Smith adds historic twist to contemporary design in fibers classes

 
Photo by Dennis Burnett


By: Monique Bos
Published: Friday, February 22, 2008

Jessica Smith, a fibers professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design, is looking forward to the department’s open studio — which will be her first — Feb. 22.

“It should be really exciting,” said Smith, who joined the faculty in Fall 2007.

The department has been gearing up for the event throughout the quarter and is featured at shopSCAD, 342 Bull St., in February. Students in Smith’s Studio Production course designed displays for two of the windows at the boutique, and a collaborative quilt created by fibers students is featured in the other window.

“The Studio Production class also created collaborative objects that they have sold to shopSCAD based around the idea of ‘Fuse,’ the name they chose for their product line,” said Smith. “They used recycled materials, and everything they made used items that could be found locally. The tag line is ‘locally produced, environmentally friendly.’”

The students also incorporated used men’s clothing into their designs. For example, they transformed an old suit into a grocery bag that converts into a backpack. They created travel placemats, which feature a surface made with men’s shirts, a backing of fused brown plastic bags, and men’s ties to fasten the placemats, which can be rolled up for easy transportation.

In addition, Smith’s students contributed recipes to a cookbook. All the ingredients had to be locally produced and available.

Samples of their work will be on display at the open studio, which also will feature demonstrations of various techniques, indoor and outdoor installations, and exhibitions of student work, including screen prints — Smith also teaches Screen Printing — digital prints, weaving, natural dyes, books, beading and more. In addition, students will provide music and refreshments.

As well as showcasing the breadth, depth and excellence of student work, the open studio benefits the nonprofit Growing Hope Artists Cooperation, a Union Mission outreach. The department will donate proceeds from a silent auction, which will feature work by students and items donated by the college’s Working Class Studio, as well as funds from the raffle for the collaborative quilt. Raffle tickets cost $1 or are free with the donation of art supplies for Growing Hope.

Smith’s diverse background lends itself to teaching a class such as Studio Production, in which students use an array of materials to create and market product lines. She studied painting as an undergraduate student at the University of Washington and has taught interior design as well as fibers. In addition, she operates a business, Domestic Element, which specializes in “subtly subversive” textiles that put a contemporary twist on historical patterns. She lectures to professionals about topics such as the psychological impact of patterns and colors in homes, and she recently participated in a panel discussion at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum on the use of historic models in contemporary design.

She said she spends a significant amount of time researching historic patterns, trends and textiles.

“There’s a huge amount of research … I’m kind of a history junkie,” explained Smith, whose palette stretches across countries and eras. “The area I’ve done the most research in is the early industrial period; I actually use that as a contemporary model. I’m interested in American middle-class culture and how images and patterns were disseminated. It’s coming out of the French Revolution and then the English industrial revolution, when people started mass-producing aesthetics.”

She doesn’t limit her range, however; for the National Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt, which ran from December 2006 - June 2007, she created an installation based on Akbar, a Moghul prince in India in the 16th century. “I was looking at him and at what was going on in Renaissance Italy at that same time,” she said.

For her, fibers and textiles are a natural extension of painting.

“I draw and I paint; fibers is just repeating the drawings and paintings in patterns,” Smith explained. “I didn’t want to be on the wall; I wanted to work with space, patterns, color and texture. Fibers seemed like the place to go.”

The fibers open studio takes place Feb. 22, 5:30-8:30 p.m., at Gordon Hall, 439 E. Broad St., and is free and open to the public.