With all the fast fashion that comes out of Los Angeles comes an increasing amount of excess fabrics and other materials being thrown away.
Many see this as waste or garbage, but for textile artist Christy Matson, it’s material she can utilize in her work. Matson visited Birge Hall as a contributor to the ongoing Visiting Artist Colloquium series hosted by the art department.
Matson began her lecture by giving a brief history of the Jacquard loom — the tool she uses in her work — and how integral it was to the Industrial Revolution.
“It had a role of transforming textile production into a fully automated industrialized process,” Matson said.
She also touched on the amount of work and time that went into creating with looms — not only the time spent weaving, but also the time spent making the thread. Thread making is a more unfamiliar process in today’s world, especially with machines completing the work instead of humans.