DBD World — handmade
Turbines, Turbans, and Drums
Joanne Rollins for physical element (Summer 2016) wearing lots of cool stuff, including my Drum Concert (see below) crepe de chine wrap, as a turban. Not a turbine. That's actually relevant. Photo: Amanda Hatheway.
So I texted Jo Carter, the proprietress and curator at physical element, in Portland, where you can currently find my stuff.
"Which one is that?"
"Drum Concert," she shot back
I smiled to myself.
When people look through my silk collection (fine arts photographs, printed individually on large silk rectangles and squares, worn however you like) they sometimes ask, "what's that one?" (pictured below). And this means Drum Concert specifically. This image tells the story of a Taiko drum concert. Visually, it flows with the rest of the collection. The content diverges.
Everything else in this collection has to do with water and power. Either it's plummeting to the ground or it is being directed, and harnessed in absentia, by a massive turbine (not a turban). The curves and power of the abstracted turbine blades infer the power of a river by default. Meanwhile literal raindrops filter across their weathered steel.
Drum Concert: inkjet print available in silver paper and plexiglass mount, or silk.
The drum concert is neither of the above. However, it was the first image I ever printed on silk. So it's actually the source.
It wasn't an image I ever intended to create, either. In Summer 2014 I was in the middle of a three- day weekend workshop with the amazing Aline Smithson whose many numbered assignments were partially designed to keep a person imaging around the clock. So, Saturday night, I was still looking for 1) something loud, and 2) to tell a story. Driving home, I heard a drum concert beginning in the park: done and done.
Eventually I printed the image, then draped it carefully it across the arm of my living room couch. It was huge. As I stepped out of the room and looked back to gauge the full effect, I was reminded of what a singular contribution graphic black and white can make to, well, almost anything.
I saw it would make a great duvet or throw. So I found a resource for printing in silk and added a few other images while I was at it. It was already something I had been meaning to do.
About two weeks later, a nondescript little white box came back in the mail.
Once I'd opened it, I sat down a minute to think. Because while they certainly did not look exactly like photographs, all the tests looked almost startlingly good.
And that's how Drum Concert ended up in this collection: the one that doesn't quite fit, but belongs. Because it's the one that started it all.
You never really know what's coming next, or where something is going to go (even if you think so). Which is, it occurs to me, why a good versatile silk wrap can come in handy.
This one looks pretty good covering a small end or altar table. I've done that. It looks great draped any number of ways on the body. And despite its large size (60x42") it also makes for a damn fine turban.
What will they think of next?
I can't wait to see.
Right now, yes, you can find deborahbergmandesigns at physical element (www.physicalelement.com) in NW PDX OR,. the town where I live and which is currently cleaving into two: the city that it was, and the one that other people who are just arriving imagine it to be. It's a transitional moment. We're on the brink of something. No one is really sure what that something is going to be. You might want to feel what that feels like while you can.
Speaking of things splitting in two, I am in the process of posting the silk collection on this gallery site for my out-of-town customers. It's certainly an interim solution, but a fairly efficient one. I am currently creating a dedicated e-commerce site for the dbd silk line, which will be its real home. That's fun, and it shouldn't be too long....
SunTzu Desmond, photo by Susan Bein. For me, one of the most rewarding aspects of this silk line is how it lends itself to collaboration with other artists.
Silk, Silk, Silk
Unspun but not unsung: bottom, raw (tussah) silk top. Above, silk blended with yak. Right: Thrust. I spun these two silk fibers to create prototype drawstrings for the protective bags that DBD pieces come inside.
I got to know silk when I learned how to spin it.
And I learned how to spin very soon after I learned how to knit because I had figured out that if I really wanted to have control over my own projects, I couldn't depend 100% on someone else's yarn. (Even though commercial and artisanal yarn are very, very nice.)
As soon as I began to take lessons, I found out what every spinner already knows: hands, not yarn, are really what spinning is all about. Hands are smart and they get to know the quality any textile fiber or variation much better than your mind ever will or could. And while yarn is beautiful, and knitted garments even more so, it is the feeling of fiber in the hands, and the rhythm of the wheel that keeps spinners hoped.
Not soon after I went for the silk.
Silk is known as a more challenging spinning fiber. It's fast and it's slippery. It can cut your hands. While wool and many goat fibers are elastic, lofty, buttery, and forgiving (you can break off many like cotton candy and then just pick them up and spin another poof on, so if your fiber gets away from you you can almost always get it back) silk is not quite as obliging. Getting it going can be more like lighting a match in the wind. And as unseen top or roving goes, it's fairly pricey.
But it's strong as all get out. Spinners are forever breaking a length of plied or single yarn from our bobbins because we need a little piece. Forget the scissors. They're such bad form! (Kind of like using an umbrella in Portland.)
But even a fine single of well-spun silk will hurt your hand for a while before you finally give up on that breaking-it-off idea and discreetly capitulate to your scissor.
Silk is light, light, light. And it's warm, warm, warm. In the summer. it's cool, cool, cool. It also plays well with others. Add a little silk yarn to a cuff, or card a little top into a wool or mohair, or even ply one silk single with one wool single and you likely have magic. Given its light weight, that strength, the luster it can subtly provide, it's an ally you don't really want to go without.
Not to mention the way it subtly but distinctly reflects light and in so doing can also pick up and blend in the colors surrounding it. That's because it's fiber structure is triangular and prismatic, so it picks up colors from its environment.
And as it happened, I loved to spin it.
"Strong, small hands," my teacher remarked.
Spinning silk feels like just moving energy. It doesn't have much drag or puff. It just moves.
And that's what it does in fine woven silks like the ones we use for DBD pieces, too.
Our pieces are made in silk georgette, 12 mm crêpe de chine, silk twill, and silk charmeuse.
We choose silks according to the season and also match them to the image to render the finest product we can create. Some pieces look best magical and filmy and sparkly in silk georgette. Others are also spectacular afforded the depth and the different very slight surface textures and sheens offered by crêpe de chine or silk twill. Occasionally, only the drape, creamy shine, and tonal range of silk charmeuse will do.
Which one will you choose?
That's up to you.
Travel well, you two.