Twit talk

Really had an attitude about Twitter. I met it for the first time last winter at a fake start up gathering. It was weird, as people started imaginary enterprises and worked to get them "going" for 2 days and it was all make believe, for adults, who paid $40 dollars for the fun of not doing anything real in a very serious way!

Maybe i am peeved because if i had collected the door for that big nothing the Fair Trade chapter artists and crew would be paid for this next round. Supporting the arts at the artists level is the sustainable economic model i am trying to establish. Do i have to make it a game first?

Species on the Verge .....to Youtube

"Species on the Verge" video still

as is and up she goes.

I am cutting the cord and setting chapter one free.

The Fair Trade op is open - Blumeadows cd, as well as the event for Women's Equality Day at the NW African American Museum the 27th of this month, the London connection-appear to be a path. The synchronistic collage is available and i am not one to dis opportunity that arrives via the known unknowable.

If you attend the show at the Museum, you have a chance to see the quilts they are showing and connect with local women who are uniting to make changes for a better balance. See you there!

moving on to Fair Trade

Beautiful Soul website - a new look is on the way

Blumeadows is about to finish a cd and since he is interested in doing the soundtrack for the Fair Trade chapter -the "Water Rip" is on hold. Collaboration works best with flexible plans and a double "release" can optimize both of our projects.

I became better acquainted with the Fair vs Free (to exploit) Trade issues while i was in London. Check out the Ethical Fashion Forum for more on this topic.

I met 2 women in London that had gone to Africa on grants to help create small business works. Both stories were plus and minus. Both started out with a clothing model and both ended up walking into a situation that had either lost it's machines or it's lease. The solution became jewelry from local sources that one of the women had to scout out herself. The other woman ended up with jewelry also, however she made an antique kimono source connection that is behind her newest collection that will be going into London Fashion Week shows September 19th -26th. Yay for sustainable spirit! and watch for "Beautiful Soul".

Finally....almost

Her future is up to all of us! (video still)

Just a tweak or two left to do and the video for this first chapter of fashionRIP will go to YouTube.

Okay, there is a sheer overlay effect i want to add but if that can't be done this next week than i can use the idea in another chapter.

Fashion Out of Context

Catwalk fashion is an art unto itself. The staging of clothing has possibly created the precedent for home staging and makes me wonder about window dressing? When did the artful window crowd out the "show it all" mish mash stack up display?

This is the kind of creative history that pushes commerce and art together tangling design impact into a desire for the displayed. Though the whole of the work is an art are the individual elements "artful" on their own?

In the illusion built to sell, the pleasure dies soon after an element is extracted and moved into a lesser designed habitat, thrown onto a moving body or into the kitchen sink. The illusion fades as the product becomes lost in the everyday ephemera.

Brought to you by shop less, live more!

Soundtrack

jaimerobert johnson at NSCC graduation 6/08

Finally all things have come together to to put the music to the "Verge." This has taken awhile to fall into place; hardware, software and bi-coastal communications issues can be smoothed out but in this case meeting up at the media lab is the better plan.

jaimerobert Johnson came west to work and play music with some old friends during summer break. In this mix he is taking time to lay the tracks at the very lab the video was made. It is great to be past these tech hurdles and onto the raison d'etre.

Sometimes patience is a good thing.

Video cast pictures are at the ArdisAllyn Picasa site.
Posers Flickr spot has a slide show of "Species on the Verge" pictures.

Western Gallery

I am a slacker on the blog but that doesn't mean I am not working!

A few days ago I found out that Western Gallery wants a sustainable fashion show (and I am negotiating fr a mini version of the fashionRIP installation. This based on the argument that clothing in context, like art and words is the truer statement aka artist's intent, for what is ground breaking, visual shifting or radical etc becomes part of the lexicon after awhile and therefore loses impact. This is especially true to fashion and I will go into this in an article I want to write for the Ethical Fashion Forum- a shameless tease)

Showtime means Water dresses are on the cutting table and under the needle. After all that black mourning this blue, green, lavender palette is a joy to play in despite the undercurrents in the topic. The relative and the juxtapose, the relationship and the idealized futurism.....its all there! its always all there.

