Friday, April 30, 2010

Love the Fabric Workshop. Love it.

Finally! Finally I've managed to land myself a job at the fabric workshop! I've been trying to get my foot into that door since graduating! And it's amaaaazing! I was brought in March to work as a seamstress on a two-month project with New Mexico artist, Paula Wilson.

(We took over an ENTIRE floor to work on this project with Paula.)

The absolute amazingness of the fabric workshop was immediate. I love working at Viv Pickle but there's something so rewarding about working in an environment that utilizes your creativity: on my first day in the studio I was asked my opinion on fabrics and colors, trusted to make intricate samples and integrated fully into the project.

(Me sewing a giant brick wall/curtain on as absolute BEAST of an industrial.)

It's been almost two months since I started working there two days a week. Now I'm there four days a week... even some late nights and weekends. The work is challenging (I've spent hours brainstorming archival engineering with a master printer and the project manager), physically exhausting (today I spent over an hour sewing an 11ft piece of felt into a decorative architectural cornice), and totally starstrucky! The fabric workshop and museum archives are FULL of yardage by artists like Felix Gonzalez Torres and boxes labeled Laurie Anderson. Not to mention I totally shook Nick Cave's hand two weeks ago. Ack! SERIOUSLY. The Fabric Workshop has worked with soooo many amazing and famous artists!

(Louise Bourgois! Swoooooon!)

The opening is RAPIDLY approaching (May 7th! One week!) and I only love working there more and more! I'll get some more photos of us working in the studio over the next week!

Monday, April 26, 2010

Be My Valentine, FiberArts Magazine!

At the very last minute I sent off one of my knit postcards to the annual FiberArts Magazine fiber postcard valentine competition. It didn't win any prizes, but it did manage to make it into the April/May issue!


Ok, so every year you send a pre-addressed/stamped hand-made, fibers postcard to the Interweave studio and they mail it back to you via their local post office in Loveland, Colorado... which also means that this was the perfect opportunity for me to test the real world mail-ability of my postcards! (Note the just-in-case $1 stamp. Y'know.. just in case.) But it arrived at the Viv Pickle studio in fine condition! Yay!


Happy Universal Love Day to All! Check out my postcard in the spread:


OOoooooh... sooo exciting! I hope I didn't offend any of those fibers ladies with my roughly knitted language. :0)

You can see all of the entries from the magazine here at the FiberArts magazine website!

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Stuff and Things

Ack! Is it the end of April already? Wtf? Somehow I thought it was still February. Casa Renick Rinehart has been a bit above crazy lately. By which I mean: so much more than crazy that I have been running around all over the east coast and all over the country trying to make some pretty big decisions. For those of you paying attention to my neurosis, you're probably wondering if I'm going to grad school in the fall. Unfortunately, (or maybe not so unfortunate if you're my bank account) it turns out that I will not be going back to school... so, I've bought myself a pick up truck and I'm moving to Chicago instead! Aaand... I'm moving kinda' soon.

Like one month from today.


Aaaah! Soo much to do! What with the logistics and the packing and selling of most of my earthly belongings... (keep an eye out for the porch sale!)

But in the mean time I've been keeping the busiest ever! I've been doing some free-lance t-shirt printing, some last minute quilting, and- super exciting- I've started working a few days a week at the Fabric Workshop and Museum! (OOoooooooh... yessss. I've been trying to get in there for years!)

Anyway, keep an eye on the blog for lots of photos and stories from the past couple of months and current projects!