Parsons' Inaugural MFA Textile Graduates Debut Capstone Projects
Interior Design magazine featured work from Parsons’ MFA students. We copied some of the projects below. Enjoy!
Link to the original article, with the remaining work, below.
July 3, 2020
By Quinn Halman
The New School’s Parsons School of Design announced the debut of theses capstone projects from the 2020 graduates of its inaugural MFA Textiles program. The MFA Textiles program was envisioned by Li Edelkoort in 2015 who, now the Dean of Hybrid Design Studies at Parsons School of Design, says all 16 graduates are, "prepared as no other to find their way in a post-Covid society that will search for authenticity and aim for a better world, considering planet and people.” Take a look at each project that explores the intersection of craft, technology, and sustainability.
1. Jeremy Ripley
A piece from Morpho+Genesis; tancel, wood dowels, rope. Photography courtesy of Jeremy Paul Ripley.
Flat texture is transformed into living forms inspired by mathematical and geometrical concepts. The textiles are inspired by and aim to create new interactions with acoustics, the color spectrum, and electromagnetics.
2. Tess Murdoch
Colorscape VI; Handwovens, silks, Romanian hemp twill, leather, cottons, wool roving and felt, digital print on cotton, handmade paper wrapped in a knitted sample. Hand-painted with inks + warps dyed with cochineal, madder root, rust, logwood, and fiber reactive dyes. Photography courtesy of Tess Murdoch.
Touch is everything for this collection of compositions made from raw or donated materials. Spanning machine knits to hand weaves, the evidence of the hand is omnipresent in every piece, no matter what its size or color.
4. Lauren Bailey
Creature Comfort; linen, banana fiber, pineapple fiber, and recycled silk sari yarns dyed with madder root and repurposed fabrics dyed with eupatorium. Photography courtesy of Lauren Bailey.
Previously used textiles are whimsically reimagined as home objects and masks that are made to be touched. Inspired by forms and textures found in the natural world, Bailey's methods include weaving, quilting, and natural dyeing.
7. Liuxu Luo
Wandering Home is a textile installation inspired by the elderly wanderers from Finnish folk tales who created art from the natural materials around them. Photography courtesy of Liuxu Luo.
Beginning with watercolor then evolving to include laser-cut flower shapes, silk, ribbon, and other naturally dyed materials, the final product evokes the free-flowing patterns of nomadic life.
10. Pallavi Padukone
An item from Reminscent; Handwoven recycled sari silk and vetiver scented wax beads dyed with cutch, turmeric, and chili. Photography courtesy of Pallavi Padukone.
Incorporating fragrance through natural scent-coated and dyed yarn in handweaving and embroidery, time and space is collapsed into one garment that proves to be an immersive experience.
11. Sagarika Sundaram
Circular fashion made from indigenous Himalayan wool is the focal point of Sundaram's Unseer collection. Photography courtesy of Sagarika Sundaram.
Sundaram uses natural wool to create circular fashion forms that aim to break the cyclical notion of consumption and waste the clothing industry has choked the earth with.
13. Olivia Koval
Koval develops textile compositions of naturally-dyed fabrics and hand-weavings to make large-scale landscapes. Photography courtesy of Olivia Koval.
Inspired by quilting, landscape, and natural color, Koval uses natural materials to create landscapes guided by memory and the cycles of the natural world.
14. Sanya Sharma
Moment - A study in space and time. Photography courtesy of Sanya Sharma.
A study of intersectionality across time, Sharma weaves together natural fibers to create diaphanous, spatial structures that offer a disconnect from immediate chaotic surroundings and allow for a moment of stillness.
15. Zhuldyz Tazhimbetova
A variety of knitting practices are used to depict the change in landscape around the Aral Sea. Photography courtesy of Zhuldyz Tazhimbetova.
Tazhimbetova tells stories about the shifts of depleting natural resources and landscapes through a variety of knitting practices that allow for complete agency over the project.