A Sample of Making | Kristin Mariani Frieman

November 2 - 21, 2009

 

“Après moi, le déluge”  Valentino: The Last Emperor

Kristin Mariani Frieman is a Chicago based dressmaker, designer, and artist who founded the label RedShift, a line of contemporary couture created from salvaged materials and found garments.  A Sample of Making is a RedShift design project that provides a platform for the intensive labor involved in making clothing. For a period of three weeks the designer will produce singular garments within the Spoke gallery space from her collection of salvaged wools in a spectrum of colors. Seeking to present her process of design alongside the product of her practice, she aims to create opportunities for critical exchange by engaging others in the design process.  Working with several interns, the designer will have open studio hours, hold a workshop, and host a closing event to view the work created at Spoke.

GrayScales Workshop
Saturday, November 7th and 14th
1-5 PM, $95
Spoke   119 N Peoria 3D, Chicago, Il

How we see gray informs how we see color.  This is a do-it-yourself (make yourself cozy)  workshop based on Josef Albersʼ gradation study from his book Interaction of Color. Working from salvaged gray wools from the RedShift collection, participants will create a gray wool scarf or pair of mittens using a combination of hand and machine sewing processes. The workshop takes place over two consecutive Saturdays and is open to all skill levels, ages, and disciplines.  Participants are welcome to display their final projects as part of the closing event for A Sample of Making.

To participate please contact: Kristin@redshiftcouture.com 

Open Studio Hours
Monday-Saturday, closed Wednesday
12-6PM

Closing Event
Saturday, November 21st
6-9PM 

Kristin Mariani Frieman would like to thank the following interns for the time
and handiwork that they contributed to RedShift for A Sample of Making:

Sarah Amariat
Kelsey Heiniger
Rosemary Lee
Coral Manor
Danielle Wyman

RedShift   Kristin Mariani Frieman   Dressmaker/ Designer
PHONE  847.226-4559    |    EMAIL  kristin@redshiftcouture.com    |    WEB  www.redshiftcouture.com 

Review of Collection: Brought, Bought and Stolen

Collection: Brought, Bought and Stolen
Review by Stephanie Nadeau

When Joseph Beuys imagined Social Sculpture in the 1960s, he freed creativity from the history of art. He pictured society as a creative collaboration, a work of art that is continually re-produced as each individual finds his own way forward, creating culture by making the world habitable. His politics expanded the scope of art to include social change, and declared creativity a matter of responsible public practice.

What are the implications of that image on the art world now? Certainly there is still something called Art that is the purview of the trained artist and the intellectual, a sphere of inquiry that progresses in the institution and thrives in the marketplace. The gallery system is still framing that inquiry, naming the outsiders and indexing the stars. The struggle to broaden the scope and reach of the art scene in Chicago has had everything to do with envisioning an alternative to this system.

Alternative exhibition spaces thrive in this city. Some host regular programming, while some spaces spring up unexpectedly for a short while before returning to their former states as living rooms and studios. Almost all of them are independently funded and most are artist-run. Their presence in the city distances creative production from a strictly commercial context, and allows artists the freedom to make and exhibit work that is uncertain and risky. New networks are created, collaborations fostered, and discussions facilitated, charging Chicago art culture with a spirit of making and creating that is useful, open, and aligned with Beuysian artistic praxis.

The DIY Chicago art scene has recently expanded by one more venue, accepting into its many variegated folds a small space in the West Loop called Spoke. Tucked above ThreeWalls on the 3rd floor of the 119 Peoria Street building, Spoke is remarkably well positioned to offer challenging programming to a mainstream art audience.

Co-founded by Monica Herrera, Rachel Moore, Heather Mullins, and Rana Siegel, Spoke aims to challenge and re-invent the role of the traditional art gallery, by providing a platform for a diverse range of creative people, projects, and endeavors of all kinds. Their inaugural show, Collection: Brought, Bought and Stolen, is an exhibit by Canadian artists Sarah Febbraro and Jesse Levine, who have decided to use the gallery to exhibit their personal collections.

Levine performed a sample of his music collection at the opening, remixing and manipulating it with added effects and keyboards. In a very nostalgic gesture he also created a mixed CD of songs from his collection, available at Spoke throughout the month.

Febbraro installed 59 works of art acquired as gifts or garage sale purchases, bought on the street, in thrift stores, or rescued from the trash. Comprised of paintings, drawings, collages, a finger puppet, street art and memorabilia, the collection hangs on two walls in the gallery, filling them completely in an earnest and cluttered array. The objects have been arranged on the walls en masse, without labels or identification, too close to one another to be considered individually.

Her collection champions the novice and the outsider, and is political in the way that an artist’s living room might be. A beautifully hand-drawn poster of Barack Obama hangs near handy-craft Christmas tree ornaments, opposite a colored pencil Spiderman drawing from an artist on Monroe Street, pinned up under a large and terrible oil painting of a leering, green baby.

Taste is not the validating context for the work in this exhibition. In fact the work is not the work in this exhibition. Febbraro and Levine have framed their collections within the gallery as a gesture intended to broaden the definition of artistic practice, allowing the scope of theirs to include the quotidian ways in which they accumulate and value the creative work of others.

Collective Crosshatch Study | A Sample of Making

The Collective Cross Hatch Project is well underway, with visitor and student contributions from classes at Columbia College and SAIC. The collective pieces will be on display at the closing event.

Please come and join us to celebrate the closing of Kristin Mariani Frieman's A Sample of Making.  Participate at the craft table where you can make your own mittens and felted wool hats, and help yourself to some chili (con carne and vegetarian) to match the RedShift sweater palette.
Saturday, November 21st  6-8pm.

Participants:

Kim Debord, Julia Toepler, Amanda Helmer, Olivia Strautmanis, Julia Rothblatt, Ryan Hrovat, Andrew Love, Allegra Tansey, Victoria Myrick, Jessica Ma, Gracia Yoo, No H Sara (Sara Riley Douglas), Heather Mullins

Drawing I- Columbia College:
Dylan Luloff, Cynthia De Jesús, Brandi Wickert, Emily Ponce, Eric Cimino, Rebecca O'Brien, Jessica Quintero, Karmen Petersen, Emily Callaghan, Brittney O'Keefe, Heriberto Lopez, Chris Terrill

Fundamentals of 3-D Design-Columbia College:
Elric Gerard Sabb, Alice Xiao, Dana Scheibe, Stephanie Gabrys, Cecilia Tito, Brittany Hill, Megan Brown, Jessica Egan, Becky Conterio, Patty Galarza-Hernandez, Jennifer Johnson, Paige Kingsley, Fernando Garcia


Previous participants:
Chelsea Goodwin, Carla Duarte, Sarah Amariat, Kelsey Heiniger, Coral Manor, Michael Clarke, Liz Weamer, Carlotta Parisi