Shayleigh Faye
Technology used:
-Sewing Machine
Rembrandts Olive Skirt
Developing from the inspiration of a jar of olives, Rembrandts Olive Skirt uses the color of olives illuminated only by a florescent refrigerator light and deconstructs their circular structure into colorful squares. The skirt was meticulously painted with the application of limited color palet oil paint sticks and a soft-bristled toothbrush on muslin fabric.
The name Rembrandt's Olive Skirt comes from my inspiration for the skirt from olives and my inspiration for my models to pose like figures from Rembrandt's portraits. Rembrandt was a cultivator of oil painting figures in the 1600s who utilized a very similar pallet to the one I created from olives; sap green, yellow ochre, burnt umber, and red vermillion.
I felt that posing my male model like Rembrandts Man Holding a Black Hat and my female posing like The Toilet of Bathsheba added to a visual depth when taking pictures that furthered my dramatic color story.
Color Story
For this skirt, my painting medium consisted of 12 professional oil paint sticks
This shade of green I created by mixing together the yellow ochre and dark blue. It represents the green pigmentation in the olives.
This shade of green I used straight from the paint stick and it represented the un-ripe olives scattered in the jar.
This shade of red I used straight from the paint stick and it represents the pimento center of the olive.
This shade of brown I used straight from the paint stick and it represents the dark patches in-between olives.
Process:
My process for Rembrandt's Olive Skirt began with my inspiration of olives and the way that the light from my refrigerator changed how the olives appeared. I then deconstructed the shape of an olives, a cube within another cube. I translated this onto my skirt using three primary steps
Step 1: Tape and Tie Dye
Step 2: Tape and Block Colors
Step 3: Remove Tape and Heat Set
Step 1: Tape and Tie Dye
After outlining a large circle on a white sheet of muslin, I carefully measured out equal square segmentations across the entirety of the fabric and placed thin strips of tape to ensure a crisp white outline. I then mixed oil paint sticks with a toothbrush and meticulously blended red, green and yellow into a tie dye pattern. I omitted brown from this stage because I thought it would overpower the gradient. The image on the left shows my work station and my color swatches I kept near me to make sure the colors I blended would match the whole.
Step 2: Tape and Block Colors
For this stage I placed a tape strip twice the size of the first tape strip directly over the center of the first tape strip. This allowed for me to keep my white border and a new tie dye border for the original olive colors. After carful consideration I chose to put the colors in the order of red, brown, green and yellow.
I noticed that when I put certain colors together like red and green, I could only think of Christmas, and when I put yellow next to brown that tone stood above the piece as a whole. The image on the left shows the beginning of the taping process and the image on the right shows my colors fully blocked in.
Step 3: Remove Tape and Heat Set
I finally reaped the fruit of my labor at this stage, peeling off both layers of tape to reveal my finished product. The whole process I debated weather keeping the white line in-between was a good idea, but looking at the final product I know it was the right decision. Had I covered up the white space with a yellow ochre or vermillion, the color story would be dominated by that particular color. The image to the lower right shows an up close of the finalized textile, the lower left shows one of my models posing.
