Yiping Tong
Week 1
What is sustainable development? Protect the environment and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, solve overproduction, reduce pollution and waste, and support biodiversity.
Likewise, what is sustainable fashion? A good rule of thumb is to avoid purely synthetic materials such as polyester – according to statistics 55% of global clothing is made of polyester – because they are derived from fossil fuels and take years to break down.
Regarding sustainable development, the first thing that comes to my mind is second-hand clothes and the secondary creation of second-hand clothes. Of course, in secondary creation, try to choose recyclable products for creation. I first used straws made from coffee grounds to mark them and then used recyclable materials such as paper cups, wooden spoons, and bubble wrap. I made them separately in different colours, mixed them with acrylic paint, and then printed them with a roller. Then use software to combine them and modify the colors to get a simple pattern. This is the most basic secondary creation. This pattern can be printed on various places such as clothing or shoes.
I found an article written on January 13, 2022, called “The Myth of Sustainable Fashion” (by Kenneth P. Pucker). This article extensively talks about various ways to maintain sustainable development. It is also this article An inspiration to me.
WEEK 2
I bought a 3D pen and wanted to make a mask. In the traditional sense, some masks are made of cardboard. Such masks can allow children to draw on them. Of course, some masks made of fabric can be used by adults. I wanted to break this rule, I first made the mask using regular A4 paper, then I used a 3Dpen to draw on the A4 paper, and finally removed the A4 paper to get the finished product.
WEEK 3
During this week’s lesson, I realized that nature has many plants and colours that I had never discovered. In my initial impression, nature is a lot of green. But before I found a tree with texture in Hyde Park, later in the park I found that not only the flowers were colourful, but also different browns could be seen on the bark. I used pencil and paper to draw on the bark and put them together for comparison. I found that the bark is like fingerprints, with different textures in every corner. I extracted some prints on the piece and carved them out. Get different effects after using paint.
WEEK 4
Regarding this week’s theme “Sustainable Development of Culture”, the first thing I think of is China’s ethnic minorities. As we all know, China has 56 ethnic groups, and except for the Han people, they are all classified as ethnic minorities. Among them, the Miao people are one of the ethnic groups that interests me the most. They have their own unique clothing and prints, and throughout history, the Miao have been classified in many ways. Xiangxi Miao costumes include headbands, shawls, tops, aprons, belts, flower belts, pants, skirts, leggings, socks, shoes, etc. These costumes are decorated with hundreds of fantasy patterns such as geometric patterns, animal patterns, and plant patterns. , patterns with profound meanings. Miao costumes in western Hunan are made with a set of traditional techniques such as textiles, printing and dyeing, embroidery, brocade, cross-stitching, numbering, batik, and tie-dye. Each technique has its own unique production process and processing method.
I happen to be very interested in their tie-dye process. The process of tie-dying is to prepare some paint you want to use, a basin, a lot of rubber bands and some fabric. Use a rubber band to tie the fabric tightly, then pour paint on it, and finally let it rest for 15 minutes, and you will get a unique pattern.
WEEK 5
Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person’s feelings, opinions, or experiences. Empathy is an important aspect of human social and emotional intelligence that plays a vital role in building and maintaining positive relationships, promoting cooperation, and showing support and kindness to others. There are many correlations between empathy and art, they reinforce and intertwine. Works of art often contain rich emotional expressions, and viewers or listeners can feel emotional resonance through these works. Artists express emotions through their work, and audiences are able to understand and relate to those emotions, which involves empathy.
REFLECTION
After a few weeks of studying, I realized that sustainability was already all around me, and when I was doing market research, I found that most of the materials were already made from recycled fabrics. When I look back on my homework over the past few weeks, I see that I have not incorporated environmental protection into my work, so I will try my best to integrate environmental protection with my own work in the future. In this project, I experienced the freedom to create, and I was able to work with the materials I wanted. In the weekly workshop, it is also possible to create with different materials. I think it’s very useful for me because I can combine what I’ve learned from this writing with what I’m going to do in the future, and I can enrich my work even more. Overall, I learned a lot about the creation of materials during this month, and the presentation of the teacher in the class also gave me a lot of ideas. I also have a clear idea of how my future work will be created.
Peer Reflection from Cindy Zhu
When I read through Yiping’s Blog, I can see that she is interested in different techniques and she tries many of them.
First of all, I would like to say that I really like her research on sustainability in the first week. I really like her concise summary of some research on it and her focus on how to experiment the process, her description of the process is very detailed. However, there is one thing makes me feel a little lost when reading about this paragraph is that here she mentioned two very clear data 55% and an article she reads, but there was no clear link and sources, so I was not sure about the accuracy of the information. The same problem arose in the following weeks.
Then in week 3 and week 4 she got really beautiful images full of texture, and I really like this way of getting texture directly on the bark. And at the same time, she experimented with many different kinds of paper. The effect of using white on black paper reminds me of anti-color effects and X-ray photographs, especially when contrasted with the surrounding bark. One thing that makes me feel a little not enough these past few weeks is that these beautiful traces have not been further developed. I think these textures in themselves are perfect for the next step.
After looking at her Blog, I learned a new way to acquire texture, and also realized the importance of development. There were many parts in my own works that stopped the preliminary development too. After watching her works, I realized how regrettable it was. At the same time, I will try more kinds of materials like her to see the effect of different materials in the future.
I think as a whole it is clear to see that you have understood and engaged with the better lives’ lectures, commenting on them in correlation with your work. I really like the prints derived from recyclable materials in week one, and I think that there is clearly a beginning of developing ideas here as you combine mark making and prints digitally. I think maybe it would have been beneficial to document the process, as often this can be just as inspiring as the outcome itself – maybe the straws looked really interesting after having been used for printing and you could have done some quick 3-dimensional work with these? Although the prints you created are really strong, you can create more unique ideas by responding in a handful of different ways. This is why I think week 4 is really successful, you are trying more of a 3-dimensional textural approach here which is really different from your initial week 1 responses. As well as this, you clearly document the process which communicates your method and technique really successfully. I think maybe you could have expanded on this by doing a drawing or mark making response of the dye sample, looking at the remaining texture in the fabric which could have generated really interesting mark making. I think your mark making in week 3 (nature) s really strong and especially like how you also did a rubbing of the tree as well as observational drawings. Maybe in future you could look at combining and layering these drawings in different mediums and deriving shapes and textures from them to continue pushing forward your work.