A fragile peace

Musings on homonyms, fractals, clones and other similarities

Hmmmm, should we get further entrenched in a war we shouldn’t be in that we won’t be able to get out of…. I’m feeling a distinct sense of deja vu about this, and I know I’m not alone…..

“Designer, talk to me.”

“Well Tim, I found this picture inside The New York Times Magazine and it inspired me to make a fabric, something lacy but with strong fibers that can hold together disperate elements.”

“That seems like a lot of work. Are you sure there’s time?”

“This is the time right now, Tim.”

“All right Designer. Carry on.”

The cover of the new Style magazine for Oct. 18th is such a smashing look I thought I’d make it into my weekly design, just like that, no interpretation, no creative thought.

Then inside I find an artist doing much the same thing with cows, though she is thinking quite pointedly and creatively. Julia Lohmann uses cow parts to make cow sculptures. It’s disturbing and maybe a little wasteful in that she’s using hides, though mostly she’s focusing on parts that would normally be discarded, and in doing so is getting viewers to think about the amount of waste in meat production.

I’m interested in the self similarity aspect of her work, about the scrambling of something to make it again, or some semblance of it, much the way I’m scrambling today’s cover before piecing it back together to reconstruct the image in a new form.

What is it that we’re doing anyway? Our creations are not  quite fractals (the most interesting self-similar things of all) where a small part of the whole has the same structure as the mass of such parts (I’m thinking of  clouds, cauliflower, broccoli… and I think also their fascinating hybrid, romanescue….),

and they’re not clones we’re making, but something inspired by an object or being and reconstructed from it’s parts to make something related yet original.

“Designer, one of your outfits is so strong and the other is so delicate today.”

“Yes, Heidi. One was handed to me and the other took a lot of effort, especially since I was trying to change the values in the image.”

“I can see that.  It’s beautiful but also a fragile piece.”

“I think it’s worth the effort.”

“Designer, I agree. You’re IN. You can leave the runway.”