Reknit was launched on January 4th, 2010 as a small project to share a resourceful family tradition with the world, and to encourage my mom to partake in her hobby more often. The project is based around the idea of reclaiming yarn from old clothes, and reknitting that yarn into something new and useful. … The site will feature a different item each month, which will be decided by user submitted votes.
During the month of December, IDTextile studio invite you to visit our HOME SWEET HOME. Room by room, post after post, find out about our furniture collection “handmade design”. In an effort to confront environmental and economic issues we have made a conscious decision to develop objects in accordance with a strong “make do” ethos whereby salvaged textiles and furniture are cleverly combined with all our creative know-how. “Cross-encounters” give rise to a collection of unique pieces, where a frail mirror might find protection under a crocheted cover, or where a damaged cane chair might be rescued by woven-in embroidery…each object and each scrap of material telling a story and their cross encounters being limited only by our (your) imagination.
Lucy Brown,Wear Me With Tender Loving Care, 2000
Photo credit: James Newell
One artist I came across recently within the context of re-cycling and textiles is British artist Lucy Brown. Her working processes are interesting in that collecting, finding and even wearing old clothes are as important a process as the final piece(s). Her techniques include cutting and weaving processes. The final pieces appear to me as curious, fascinating, shrunken and compacted forms. They have an air of sadness, desolation. Items such as lapels, fastenings, seams are retained as indicators of their former ‘lives’. Lucy Brown belongs to the respected 62 group in the UK. For anyone who does not fit within Axis criteria there is a free Standard membership that includes e-bulletins, Axis Facebook, contact messages to artists (maximum of 50).
submitted by Lesley Bricknell
Artist Carole Baillargeon has contributed images of a 2006 installation, Autome: Paysages-vêtement en quatre temps, a massive (10 x 18 metres) piece of patchwork comprised of recycled jeans collected and pieced from 1995 to 2006. She will show another work in this series, Printemps: Paysages-vêtement en quatre temps at Diagonale in Montreal from April 12 to May 17, 2008.
Saturday, November 10 to Sunday, December 30, 2007
235 Queens Quay West, Toronto, Canada
Blankety Blank, Candice Tarnowski
Re-inventing wool sweaters has been the artist’s focus for the last 3 years. Transformed into a collar or bracelet that contains part of a previously owned sweater completes a cycle, and another generation takes shape. Curator’s Statement 75kb PDF
I am a regular visitor to Cynthia Korzekwa’s blog Art for Housewives. Cynthia is an artist and blogger interested in re-using, repurposing or otherwise recycling items into beautiful art, craft and wearables. Her most recent entry (October 31, 2007) has links to some great articles about the prevalence of clothing made from recycled fabrics, notably flour bags and feed sacks during the 1930’s.
You can read an interview with Koizumi HERE.
Poplar Gallery.Online
CARE Canada