Week of the Gelato/Baguette Mix-Up

I'm writing you from near-impossible circumstances: buzzed out of my mind from coffee, sitting just down from chain smoking, "film" obsessed teenagers. They spit a lot, between cigarettes. All of this is outside, which in Bend, Oregon, means there's an eternal amount of cute dogs and overly-nice tourists to distract. I'm nestled in-between a baguette and the gelato place and let me just say my mind's a pudding-pop mixture of both.

I've been told this is the mood of summer. That, unless you have unlimited access to blue pools and air con, heat drives people insane. Maybe I'm on the edge, just one coffee-sitting-next-to-an-overly-critical-teenager away from cracking. 

So I've decided to try and become water-- Bruce-lee style:

"Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes a cup. You put water into a bottle, and it becomes a bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes a teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friends."

On my search for that formless perfection, I've been thinking a lot about reflection and refraction: two key elements of water. Maybe that's also an important function of a hot summer spent neither here nor there: to be able to reflect and refract on what's happened in the busier, cooler seasons of life. 

All that to say, the blog is back. Part of the process of doing an exchange in Vancouver means I'll have to keep it up every week. I'm not sure it'll appeal to those of you who are more interested in my au pair side as much-- it has to become more about my artistic process. All artistic reflection and refraction. 

So I thought I'd go ahead and do just that, before I melt into a pile of cigarette-infused goo. 

Material research, as presented during my assessment

 This last year was my first technical year at the Rietveld, and I chose textiles. While studying textiles we learned everything from Material Research (finding inspiration, doing research, experimenting with materials such as clay, wood, rice, photographs, etc.), introduction to weaving and the textile workshop (mostly printing techniques, but also dyes, felting, and embroidery), to writing, Adobe illustrator/indesign/and photoshop.  We also had little things we did, like a drawing workshop and learning how to develop film. The photographs in this post are all from a single-use camera-- to explain the quality. If you look closely, you'll also see plaster molds, book making and hand-stitched embroidery in the new skill-set list.

My experiments in technique: combining macrame and weaving.

These are 20 of the 40 posters which I designed and riso-printed for the Plush Juices project

The Rietveld, as a school, is very into self-motivated learning. Outside of school I pursued things like the riso printer-- a Japanese style of printing 1-layer at a time. For those of you who know what silkscreen printing is- it's like that, just with a machine instead. I used the technique for printing posters to use for a magazine publication based on my previously-mentioned project.

I also chose to do a series of little projects, to allow for short bursts of interest. You may have been a part of my postcard project, or have seen my woven Japanese sandals. Luckily, none of my classmates fell victim to my silicone, oat, and pine experiments in the sole of a shoe making.  My biggest project (in both size and time commitment) was a technical feat of freestyle macrame and weaving. It was an experiment in size, texture, and technique. Of course, I also added to it conceptually-- the whole project was based off the idea of creating a tactile wall. I was inspired by the idea of the combination of tapestry and wallpaper. Did you know wallpaper started off as low-end tapestry knock-offs? They still mostly are, in my opinion. 

I called it my "Sandpaper Baby": this is my wedding-dress sized macrame. More photos to come.

There you have it, the Life and Times of Jess Wolfe in Amsterdam. Trying to be like water, to flow, creatively and geographically, is a challenge I feel lucky to take on. I'm so thankful for everyone who got me here; for life coaches and dedicated professors; for parents and adoptive Dutch families; for art academies who believe they can make something out of this baguette/gelato pudding pop.  In the meantime, I wish us all the best with the summer heat and our personal goals. As Bruce Lee would say:

be like water, friends