater Denton Arts Council, Center for the Visual Arts, February 6 - April 6, 2010 Denton, TX. Juried by Jo Lauria

Swan Point 1 55" h x 35” w
Swan Point 2 Also - 9’ h x 62" w

Materials: Wool, vinyl coated recycled polyester, linen.
Process: Digitally designed and woven from paintings and photographs taken at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island.
Hand cut floats and manipulated materials.

Exhibition

Materials: Hard & Soft, Greater Denton Arts Council, Center for the Visual Arts, February 6 - April 6, 2010 Denton, TX. Juried by Jo Lauria

MICHAEL RADYK TEXTILES: Binary Fiction 2010

2010-02-20T06:56:00.000-08:00

Exhibition:Binary Fiction:Digital Weaving, 2010, Eisentrager-Howard Gallery, University of Nebraska, October 4-29,2010. Curated by Janice Lessman-Moss
Textile Society of America Symposia, October 6-9

Visions of Gerard

52" h X 100" w

The title of this piece is from a novel by Jack Kerouac, about Lowell, Massachusetts and the scenes and sensations of his childhood there and his brother. I was trying to capture the slants of the roofs of the mills, the fog, the mist, the smoke Kerouac describes, as well as visiting and experiencing Lowell myself, trying to capture a low level of light.

Using Digital weaving allowed me to create a slow angle, with a repeat of 180 inches. The cutting of the floats adds to the veiling or mist. In many of my digital weavings the cloth is designed to be cut and manipulated. My pieces are designed with unlimited size dimensions. So a piece like Visions of Gerard can be woven the length of an industrial warp, because the piece is cut after weaving, there are almost unlimited possibilities for width and variety in surface.

Exhibition:Binary Fiction:Digital Weaving, 2010, Eisentrager-Howard Gallery, University of Nebraska , Textile Society of America