I’ve been thinking about making a skull out of barbies after this famous image of Salvador Dali for a while now. I finally decided that the easiest thing to do would be to stitch the barbies onto a ski mask and wear it as a Halloween costume. But after seeing the final result, it seems like there may never be an appropriate time to wear this.
This is a small commission I did for the Portsmouth Museum of Fine Art. They asked me to make a scarecrow for them as part of a community project called “Scarecrows of the Port,” where all the businesses in Portsmouth display scarecrows around Halloween. I decided to make a scarecrow out of QR code for them. Here is the press release I wrote about it:
Crows are very intelligent birds. Some types of crows have even been known to fashion their own tools. So it practically goes without saying that crows, being the geeks of the bird world, naturally keep up with advances in technology such as QR Code. QR Code (short for “Quick Response Code”) is the most popular type of bar code in Japan and can be read using the camera on most Japanese mobile phones and mobile phones with Internet capabilities using free software downloads. QR Codes can contain text-based information such as messages, serial numbers, or URLs. The QR Code Scarecrow contains a message to crows with QR Code scanning gadgets. Scan the code with your mobile phone to see the message.
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Here is a needlework sampler I’ve made based on the tradition of needlework samplers and the processes used by producers to create contemporary musical compositions.
For those who might not be familiar with what a needlework sampler is, here is the definition from Wikipedia: A (needlework) sampler is a piece of embroidery produced as a demonstration or test of skill in needlework. It often includes the alphabet, figures, motifs, decorative borders and sometimes the name of the person who embroidered it and the date. The word sampler is derived from the Latin ‘exemplum’ – an example.
And here’s how Wikipedia says needlework samplers originated: The oldest surviving samplers were constructed in the 15th and 16th centuries. As there were no pre-printed patterns available for needleworkers, a stitched model was needed. Whenever a needlewoman saw a new and interesting example of a stitching pattern, she would quickly sew a small sample of it onto a piece of cloth – her ’sampler’. The patterns were sewn randomly onto the fabric as a reference for future use, and the woman would collect extra stitches and patterns throughout her lifetime.
It occurred to me that needleworkers used to have to make patterns and images to decorate fabric in the same way that contemporary music producers make beats and musical compositions by repeating and layering audio samples in digital sound editing programs. So the files created using digital editing programs today basically function in the same way that needlework samplers did in the days when all embroidery had to be done by hand.