hurrah, lately

wow, just when i start to wonder about people's abilities to change things in this world today, the news media starts blurting out a slew of protests happening:

--french protests (composed mostly of students and young people) against a new bill that's supposed to spur employment of youth by making it easier to FIRE them. huh? what? the logic don't make no sense.

--immigrant rights protests here at home. the politics are getting ugly. complete criminalization of undocumented immigrants? being able to deny undocumented people schooling and medical treatment? *that's* criminal. hooray for the latino news media for publicizing the events and spurring on the cause. and the irish community is totally stepping up to side with the immgration-rights advocates. hooray for recognizing similarities and commonalities across ethnic and social lines! i saw footage on tv the other day of young latino high school students in san leandro and oakland walking out of classes and marching down international avenue. amazing.

my family is from the philippines. we're lucky enough to have received either citizenship or green cards (i had a green card until a few years ago when i finally went for citizenship because i was scared of possibly screwing up and randomly getting deported for a minor offense--it happens!). some of my relatives are or were "illegal" here in the US and they worked hard and were good people. this country (and especially california) is run on the backs of day laborers and undocumented people.

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thee motherlode

i have stumbled across the most amazing online collection of vintage crochet patterns, a veritable motherlode treasure-trove of retrolisciousness...looks like all of them are from the 70s or so...



i'm doing research on certain crochet styles for a possible art project, dare i say. it may involve me making and distributing written patterns for crochet knock-offs of designer handbags, and soliciting people to make one and photograph themselves with it in exchange for an anti-factory item. i will be more explicit as things get fleshed out, i still need to figure out if this is visually interesting and conceptually interesting in regards to a show in Beijing later this year having to do with "piracy" and bootlegging (my favorite topic, really). i want to start a cottage industry of grannies crocheting bootleg designer items. out with the shawls and baby booties! in with the Fendi, Chanel, and Gucci! ;) ...come on, ladies!

a few years ago i did a project where i started a handbag label called "Cheap Copy" where i made dozens of functional handsewn designer knock-offs and sold them at rock-bottom prices. it was wonderful and horrible and had the intention of trying to dilute the designer market one small step at a time. i have no photos, it was almost a secret project with no documentation and the handbags have been distributed and are circulating on shoulders like some viral mutation.

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links and fun stuff

HEY! thanks so much for all the support everyone, the last batch of handmade items flew off the virtual shelves and it's energizing me to make more...dresses, especially~! again, i so appreciate it and it's part of the stephanie art fund (i.e., going to fund a type of art practice that is generally unsellable, argh!).

so, in lieu of having anything in stock for the next few days (will post new choice vintage items later this week...probably won't spam everyone with an email announcement, so check back), i like to post links to other things for you to peruse:

april fool handmade has new clothes and jewelry, and more! i especially like this patch bag below. and i'm the owner of the green necklace--it's *really* lovely and i wear it all the time.




valerie at dear birthday is planning a store update later this week--watch out for it, it will be a splash and a half i'm sure! nothing up yet, but check in with her soon. her clothes are more than awesome.

dainty and dirty is channeling some serious vintage crochet after my own heart, as well as handmade, original, and reconstructed clothing and goods...lovely!



and finally, my b-friend kurt has new mp3s up on his band's myspace website. check out fierce antler and their brand of no-wave music...!

peace out
xoxox

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==> RESTOCK: Pattern Riot!

Yes, it's a PATTERN RIOT~! I think I've actually used this title before, sometime last year, but gee if it isn't hard to keep thinking up new titles for this and that. It actually drives me insane (more on this later...).

