video: swarm

an amazing year

I've been meaning to post this comic since I first saw it in March. It's been hanging on my studio wall and had started to yellow, so I decided enough was enough and finally took a photo of it. Then I realized that just going to the artist's blog would provide a better image (link below image)

It was in Riverfront Times just around the time when I was getting a decent amount of responses to my year project. How relevant! 

http://leonbeyondfacts.blogspot.com/

darn it! sock gallery

july 2012

july 2012

june 2012

june 2012

june 2012

june 2012

perpetual spring

may 2012

see it in progress

darn it!

 a new project

my very first darn job - may 2012

I think a lot about waste. How I waste. What we waste. Wasted time and wasted money.

And then I had beautiful-but-holey socks that I didn't want to throw away...which led to this project.

Background:

For the past few years, I've primarily been wearing wool socks (specifically smartwool socks) because they are ridiculously comfortable, and when you walk a lot, you need comfortable socks. I like the idea of merino wool: its naturalness and renewability, its thermal and odor-resistant properties (I wear these socks many times before washing them!), its resistance to dirt, and the fact that it grows on sheep.

I first learned about the wonders of merino while living in New Zealand, where sheep are a pretty big deal. L worked in menswear in a department store, and Icebreaker (one of the NZ brands they sold) let each employee pick out any item from their catalog. He got an amazingly thin but warm hoodie that he still loves to wear five years later. It was an incredible to get that for free because, in case you didn't know, merino wool is pretty expensive - but definitely worth it.

It's interesting to think back to the (before mass production) past, when clothes were precious because there were laborious hand-processes required to make or have them made. To make wool socks, someone would have to shear a sheep, wash the wool, hand card it and spin it to make a yarn, dye it and then knit it. After all that, it would be insane to toss a pair of socks out because of a hole. 

So back to my socks. They were expensive (relatively) and treasured, and I didn't want to waste. During a visit to Portland back in January, my mentor Erica Edwards of Quotable Content showed me a wool pair she had darned that had felted together nicely. My mom had talked about darning her underwear during hard times in her twenties, and though, thankfully, times are not too hard for me at the moment, I decided to follow in the footsteps of a tradition of repair and give my socks a longer life. 

I happened to have an orange ball of wool yarn. So I darned them.* And then I darned another pair, and soon enough I could wear those socks again without my toe poking out. I liked the contrast of the new yarn to the old, that it added to the visibility of my work...knowing and seeing that I had done that.

Proposal:

This is where you come in. Send me a worn or holey pair of socks that you love and I will repair them (for free), photograph them, and send them back to you. 

Near the top right of this page is an "E-mail: Click Here" button. E-mail me to get the address to send them to. Tell your friends and co-workers. Send them to this page if they want to know the background story. My only requests are that you only send one pair, and that I can choose whatever color of yarn that I darn well please.

Thank you!

click here to see the darn it sock gallery




*Darning is the name for the method of repairing holes or worn areas in knitting or fabric using a needle and a thread (of a similar material to the original garment).  

9 to 5

march 2012

This video contains an image for each of the 480 minutes in a working day.  In 9 to 5, I sought to capture that archetypal chunk of time when most people are away from their homes and at their place of employment.  The room is sealed off; no one passes through. The room and the camera are left alone to experience the daylight. 

Having spent many days at home during these hours -while unemployed either by choice or by circumstance- I have become familiar with the passage of light through my bedroom. This measured passage of time began to concurrently represent both the transgressive freedom of “playing hooky” from standard work hours and increasing anxiety at my separation from what can be viewed as common experience. 

I continue to be interested in the idea of work, in terms of what qualifies as work and the value placed on work. As with my Year Project, I am also fascinated by the passage of time and the many ways in which something so intangible can be quantified and depicted.