Artist Inspired Work

For this project, I was inspired by Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning. I was given the choice to make any type of art as long as it was inspired by two of 50 artists. I knew instantly that I would make a jacket. I chose de Kooning because I find his work really powerful. I think his paintings are so beautifully created and I wanted to pay homage to that. I was mainly inspired by "Excavation" and "Woman II". I liked the movement of "Excavation" plus the colors of  "Woman II".  I chose Warhol because I love the color he uses. I was especially inspired by his blue, yellow, and pink Marilyn. I decided to make an overly large collar that was inspired by Warhol's self portraits. In the portraits, his hair is standing up in all directions and I thought that a large collar would represent this. 

For this project, I used cotton twill, canvas, cotton searsucker, cotton upholstery fabric, a zipper, polyester thread, India ink, and acrylic paint. These just happen to be the fabrics I has laying around that matched the colors I wanted. I wasn't trying to make it out of anything specific.

In order to complete this, I went through a number of steps. First I found a pattern that I had made a while back and used it to cut out the fabric. I then set up a painting station in my room. In the comfort of my room I painted the fabric for the arm. I tried to evoke de Kooning in my painting style, a mash of lines and pastel colors. To make sure the acrylic paint stayed on the fabric I heated up my iron and pressed the dried paint covered sleeves. By doing this, the acrylic paint melds and bonds with the fabric, ensuring its longevity. After this was done,  I stitched the pieces together. When adding the pockets, I wrote "Thank you Andy warhol" with india in inside one of the pockets and "Thank you de Kooning" in the other. I did this because I wanted to tie everything together with direct references to my inspirations.  

In the end I created a final product that I am very happy with. I has a lot of fun making this and it has inspired me to make more artist inspired clothing.