But anyhow, here they are: new handmade items that smack of mixes and matches, with lot of vintage fabrics tossed in for a loop. The vintage doilies have made a comeback--with spring upon us, it's high time i whipped them out again, yeehaw! New vintage items will come in a few days. I have a slew of them (no, i didn't slay them) and it's gonna take me a bit to process and photograph them all. But I'm so into patterns these days that you can bet that there will be an overload :)

I talked to my webdesigner guy the other day (who's in charge of my new superduper easy item entry system that will massively make my life happier) and we should be implementing the new system sometime next week. i am ready to drop to my knees and pray to the internet and programming gods if this will in any way speed things up. i spend inordinate amounts of time on my website and it's driving me nuts. also, back to the titling issue, I'd better watch out because they will get keee-razy and start confusing people. I mean, "Pattern Riot"? What's next, "Handmade Revolution"? Oh, wait, I already did that, didn't I? Uh, what about "Smash The State" or "Reform the Healthcare System? Oh, yeah, that has nothing to do with clothes or anything, does it? Ha ha!

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hello big world!

Hooray! thanks to Carrie for sending me some photos of the new ReadyMade magazine spread with my blue dress in it...photos below...gotta get me a copy for myself now :) and i guess this means i have to start making more dresses, huh? right now i have only one going up this weekend, but maybe that's what today will be all about :)

peace out!

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few small things...

hey all, sorry i've been incommunicado for a bit--i'm trying to be better at posting and replying to posts, but i have a tendency to get really distracted. lately it's been about doing various research jaunts into the world of digital printing on silk, as well as having custom fabric yardage printed with unique patterns, silver jewelry casting, and other such, for the sake of some new artworks as well as anti-factory stuff. can't go into detail too much here since things are still in progress, but things will be rolling!

i'll be posting new anti-factory items probably by this sunday or next monday--lots of new stuff, and more vintage, too :)

i have yet to see the new ReadyMade magazine , which has hit the shelves with a fashion spread using at least one Anti-Factory dress--awesome (thanks, Jess, for hooking me up)! I've already gotten a few emails from people asking where they can get ahold of them. i need to pick myself up a copy to see what's going on in them pages! cool! if you have a copy and have seen it, tell me what's going on please... :)

xoxoxo talk to ya's soon,
s

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cute overload

for your perusal: cuteoverload.com
daily photos of cuteness, verging on the strange sometimes...check out this kitten, which i'm not sure is as cute as it is, well, weird looking.



but look! awwwww! are they real?



on another note, doesn't it seem like this blog is getting rather schizophrenic? i mean, that's the fun part, that i get to post on whatever i feel like whenever i feel like, but since it vaccilates between being polital, arty, crafty, irreverent, etc., i sometimes wonder what my readers think! oh well, i guess it's a real profile of what runs through my head, so whatever :p

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rise up?

I am sooooo going to see the movie "V for Vendetta" when it comes out...apart from the trailers looking really stunning, the tagline "The people should not be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of their people" is quite a hook. Today's San Francisco Chronicle newspaper raved about it, saying that it's skirting (--happily--) dangerously close to being a larger critique on today's governmental policies with visual allusions to both Abu Graib photos, the Holocaust, The Battle of Algiers, A Clockwork Orange, and "1984". I forgive Natalie Portman for participating in the Star Wars Trilogy over this. Going bald and becoming a resister has won brownie points from me. Sometimes I'm shocked that a major film studio would go down this route...amazing. Will report back when I have partaken.

We've been talking about the place of politics within artwork in the sculpture class I teach at CCA, and it's been really interesting. Many of my students are lamenting the effectiveness of addressing politics within their own work as a means for real change, and I've been advocating that they not necessarily place all their eggs in one basket--that it's fine to feel you need to address an "issue" in your artwork, but real change can come faster from direct action. Don't get me wrong, I am a strong advocate for socially-conscious and politally aware work, but I also know that it can wind up becoming a self-circulating dialogue that doesn't necessarily implicate any need for change. I also feel that works that are not overtly known as political can be the most amazing manifestations of both art and critique--look at Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.


