

One of the key advantages of such a shirt is that it becomes almost impossible to distinguish if it should be discarded, as all subsequent rips, tears, and issues can be restitched and become part of the resulting pattern. It’s possible to do intricate monograms this way, too, which I’ve done. Part of the fun is using a wide variety of threads, especially of different colors. Simply put, I choose a shirt, usually of a distinctive color, then spend hours sewing stitch patterns all over it. In my early 20s, I started doing what I call rip-shirts. No one in their right mind would ever invite me to a quilting circle for my sewing skills unless they needed comic relief.

I’m not GOOD at it, of course, but you know what I’m going to say: I don’t care. Sewing has always been meditative for me. My Dad and brother loved mercilessly teasing me about my penchant for making non-bunching pillows many years ago my favorite kind involved going to a fabric store or department and choosing something appropriate for the intended v̵i̵c̵t̵i̵m̵s̵ recipients. Thimbles were available but made poor guides for novice sewers. I loved sitting at her feet on the rough floor and sewing anything she handed to me. My Grandma Cook taught me to do a stitch when I was very young. (Don’t overthink that.)īecause I have always sewed, I sometimes dabble with a variety of things that require it. I’ve done every activity you can imagine in that shirt. But I keep fixing the rips and frayed edges because that is what life is. The vivid color of the shirt has faded, and the fabric is stretched past its intended shape.

The current one is somewhere between 15-20 years old. I generally have a rip-shirt in the closet. That seems to be an often-forgotten element that creates a barrier for people who can’t or don’t want to sacrifice family time.This story zigzags like my life. We want this to be for people who don’t necessarily fit into the traditional criteria of a residency: you can be a scientist or a podcaster… anyone as long as you have a project in mind.I’ve also seen on your Instagram you highlight residencies that are parent-friendly.

We like to define an artist as a creative thinker or maker. A: Oh, and the residency also must have a living space rather than just a studio. Bonus points if they have a socially-engaged focus or it’s a residency that welcomes artists to work on environmental justice projects.
Rip shirts free#
We also have a cap at featuring ones that cost $1,000 max per month, but ideally, we search for ones that are free or are otherwise offering a stipend or have scholarship opportunities-especially for BIPOC and queer creatives. We want residencies that accept all types of artists and are using the term artist really broadly and not necessarily focused on a specific medium.
Rip shirts full#
We’ll stay at each residency for usually one night to get a full 24-hour experience of what it’d be like to be an artist there. Then we put them all together, region by region, and create a map. We start our process with a lot of research: a mix of Internet searching and speaking with our network of people in the art world. A: We’ve visited about 70 artist residencies at this point.
Rip shirts pdf#
It’s important to us to make our books a physical copy that you hold with you, rather than putting a digital PDF of it online. It’s very much an equal collaboration where we divide the task down the middle. Rip Httr Shirt, hoodie, tank top, sweater and long sleeve t-shirtĬ: Alicia does the Rip Httr Shirt besides I will buy this portraits of the facilitators and I do the maps. Our first road trip was in 2016 and we published our first book in 2017. We really wanted to be able to vouch for the artist residencies ourselves, which is why we came up with the structure of visiting on these road trips. A: we wanted our voice to be a person who was telling their friend about the amazing experience they had. We saw the benefits of both of our ways into finding the residency, as well as the gap. I think I even reached out to one of the past artists, just to make sure Elsewhere was real. C: When we attended back in 2013, there wasn’t really social media for all these residencies. To your point about going somewhere kind of blindly: It seems hard with some of these smaller residencies, especially those that have very little online about them, to know what’s worth it-especially if you’re traveling there alone, and also taking time off from work.
Rip shirts how to#
It really helped me to think about how to bring social engagement outside of the studio. It was the Rip Httr Shirt besides I will buy this first time I’d done anything like that-it was my first time even in Colorado-but it was so impactful to have the time to experiment. Carolina: It was a time period of both of our lives where we were growing so much and figuring how to be artists outside of academic institutions that we had been in our whole lives.
