Joana Vasconcelos

Joana Vasconcelos is a Portuguese artist who utlizes crochet and lacemaking techniques to create her intricate, often large-scale sculptural pieces.

jungjung

I love the delicate crochet lace vegetables from Japanese crochet artist jungjung's show Vege.
From Craft Zine

Mark Bieraugel

It is great to see men getting involved in embroidery arts, and as an avid poster on the Manbroidery flicker group, filmresearch aka Mark Bieraugel,is leading the way with his fish-themed embroidery pieces. Check out feeling stitchy's interview with the artist here.

Peter Crawley

This piece is from Peter Crawley's series of architectural studies.Peter works almost exclusively in black thread on paper, the fibrious thread giving a softness to the precise straight lines and right angles in his pieces. He also has some striking abstract pieces up on his website that are worth checking out.

Found at Jenny Hart's awesome blog Embroidery as Art

Luke O'Sullivan

Well it's been quite awhile since my last post and I am feeling a little rusty so I thought I would get back into the swing of things by sharing the work of Luke O'Sullivan, a non-textile artist whose work I really admire. Luke is a Boston artist who creates silkscreened, wooden sculptural pieces of every day objects. I love that the pieces are simultaneously 2D drawings and 3D art objects.

Found at My Love for You

Kenzo

Kenzo's summer collection is exhuberant, playful and full of lovely floral prints. Check out a slideshow of the collection here.

Yin Xiuzhen

These mini metropolises were created by Yin Xiuzhen as part of her Portable Cities series (2002-2004).
Since the early nineties, Yin has been working with everyday materials such as second-hand clothes and fabrics to create sculptures laden with social references and personal reflections.
The buildings and landmarks in each suitcase were created from fabric materials Yin came across while spending time in the city each suitcase represents. The buildings she recreated were those she found memorable, for architectural or often personal reasons.
Her Portable Cities series explores issues of globalization and memory and of the modern pressure to keep moving and changing rather than living permanently in a single location.
Her work seems to reflect on the way one comes to understand and experience an environment after spending a good amount of time there.

Biology!

These pieces are from Emily Barletta's show My Biology, which was at Art Star in Philadelphia a few years ago. Check out a great interview with the artist here.

marañón

Textile jewelry designer Lorena runs the etsy shop marañón which features her unique embroidered necklaces and bracelets. I like that the geometric nature of the patterns resembles the look of precious stones that would typically be found on necklaces, yet Lorena's pieces are soft, oversized and colourful.

Christian Thompson

"Blaks Palace" Pegasus Print, 2002
Christian Thompson is an Australian artist who works within the mediums of photography, video and performance. I love the exaggerated, inpractical sweaters in his "Blaks Palace" series. The wearer's arms are extended such that he could wrap his arms around something large or possibly become tangled and constricted by his own sweater limbs.

Jonathan Callan

Jonanthan Callan, "The theoretical assumptions of management," text and screws, 2008.

Okay okay, this is not textile-arts related but I think Jonathan Callan's book sculptures are too amazing not to share.
"The theoretical assumptions of management" stands at over 6 ft high. The books in his pieces are made unreadable through the constriction of their pages and rather physical aspects such as their colour and bendable nature are amplified. Much of Callan's work involves investigation into the inherent physicality of texts.

Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People

Amy Sedaris has a new book about crafting that will be released in the fall- It looks pretty hilarious and awesome.
From TeenAngster

Shopping Bags

San Fransisco-based textile artist Lauren DiCioccio created this series of delicate, hand-embroidered shopping bags in response to the current movement to eliminate the use of plastic bags and the decline in the number of "ma and pop" grocery stores that tend to carry bags of this type of retro design. Each one-of-a-kind sculpture is based on a plastic bag the artist collected herself from a shop or on the street. By transforming mass-produced shopping bags into time consumingly crafted soft sculptures, the pieces eminate feelings of intimacy and nostalgia. Dicioccio exhibited this series in San Fransisco in 2009.
From My Love For You

Summer Prints

I love the colourful prints in Maya A. Lake's summer collection.Sorry the pictures are so small; check out larger images of the full collection here.

True Patriot Love

Reason Over Passion, cotton construction, (1968)
Joyce Wielend made this quilt for the prime minister of Canada, Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

Joyce Wieland, O Canada Animation (1970)
The 71 mouths forming the words to the national anthem are embroidered in red lips and white teeth on cotton.

I thought I would use Canada Day as an excuse to share work from Joyce Wieland's 1971 retrospective True Patriot Love, which was held at the National Gallery in 1971. Wieland is considered the first woman to elevate traditional female crafts such as embroidery and quilting to the realm of high art. The work in the show included rug hooking, needle point, embroidery and quilting as well as experimental film. Many of the pieces reflect on ideas of Canadian identity, politics, gender and ecology. Despite some of the serious subjects addressed by the work, the pieces themselves are quite playful, colourful and cheeky.

The act of quilting has often traditionally been collaborative work, and in the case of this show, Wieland worked with many skilled craftswomen on her fabric pieces. While it is common for an artist who is working on a large-scale piece to utilize external help, what makes this exhibition distinct is that all the needlewoman involved in Wieland’s projects were given credit for their work in the show. In comparison, when Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party was exhibited eight years later, American critic Lauren Rabinovitz noted “Chicago neither paid her assistants nor formally acknowledged their help.” While her work was clearly influenced by other artists incorporating feminist ideas into their work in the late sixties and early seventies, the specificities of Wieland's work were totally unique and innovative at the time when she was working.

Missoni Resort Collection 2011

I love the colourful, eccentric collection designer Angela Missoni has come out with this season for Missoni's resort line. The clothes are a hybrid of yellow, red, orange and purple tribal patterns mixed with 1960's esque miniskirts and halter dresses.

Daniel Kornrumpf

The detail and photographic realism exhibited in Daniel Kornrumpf's hand embrodiered portraits is unlike any other embroidery I've ever seen. The whole amazing portrait series can be viewed here

Annie Larson

Wow! My first blog post! How exciting. I thought I would start things off by sharing the work of one of my very favorite contemporary knitwear designers, Annie Larson. Her clothes are vibrant and playful and I love her interesting use of pattern and shape. These pieces were knit on a Brother KH-950 knitting machine and were made for New Land of Milk and Honey, a collaborative show at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, MN.
Check out work from the show itself here