Single Day Events
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Inside The Designer's Studio
Open Studio
Join Pollack for morning coffee and a behind-the-scenes look at the company’s SoHo studio. Rachel Doriss, VP and Design Director, will share her process of designing a textile—from the spark of inspiration (often from unexpected places) to hand-drawn artwork and the many production techniques that can be used to achieve the final result. Learn how choices of color, texture, scale, luster, and fibers all play their part.
Pollack is a boutique design company, specializing in unique, innovative designs, and using a large and varied tool box of artistry, fiber contents, yarns and weaving techniques. The company got its start 30 years ago with the launch of its collection of textiles targeted to the high-end interiors market. Since then, the line has flourished and expanded into the contract, residential and hospitality markets, as a more decorative aesthetic was combined with the company’s solid technical foundation. The wide-ranging collection is celebrated for fabrics that easily cross the lines of these individual segments–fabrics marked by sophisticated design, intricate construction, nuanced color palettes and timeless style.
Exploring the Space: A Tour of FIT's Weaving and Knitting Lab
Open Studio
Join FIT in it's campus in Chelsea for a tour of the Weaving and Knitting Lab, hosted by the Textile Development and Marketing Department. Attendees will explore the lab space and learn about the various looms and knitting machines that are housed at FIT. These include state-of-the-art Stoll and Santoni knitting machines and a TC2 Jacquard loom, as well as a wide variety of hand-operated machines. Attendees will also get to view "Farm to Fabric," the curated work of TDM senior capstone students, on display in one of our exhibition spaces.
www.fitnyc.edu/academics/academic-divisions/business-and-technology/tdm/index.php
The Textile Development and Marketing (TDM) program at FIT takes the visitor from fiber to finished product, through all aspects of the industry, from knitting and weaving to dyeing and finishing to performance textiles. The program focus on critical issues like sustainability and biodesign and analyze textiles in our state-of-the-art lab.
Studio Opening: William Storms
Open Studio
Participants are invited to join William in his new studio space in Brooklyn, NY.
Everybody is welcome to tour the new studio, view available work, learn about upcoming workshops, and more.
From samples of his larger-than-life sculptures to the vintage yarn machines, numerous looms, or newly spun selection of Whirlwind Yarn — there is a lot to see! Come be a part of the opening celebration.
Interested in learning more? Register for an Artist Talk using the links below to learn more about the studio equipment and a preview of William’s process.
For Elevator access, please use the entrance at 67 35th street.
@william_storms @whirlwind_yarn
William Storms is a mathematically driven craftsman “fortunate enough” to have discovered the loom- whose work is an ongoing effort to produce three-dimensional work in a traditionally two-dimensional world.
Straddling the worlds of Art and Industry, Storms began his weaving career with a bespoke textile studio in Brooklyn, NY in 2011- where he was quickly introduced to the world of custom handweaving for the Interior Design Trade. This exposure to crafted, custom luxury became the foundation of his practice; working next as a Designer for several prominent Jacquard Mills and simultaneously establishing his signature as an Artist.
The continual focus on blending Craft with Custom Manufacturing is a staple in Storms’ body of work, as both an Artist and a Designer.
Pratt Dye Garden Open House: A Celebration of Natural Color
Open Studio
Pratt Dye Garden invites participants to an evening of exploration and celebration of natural color. Tour the courtyard, join in the Crew led natural dye demonstrations using their 2024 yield, and learn more about the work of Thompson Street Studios. Enjoy refreshments from their all-natural mixology station, crafted in collaboration with their friends at Oko Farms.
The Textile Dye Garden is an ongoing project at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY serving as a resource for sustainability education and a hub for collaboration and experimentation within the Pratt and surrounding communities.
The garden offers workshops to Pratt Institute and the surrounding community educating on the sustainable and integrative process of natural dyes.
Open Studio: Helena Hernmarck
Open Studio
Witness Hernmarck’s monumental wall of brilliant, lustrous rya wool, and learn about the material choices, working methods, and creative questions that have informed her career and the ‘spectacular illusion’ for which she is known. Portions of Helena’s archive will be on view to illustrate her legacy of commissioned tapestries, and touch samples will be available to offer insight into her technique.
A pioneer of photorealistic tapestry in the 1960s, and the first to apply camera optics to handweaving in the 1970s, Hernmarck is credited with revolutionizing tapestry’s aesthetics and relationship to modern architecture. Her tapestries enhance buildings around the world and are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and other major institutions.
