Ohhhh, this New Yorker cover by Haitian artist Frantz Zephirin is rich looking (and colorful!).
There are framed prints of this cover available at http://www.newyorkerstore.com to benefit Partners in Health and their relief work in Haiti. To me, the artwork for this cover (though painted) looks like a woven tapestry.
And this knotted tapestry, designed by Fred Tomaselli, called “After Migrant Fruit Thugs”, from the Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times, is really beautiful. The artist was approached by the owners of the “Rug Company” in London to design a tapestry to be knotted in China. The initial art was a multi-media collage which layered paint, photographic bits and real leaves, while the woven interpretation is a glorious display of intricate knotwork, rendered in silk, wool and metallic threads, drawing on hundreds of years of skilled Chinese textile artistry.
I have tapestry on my mind because I’d hunted down a picture of one of my mother’s tapestries from 1976, for a friend’s daughter who’s learning to weave and had chosen the same combination of shiny and soft materials.
“Designer, you’re getting distracted!”
“James Patterson?!! Is that really you??”
“Yup, Patterson here(!)…. You have a fabulous New York Times Magazine cover this week from Jan 24th to cut up for your paper doll project. It’s clean and designerly, it has lots of nice colors (including sparkly silver for goodness sake), it’s got some fun spacial play with the books in front of the type… and it’s got me in it!”
“Ummmm. Yes, I can see that….”
“So, what exactly are you waiting for?”
“Well, I like to look around to fuel my creativity.”
“Ok, I grant you that, but let’s talk about your production level.”
“All right.”
“How many of these outfits do you make in a year?”
“Well, A low number would be fifty two, one for each week, but actually, I make outfits from supplemental covers too, you know, from Fashion, Travel and Style New York Times Magazines, and sometimes I make additional outfits from the inner magazine pages if I’m feeling particularly inspired.”
“Ah, that’s pretty good…. I only put out an average of nine titles a year…. Do you have help?”
“No, I design and fabricate all of the outfits myself.”
“Just think of the possibilities if you had a staff like mine! You could have co-designers, marketers, publishers…. How many copies do you produce of each outfit?”
“Only one.”
“WHAT??? I produce fourteen million of each of my books and they’re published in thirty eight different languages! On top of that we do multiple reprints, and they keep selling like hotcakes.”
“Wow, that is impressive.”
“How do you market your work?”
“Oh, I don’t. I just take a picture of each one and put it up on my blog.”
“But how can you make money at that?”
“I’m actually not very good at making money.”
“I see…. Then why do you do it?”
“Well, I enjoy it, and I think other people do too.”
“Hmmmm. But if you printed fourteen million of them like me then you could sell lots of them!”
“Paper doll outfits?”
“I see, you do kind of have a point….”
Today I have a sophisticated color palette to work with. My skirt is reminding me of a striped, vintage, Roman silk scarf, and I actually own these shoes! They were handmade in Peru years ago for Sigerson Morrison when they were just starting out. Their workshop was in a little room next to mine in the Cable Building at Broadway and Houston in New York City. Back then friends could pick leather and trim colors from swatches and have their Sigerson Morrison shoes made to order! I hope the Project Runway judges will feel I’m back on a fashionable track.
sunday magazine paper doll challenge 