Eco Design Fair

Nicola (Beautiful Soul) and Jaime

People Tree Fair Trade at the Eco Design Fair

Sums and me

Sums and Mathew

show shot

Manon Flener

party after the Eco Fair party, thanks to N & J

London was fabulous. I am posting photos of the wonderful group brought together by Nicola of Beautiful Soul (website will be up soon) and Jaime to make this stay one of the highlights of my life! I will write more later, but have to get an article to the Ballard News Tribune.

If you are new to this blog please go to the links on the left and see the Ardisallyn photos of the video shoot as well as the Flickrr slideshow on the Posers link. If you click on the photo a caption appears and this will help you get an idea of the first chapter of fashionRIP "the Species on the Verge"

I am going to have to get a blog for this "new to the site thing" as my cards are now global wanderers and this blog is a scrolling journal affair. When the Verge premieres a proper website will be necessary but til then the money goes elsewhere. Gallery, showing space suggestions are wanted as the original venue didn't get their grant..... thank you. (please respond as all ideas are welcome...go to the Teachstreet link to contact me)

If Wishes were

Horses, i would be riding the black stallion i pretended to be when i was 8.

I am not sure what that means but my head is in the clouds one minute and freaking the next. Why?

I am speaking in the pro mode for the first time, in London, to start off the Eco Design Fair East opening night fashion show and party.

Now i was into lining up speaking presentation gigs for sustainable fashion but i had planned for a soft entry.

My plan was to start at Seattle Central Community College; a school i was familiar with and where i thought i would do an interactive lecture in order to get feedback, ideas and some polish.

The universe however has a better idea and this rather amazing and quite beautiful opportunity arrived instead. I must be ready for it, even though it feels a little like being pushed out of the nest.

I am leaving Thursday early a.m. and will post more from London if all works out with my new little Aspire netbook.
PS i am naming names because information comes from everywhere.....validity is another topic!)

Where's the fashion!

fish with glamorous sequin scales

too cool rayon

Vintage fabrics have the greatest prints. The old rayon was fabulous, cool to the touch, great body and not ironing needy like the rayon revival fabrics of the 90's . What happened?

The 50s fish print on barkcloth is a closeup of a sundress that makes me think of the Pike St Market fish tossers and a trip to Arizona.

Vintage clothing should be cared for then passed along as is a most sustainable form of fashion....and retains value. That is important now as i am raising funds for the next part of the fashionRIP Project.

Anyone have a warehouse to give me? One that can be an experimental makeover for a sustainable work/live space. Hey talk to me! An experiment in an experiment, how fun is that!

wrap it up

i am made of plaster and so carefree

The video has been sent to Springfield, MA. for its audio track.

In the meantime i had to redo the entire project because when i made a rough cut dvd to go with a Final Cut Pro project -"Making of the Species on the Verge" - my Final Cut HD Express project was re-sized into a mini black boxed image and then that version was accidentally copied back to my portable hard drive.

In the "it happens" column of apparent crap, this is a good addition. However i made a new project with virgin clips and am almost back to where i was. The plus is that i am really learning the software, explored several possible solutions and am now cleaning up the timeline even more as i am less in love with it. i have gotten a bit jaded and need to back off!

Funny how emotions can play such a part in life; its too bad we are not as well versed in them as we are in technology. A by-product of our cultural focus i suspect.

doors slam

photo from the # 7 bus

i had a few days of doubt and pain, wondering why i care so much about the issues being addressed directly and subtly by the fashionRIP Project. Why continue when i am not getting paid, when few understand and when the fog of ignorant bliss can be so thick?

fashionRIP started with the dresses and as a comment on the unsustainable (and full of bad habits) fashion and textile industry. Since then theRIP has grown into its present form of expression. It is an elaborate communication, striving to tell the story of present truths and dispell the delusions that cultures struggle under because their concepts are familiar and "owned" rather than seen for their temporay quality. Why is that?

How do really good, well minded, intelligent people fail to see this prison? The cultural brainwash is a big carrier of these diseased concepts and though it constantly shifts to absorb new ideas (after the wall of denial crumbles so much that it must!) it appears to me as a huge collection of distortions based on a violent childhood (early history is full of bloody gore).

If we can accept that we are bruised, forgive the past for its ignorance and shift our energy and action into the direction we really want to go.....we have already started the journey!