TOILE DE JOUY PROJECT

This project of textile installation tasked students to design a toile de joy, a pattern style with detailed and illustrative scenes, in reaction to a memorial, landmark building, or historic location in New York City. Groups will design a fabrication that incorporates inspirations from historic or political narratives of the surrounding neighbourhoods of their chosen site. Additionally, groups will also design a separate length of commemorative wallpaper celebrating the memorial or history of the event. The toile pattern will be printed on 100% cotton fabric, using the resources of fabric printing plotters and following the processes to lead to a 24 X 36” size. The wallpaper will be printed on paper from the printing plotter with a scale of 34 X 44”.

PROCESS

Exploring the neighbourhood around the monument to investigate

I personally explored 12th Street and documented a photographic walking tour map. These images were used to create an extensive mood board/map with historic images, current images etc

Brainstorming and Planning - Assigning roles and tasks to each group member

I firstly created rough sketches of the elements I chose to create digitally. The elements included the Hudson river, classical buildings, Pier 48, White Horse Tavern, and the AIDS monument. I chose Pier 48 and White Horse Tavern.

Drawings were created digitally on Adobe Illustrator, where extensive research was done to investigate the historic past.

Test Printing and deciding changes to make to improve the artwork. My group and I decided to make the drawings a dark green color as the AIDS monument is located in a park, surrounded by nature and greenery.

For the wallpaper, we used the same drawings but changed the colors to blue in order to reference the Hudson river, an important element in relation to the AIDS monument. The Hudson river is connected to the location of the monument and other drawings.

Challenges that my group and I encountered during the project.
Size Mistake and Printing - In order to print the fabric, we had to outsource to obtain the toile pattern. It was a difficult process as communication was ineffective since the size was — Challenges that my group and I encountered during the project. Size Mistake and Printing - In order to print the fabric, we had to outsource to obtain the toile pattern. It was a difficult process as communication was ineffective since the size was incorrect. The fabric printing team printed a smaller size than requested, where changes were unable to be made since the entire printing process takes a minimum of one week to complete. Furthermore, no test printing is able to be done due to limited time to complete and submit the project. In the future, we needed to take in account mistakes that may happen and ensure there is enough time to fix them.