Process
Happy Friday, everyone! I just wanted to share one of my non-work related projects that I recently finished.
My dear friend Shannon curated an art show at Biola to celebrate National Women’s Month. Here’s her statement about the show,
The grace to be a beginner is always the best prayer for an artist. The beginner’s humility and openness lead to exploration. Exploration leads to accomplishment. All of it begins at the beginning, with the first small and scary step.
– Julia Cameron, “the Artist’s Way”Each of the 26 artists in this exhibition have willingly thrown themselves full force into the often scary process of creating art.
These women come from a variety of different places: you will see art from Biola staff members, current students: both art and non-art majors, and alumni who are now working professional artists. The range of work displayed is wide, but the pieces are linked by a foundation that has seen the process as more important than the product. Each artist seemed to have some sense of the unknown, but moved forward anyway.
the word process takes on a few different meanings in this show:
>>> the exploration of specific materials
>>> the exploration of a collection
>>> the exploration of a life phase or experienceI invite you to explore this space and make your own connections, hopefully becoming inspired and empowered to participate in the act of creating something yourself!
Art? You just do it. — Martin Ritt
Shan asked me to participate in this show by creating a new installation for the space. She gave me no parameters and said I could do whatever I wanted.
I had recently been toying with the idea of treating paper like fabric and I decided to work with coffee filters since even though they are paper, they have a fabric-like quality to them.
Using fabric dye, I dyed over 3,000 coffee filters starting with a fully saturated color and slowly diluting it as I went.
Each filter was organized by shade, folded, and then glued to the structure I created to house it.
I chose to put it up against a glass wall to allow natural light to shine through a bit and illuminate the piece.
These are some of my lovely friends/sister that came out for the show–how great are they??
Thanks, Shan for the chance to participate in the show.
Also, a special thanks to Taryn, Emily, Natalie, Dan, Jason, Michelle, and everyone else that helped me fold–You guys are the best!
11 comments
That is gorgeous! Great job.
this is incredible. beautiful job. i love it.
xoxo
I’ll be honest…This made me really excited.
Super BEAUTIFUL……….Super AMAZING………. Great job!
saw this when you were putting the finishing touches on…absolutely wonderful. love the choice to put in on the glass window to allow light to come through…i’m so tempted to try your dye and coffee filter method.
thanks for the awesome instillation! your work is great
This turned out beautifully. Love that you diluted the color as you went…clever.
So beautiful Ruthi…
soooo aaaahhhhhhhmazing!!!!
Hi Ruthi!
I was at Biola this past week visiting one of my closest friends, and we were talking about visual merchandising for Anthropologie (her father is friends with someone in Phoenix working for Anthropologie’s design team?) and I mentioned how much I love your blog/work, and pulled it up on my phone, specifically to show her this installation. She flipped and said OH THATS IN THE LIBRARY, and I realized I’d entirely missed that it was at Biola, so within five minutes I was standing in front of it.
Anyway, just wanted to tell you again that it’s beautiful, even moreso in person.
xoxo
CONGRATS!!! it’s amazing! the colors and the layers looks great! .. your patience is truly rewarded =), thanks for being an inspiration.
Ruthi,
I work in the library at Biola and pass by this piece many times a day. Almost every time I pass by I want to pick it up and wear it like a cape. I think this is a great testament to how you captured your vision. It looks like fabric, I want to interact with it like fabric, and the whole piece looks so fluid. Great work!
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