art for DVD re-release, The Battle of Algiers

Recently I've been reading a lot of historical texts and documentation on labor movements of the 30s, as well as primary socialist American documents from the 60s. If you're interested, a really great book is "The Cultural Front," which analyzes film, visual art, theater, and music from the heydey of union activism in the 30s, and also adddresses the systematic destruction of government-funded creativity due to the subsequent War #2, Cold War, and Red Scare. It's a great read and a wealth of information. I'm convinced we need to look to history to learn possible answers for today. I get so enraged with the over-hyping of today's society as being "ahistorical" in the sense that since we're in such a fast-forward, globalized world, historical movements don't apply anymmore. I think it's brainwashing folks into not remembering the days in which collective action really made a difference. I mean, good god, the Industrial Revolution was a monumental upheaval, radically changing Western economies, displacing people, and creating major class differences. Today, it's obviously more complex, but still similar, and we have a lot to learn from looking back.


my friend Amy Balkin's poster project in conjunction with her larger effort This Is the Public Domain.

On an interesting observation note, I have been noticing a resurgence in the retro visuals of political protest popping up lately (Russian Constructivist, revolutionary, purposefully hand-made looking silkscreened posters a la 60s handbills, etc). Look at the advertising for V for Vendetta, the recent Napster ads, and at CCA there is a poster campaign for the artist Thomas Hirschhorn sporting some serious retro protest. Whether this is just aping the visuals of the revolution with no real meat behind it, I've become very fond seeing these types of things around, for if anything they make me feel like perhaps out of curiousity people will try to figure out where the style originated from.


Napster's latest ad campaign--revolution or placebo?

There's an art exhibition on the Black Panther Party opening up at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco's local alternative museum space, and I am incredibly curious to see how it resonates within today's audience. This weekend is the Anarchist Book Fair in the city, too.

Does this all mean anything? Is it because I live in San Francisco, home of the self-professed counterculture movement (but alas, short lived and everyone turned into rich yuppies with SUVs) that I am noticing this? Is it wishful thinking on my part? Is there something brewing, or is it just a visual panacaea to lull us into thinking that we are, indeed, thinking about revolution?


Pirkle Jones, "Women, Free Huey Rally, Oakland," 1968, from the Black Panther exhibition

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tiny bit of highway drama

...no, it wasn't these guys, but...

I had a bit of highway drama yesterday driving back from Stanford to SF--I was coasting along nearing my exit when I see out of the corner of my eye a cop car tailing me for quite a while--he seems to be in a holding pattern with me and i just KNOW he's gonna pull me over for....my expired license plates. gosh darnit, i've just been so busy lately and now they're three months overdue. not only that but I have to drive EVERYWHERE so i knew that it was going to catch up with me sometime sooner or later. Just as I knew he would he turns on his lights and makes the "woot! woot!" sound and says through the little loudspeaker "take the next exit". argh! it was funny because right at the exit were hordes of people waiting for a bus and off I come followed by a flashing cop car giving me instructions on where to stop, and I felt like I should have at least done something more sexily illegal than just have expired plates. Like maybe speeding or something. Anyhow, it was all rather uninteresting, the actual ordeal, except for the fact that he gave me a summons to show up at TRAFFIC COURT in South San Francisco at like 8:30 in the morning a month from now, where they will figure out if they will ticket me or not for it. I would really have much rather just paid an actual ticket or have gotten a "fix-it" one instead of disturb my early morning reveries. damn!

Another funny part was my only excuse for him as to why I haven't registered was a meek "uh, I've been really busy(?)"--with almost a question mark at the end, too. I feel like I should have talked more drama or something, had a better excuse. But alas, I'm just plainly forgetful. Oh well.

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Anti-Factory RESTOCK: Travelling the Beltway!

Hey chicas y chicos, I just added ten new handmade items to my anti-factory store, along with tons of new (to you) vintage...check it out! I have a new long-length top that has a removable (and sometimes reversible) belt, along with a cute "cravate" necktie girlie one...Oof! I'm tired ;p

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my inner hippie

I have been dying to make some of these "folkwear" designs...i think my inner hippie is coming through--i've recently rediscovered all the flowy pseudo hippie garb and such that i would have been totally into back in high school (yeah, the first part of high school was hippie, then i went beatnik, then goth, and by the end I had long green dread-y hair)...anyhoo, check out these great Folkwear patterns! below are a few i'm tempted to try. Love them drawings--so 70s meets art nouveau retro...I mean, who doesn't want to pretend to be a RUSSIAN SETTLER, for god's sake???

