Artists
Jiangmei Wu
Associate Professor
Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture, and Design, Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana, USA
Statement
The process of making fabric origami can be highly technical and time-consuming. By adding a dimension of mathematical complexity and technical skills into what is traditionally viewed as a “women’s craft,” I hope to continue to create, and encourage others to create, more fabric origami. My goal is to help blur the boundaries between high art and low art, between the domestic and the public spheres, and between traditionally perceived male and female roles.
Artworks
A dimension of mathematical complexity is added into what is traditionally viewed as a “women’s craft.” In this piece, I attempt to depict the ripples moving visually and conceptually in space and time. I first created a sewing pattern by using a technique I call “tessellation grafting.” To graft a tessellation, I started out with a sketch that is converted to a triangular tessellation drawing. I then cut along all the edges and vertices of the triangular tessellation and insert rectangles and polygons to form a new tessellation. To make the fabric origami, the corners of new polygons were sewn together, collapsing the polygons back to points and rectangles back to lines. The fabric was then carefully pleated and flattened.