{"id":941,"date":"2010-03-05T08:35:30","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T13:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=941"},"modified":"2024-11-21T10:43:56","modified_gmt":"2024-11-21T15:43:56","slug":"941","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=941","title":{"rendered":"Recycled Materials?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today a textile\/fiber artist asked a bunch of the rest of us on a list if anyone had suggestions or knowledge of how to modify potato crisp packages for use in textile projects, and although I replied with a light touch of irony and several actual sugestions, it led me to thinking about why people choose particular materials to work with<\/em><\/span>, and I spent a little time thinking about the non-traditional materials I have worked with in the past few years – and I mean, why leather? \u00a0(because I developed a symbolic meaning for it) and why lame\/glitter ? (aside from genetic attraction to anything glittery!\u00a0 – to me something gold and glittery indicates preciousness or intrinsic value)<\/p>\n

This request was posted\u00a0a\u00a0couple of \u00a0hours ago, but already there are several references to websites or articles on using these packets in craft projects, ranging from folding and sewing the folded units to attach to another surface, or cutting into long fine strips and making bracelets ….and I am sure there will be more as the\u00a0 day continues.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0So how to use them and how to shrink and otherwise modify them is acessible knowledge out there when you GTS.\u00a0 \u00a0And I presume one would thoroughly wash them to remove all traces of oil salt and potato odour that would attract bugs to any natural fibres in the work.<\/p>\n

But to me the most important questions are on these lines:\u00a0 In using modifed crisp packets, would an artist be saying something about the waste of resources for such packages and the rubbish we leave around?\u00a0\u00a0 Or does the choice of material not necessarily say anything at all about it’s actual original purpose. ie once it’s done containing crisps, so\u00a0it just becomes an empty\u00a0container made of a certain material?<\/span><\/em>\u00a0 And does\/can\u00a0how you use\u00a0a material take it beyond a ‘craft project’ necessarily?\u00a0\u00a0 I have been thinking a lot about what we discard – the recycling rubbish scheme here doesn’t work well for various reasons; and just lately foreign tourists have written to local media about how certain places or experiences here have been spoiled by the poor rubbish disposal habits of uruguayans… and I have taken quite a few pics ( see recent blog posts) which either accidentally or deliberately feature rubbish, especially the enduring plastic kind.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The above pic is of a bunch of predomantly plastic rubbish\u00a0 exhumed by wave action recently on a dune of our local beach.\u00a0 More pics elsewhere close by on this blog page.\u00a0 I\u00a0don’t know the archival qualities of potato crisp packets, but I feel they must be pretty durable.\u00a0 I am wondering though if I should focus entirely on using more ‘waste’ \u00a0material combining it with fabrc and stitch, or even\u00a0ditch the new fabrics new fibres thing altogether?\u00a0\u00a0Nah… or at least, I’m not in the right frame of mind for that just yet.\u00a0 But there is food for thought,\u00a0and\u00a0while considering all this I remembered the\u00a0fabulous scuptural textile-like\u00a0work of\u00a0the Nigerian artist El Anatsui<\/span><\/a>\u00a0– check out the fabulous, massive curtains of linked bottle tops…. but it’s not just about bottle tops.\u00a0 \u00a0 In Quilt National in 1997\u00a0 was a terrific quilt by West Australian artist\u00a0 Janie Matthews,<\/em><\/span> entitled “American Icon” it was a large US flag design made of thousands? of applied 1″ squares cut from Pepsi\u00a0 and CocaCola cans, each predominantly red blue and white square placed to give the design its form<\/span><\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 In this work, the symbolism and irony and sybolism with in this\u00a0 approx. 1.5 in length work were clever and interesting – it wasn’t just about the design of the US flag, nor was it just about the two giant soft drink companies.\u00a0 Those of you near your QN catalogues can look it up….but I don’t seem to be able to find a pic of it anywhere online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today a textile\/fiber artist asked a bunch of the rest of us on a list if anyone had suggestions or knowledge of how to modify potato crisp packages for use in textile projects, and although I replied with a light touch of irony and several actual sugestions, it led me to thinking about why people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6uxpF-941","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9017,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions\/9017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}