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we don't know how to drive over here

Seriously, we Californians (especially San Franciscans) don't know how to drive when there's snow on the ground. It barely gets below 40 degrees during winter, so on the occasion that even hail comes down, we all drive like morons, me included. Going too fast, not taking turns easily, etc. The past few days has seen SNOW around the area. I repeat: SNOW. It's crazy! Well, it's not in the City proper, but right across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County (Sausalito, to be exact) there was a major 28 car pileup (!) due to everyone sliding around. That stretch of highway is SUPER downhill and curvy, and I'm always a bit freaked out going down it during normal weather. We go that way to visit Kurt's mom in Fairfax--about 45 minutes away--so it was really freaky to see pictures of the pileup and all that SNOW on the ground.

Did someone say spring was around the corner? It's hard to believe with all the cold we've been having lately!

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did someone say vanessa beecroft?

oh, kanye, kanye, kanye. you are so over the top! i love you but you have been getting so much negative publicity lately about the way you are so full of yourself. anyhow, this photo of you with many gold ladies surrounding you (entouraging you, i guess) has been much publicized but little pointed out that vanessa beecroft did this quite a while ago. remember naked, shaved models at the guggenheim a few years ago? oh wait, and before vanessa beecroft were the robert palmer girls. and before that, well, i guess mannequins, right?

come on, people, know your recent art history before giving kanye too much credit, 'kay?

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its....chloe!

Last night i had to go out to dinner and miss the final episode of Project Runway. I anxiously set up my VCR to tape it, crossing my fingers that I did it all correctly, and today after coming home from teaching sat myself down with a big glass of sulphite-free organic wine and WATCHED IT. I had to avoid reading all the blogs for a whole 24 hours to avoid possibly running into finding out who won!



And the winner is....Chloe! Yeah, the girl who was one of the Vietnamese boat people, picked up a Texas accent along the way, and grew up with EIGHT sisters (good lord!). You go, girl! Actually, the truth is that all three of the finalists--Santino, Chloe, and Daniel--I thought showed pretty basic collections that lacked the oomph I thought they could have had. I mean, I appreciate the level of finish, but it was so....safe! Daniel's especially. And Chloe, god, some of her dresses looked like big gold taffeta curtains, they were so SHINY and heavy looking. Santino, you went way safe too, i dunno what happened dude. Anyhow, I am giving a shout out to my asian immigrant sister (yo!) Ms. Dao, so good for her!


i like the outfit on the left, am not sold on the outfit on the right...

On another note, I missed going to the Marina Abramovic lecture tonight at Stanford. She's a guest of some division of the university having to do with public performance and politics (NOT the art department, funnily enough). I wish I could have seen her re-enactments at the Guggenheim last year (check out either the january or february issue of artforum to read about it) of seminal 60s/70s performance art pieces. Talk about "covers"--she's totally inserted herself permanently into the dialogue of these works now.

Tomorrow night Thomas Hirschhorn (he of the handmade crazy critique of globalization and consumerism) is speaking at the Wattis Center at CCA (California College of the Arts) here in SF and I shall be in attendance. Next Monday Matthew Barney is at my alma mater SFAI in conversation with someone (question/answer sessions). Like, "yo, Matthew, how's Bjork?". I can just hear it now...There is a plethora of art talk this week, fer sure...

Semester/quarter update: My Stanford class is almost finished! These short 10-week quarters are amazingly crammed--it's so hard to get involved in several different projects during such a small amount of time. I'm actually very proud of my students and what they've accomplished. The funny thing is that the more time you give them on projects, the more they overthink things and worry and wait until the last minute to execute them. Last week I gave an assignment of a "public intervention" in which they had only five days to figure out and execute, and overall it was great and totally fresh. I'm learning that less time equals faster editing and just DOING it instead of agonizing over it, and the work can come out cleaner and better. Two more weeks until the quarter is over and so it looks like I won't be commuting 2 hours every tuesday and thursday after that! I always miss my students when it's over, though...fly, my little pretties, fly out into the world and MAKE SOME DAMN GOOD ART, y'hear???

