This season I have been busy making scores of headdresses for Dia de los Muertos, and led a craft session to teach my friends how to make them too – such fun!
I used sturdy headbands, (either wide plastic or thin metal work well) and with hot glue, added a felt strip as a base to add the decoration. I provided a lovely selection of faux flowers and foliage, plastic and polystyrene skulls and rhinestones, and we dived in, cutting up some dollar store lace tablecloths as mantillas.
Ive been indulging in some crafting, with felt and embroidery!
I constructed the booties from felt using a vintage Simplicity 1948 pattern as a guide, choosing two styles, one resembling a sort of moccasin and the other more of a sand boot.
When it came to decorating them I decided to embroider them with a variety of stitches, using my own designs doodled freehand rather than using those on the pattern. On one set I added some vintage mother-of-pearl buttons that I bought at the Rose Bowl flea market.
With ‘Light Curtain’, artist Liz Rideal paints the fabric of the building with light, as a sophisticated LED rig and video projections illuminate the exterior of the Whitworth Art Gallery during the evenings.
This video, shot on Canon 5D MKII, is one of a series of videos and photos I captured for the COTTON: Global Threads exhibition website, my latest project with the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester. Creating the website has been a great opportunity to indulge my love for art history and cultural theory, exploring themes in the exhibition including globalization, ethics, cultural hybridity, identity and beauty.
I was fortunate enough to interview some of the international contemporary artists involved with the exhibition such as Lubaina Himid and Aboubakar Fofana, and work with the curators and conservators to bring it to life online. The aim was both to inform and inspire people who are able to visit the gallery, and offer an engaging experience to those who will experience it in the digital realm – with some behind-the-scenes peeks and exclusive content created specially for the site, featuring a multiplicity of voices and perspectives.
COTTON: Global Threads opened on February 11th and runs until the 13th May 2012. Visit the Whitworth Gallery if you can, its a great show. Delve into the website and blog at www.cottonglobalthreads.com