kidchamp dot net

09.01.10

101 in 1001 {II}: 011 contribute work to a gallery show [completed 08.31.10]

once upon a time, i heard of a contest; it involved tearing across the city to secure a blank tote bag, spending a week reimagining said tote bag, and potentially ending up in a gallery show. i just love tearing across the city for random things (as the people who saw joe and me switching shoes to race across williamsburg could tell you), and i finally had time for a nice and complicated project; i was on this. two fridays ago, i took a cab down to the school of fashion at parsons and grabbed my blank bag.



on saturday i sent esb a rambling email about bags and textile portraits and technique and laura palmer and fashion and david bowie. bowiebowiebowie, she said, and who am i to argue with that? on sunday i got advice and a bunch of linen thread from the ladies at purl soho. on monday i picked up contact paper and blew out a bowie-photo at kinko's for a rough template; by monday night i had a viable source sketch and was a little one-woman sweatshop. a word of advice to you, internet: should you find that you have to embroider a tote bag at some point in your life, go through the extra step of taking said bag apart. i didn't, so i had to do the whole thing upside down and have a lovely pointillist bowie on my right thigh.



i actually didn't start listening to records as i sewed until thursday night; on friday morning, for my last three hours of satin stitches, i played low (twice), heroes, and the first half of changesbowie. i tub-dyed the whole thing friday morning (per jamie and one of our fashion editors), hid it from steve overnight, and climbed up to the roof to take submission photos on saturday morning. on saturday night i kept grabbing joe's arm. i want to win, i hissed.



yesterday i won,



and yesterday evening joe and amanda and i had semi-cold cans of beer at the gallery show. and tiki drinks at painkiller. and banh mi and pho at an choi.

{full project set here}