==> hey sabrina, if you're reading this, put down your math book every now and then to make art, ok? ok!

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personal fashion faux pas

I had a major housecleaning day yesterday in which i went thru my closet and tried to finally give the boot to all the half-assed clothing lounging around there. i'm such a clothes hoarder--piles of stuff that i've been meaning to "fix" in some way, and vintage items that i've had the idea of wearing but have not done so in a looooong time. It's silly and takes up too much space! so after sifting thru it all i have realized that i have some major deficiencies in my wardrobe: mainly PANTS. where did all my pants go? how come all my pants are the flare-type that was big, like, four years ago? all my jeans are terribly ratty (and not in the good way. actually, ratty jeans are not good, period). I found a picture of what I want: stovepipe pants. In with the new silhouette, out with the damn flares!



and i can't even begin to mention all my outdated tops and jackets. I never did buy a good coat this year...and i need leggings. yes, leggings. like the kind i used to wear in middle school under skirts and giant 80s Esprit tunic tops. i'm going to dress like i'm 12 years old again, only not really. and i want dresses. lots of little jersey cotton dresses that i can layer stuff over and under. and more jewelry. strange chunky jewelry that looks a bit "off" but that everyone will comment on.

I find it ironic that as a person who *makes* clothes, i can't even attire myself properly. I think it's because I generally wind up selling all the good stuff with the intention of making the next one for myself...and then...well, you know the story! Ack!

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Anti-Factory RESTOCK: Thoughts of Spring!

Phew! After a few minor mishaps, this latest bunch is fully up and operational...I had some trouble with my pesky Paypal buttons at first since i had changed the page layouts, but it's all good now! TONS of vintage stuff, 14 new handmade, too. Thoughts of spring are wafting around my head, and until it finally arrives there will be many "transitional" items that can do double-duty in both cold and warmer weather :)

Will post more after i take a much needed couch break! Wish me luck on my nap!

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eek!

silly me--are you having problems trying to purchase the handmade items? I just realized i had the wrong code in the Paypal "add to cart" buttons, but now it's all fixed! To see the correct pages, you may need to hit the "refresh/reload" button on your browser! Sorry for the inconvenience--that's what happens when you are a bit too discombobulated :)

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busy bee

hellooooooooo internet land! it's been a while since i made a blog entry, and for that i'm sorry. i generally try to write something every few days (once a day, if i'm on a lucky streak!) but i've been super busy with teaching issues and getting the managerial end of my artwork in order. it's at that point where if i don't handle something on a particular day, the whole house of cards collapses in on itself...argh! i'm remaking a few small artworks for a show in Barcelona and getting some grant proposals together to participate in an art symposium at the Fine Arts Academy in Beijing in July.

the vintage section has been a great addition to the anti-factory store--it will stay up as long as i have the help (kurt) who has time for it :) spring is starting to be sprung--ha ha--and it's making me sorta giddy with the design possibilities.

i'm officially closing my graphic design business, which was spotty anyway for the past few years (since entering grad school in 2003 i pretty much stopped taking on new clients). i freelanced for almost four years and was a designer at the exploratorium museum in san francisco for over eight years (oooof! i'm showing my age). i have to leave it by the wayside cuz there's too much other stuff to do. and besides, sewing clothing is way more fun than doing annual reports!

so new stuff will be posted probably late sunday or on monday...can't figure out what day yet, gotta coordinate. this winter light has been absolutely horrid to take photos of things, and i'm half tempted to invest in a lighting kit (more money! ack!) to make my life easier. or it may just be a total waste, who knows? i could use one to help me document my own artwork, actually, so....

anyhoo, will try to gather cool links for everyone soon. thanks for hanging tight!

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