Hernmarck’s studio is located in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Please consider transportation options before registering for this event. The studio is a 15-minute drive from Purdy’s, Croton Falls and Brewster train stations on MetroNorth’s Harlem Line. Taxis are available from the Brewster train station. Address will be emailed to registered attendees one week prior to the event.
Helena Hernmarck is a Swedish tapestry artist who lives and works in the United States. She is best known for her monumental tapestries designed for architectural settings. Her mentors were three Swedish pioneers of the modern movement in textiles: Alice Lund, Edna Martin, and Astrid Sampe. After graduating from art school in Stockholm in 1963, she moved her studio to Canada and later to England before settling in the United States in the mid-1970s. Hernmarck now maintains an active studio in Ridgefield, CT.
Virtual Open Studio: Make Waves
Open Studio
Textile department of Pallas University of Applied Sciences encourages students to experiment with warp and weft manipulation tools for handlooms. The tools are mostly invented and built by professor of Pallas UAS Kadi Pajupuu. The course supervisor is Mari-Triin Kirs who participated in Dorothy Waxman contest some years ago and is now teaching weaving at our university. During their event students and teachers demonstrate with the help of videos the use of those tools on handlooms, analyze the samples and show photos of garments made with the help of warp and weft manipulation tools. The tools (RailReed, Stepping Reed, rigid heddle modules, floating warp devices etc) are made in the spirit of DIY.
www.facebook.com/tekstiilpallas
pallasart.ee/en/admission/departments/textile/
Pallas University of Applied Sciences is the only higher education institution of applied arts in Estonia. Pallas provides studies in three focus areas (design, conservation/restoration and the arts), which are organized into seven curricula: photography, painting and restoration, media and advertisement design, furniture design and restoration, leather design and restoration, sculpture and textile. The aim of the textile department is to develop the field of textile art and design in Estonia. The curriculum is broad and includes courses in fashion. The focus of the curriculum is both on individual skills as well as cross-disciplinary collaboration.
The Blending Project I
Open Studio
New York Textile Month is a time when textile makers create radical conversations and connect with their ingenious community. This coming 2024 New York Textile Month, Annie Coggan and Janis Stemmermann will be inviting people to Russell Janis Gallery for two days of community quilting on a series of digitally printed textile images. These images are generated by combining Coggan and Stemmermann’s immediate bodies of work. Images built by ceramics, chairs, block printing and smocking are all blended by the Midjourney AI platform, creating more than just patterns but a series of provocations. The large scale digital images will result in four life size quilts.
At the September 27th and 28th 2024 quilting sessions, Annie and Janis will discuss and demonstrate their use of AI, ponder their collaboration and simple quilting techniques; all to create a new brand of collaboration where haptic practices and tecnology unite for a new textile future.
Artists Russell Steinert and Janis Stemmermann met in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1990 and launched the Russell Janis website in 2012 as a platform to experiment with presenting visual, cultural and art-making ideas. In 2014, they moved into the current studio location. They facilitate and exhibit projects with invited artists across disciplines.
In 2020, during the pandemic, Russell and Janis established a presence at Fiddle Styx and studios for their art practices in the northwestern Connecticut in Sharon in a former childrens’ violin school.
The Blending Project II
Open Studio
New York Textile Month is a time when textile makers create radical conversations and connect with their ingenious community. This coming 2024 New York Textile Month, Annie Coggan and Janis Stemmermann will be inviting people to Russell Janis Gallery for two days of community quilting on a series of digitally printed textile images. These images are generated by combining Coggan and Stemmermann’s immediate bodies of work. Images built by ceramics, chairs, block printing and smocking are all blended by the Midjourney AI platform, creating more than just patterns but a series of provocations. The large scale digital images will result in four life size quilts.
At the September 27th and 28th 2024 quilting sessions, Annie and Janis will discuss and demonstrate their use of AI, ponder their collaboration and simple quilting techniques; all to create a new brand of collaboration where haptic practices and tecnology unite for a new textile future.
Artists Russell Steinert and Janis Stemmermann met in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1990 and launched the Russell Janis website in 2012 as a platform to experiment with presenting visual, cultural and art-making ideas. In 2014, they moved into the current studio location. They facilitate and exhibit projects with invited artists across disciplines.
In 2020, during the pandemic, Russell and Janis established a presence at Fiddle Styx and studios for their art practices in the northwestern Connecticut in Sharon in a former childrens’ violin school.