Sewing Circles: Annet Couwenberg

Family Affair, model Mara Meyers and photo credit: Dan Meyers.

Annet Couwenberg: Sewing Circles features an overview of ten years of cultural research, digital experimentation, and finished artifacts by Couwenberg, who uses lace as a primary material. Through her creations, the artist asks how traditional textile construction can be modified or transformed by adpating it to digital fabrication processes.

Couwenberg's technical experiments include 3D printing of mulit-pronged connectors that are used to assemble life-size umbrella-like structures, laser-cut buckram (cloth stiffened with glue) that produces dramatic origami "infinity" collars, and Y-shaped CNC-cut polyethylene that produces infinitely scalable lace forms.

The exhibition also features a large interactive piece which will make its debut at the CADVC. Entitled Cleft, this work is based on a Dutch ruffled collar as an example of a piece of clothing acting as both a constraint and a beautiful enhancement. Cleft examines the precarious balance between the constraints of social norms and our private desires. Designed as an interactive work, Cleft allows audience members to serve as "digital puppeteers", navigating the boundaries of our social interactions through the use of computer software.

Cleft (2016 - 2021), preliminary drawing

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https://artsandculture.umbc.edu/center-for-art-design-and-visual-culture/

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