At a glance: Outreach in Design and the Arts.
Student design team meets at Oakwood Village
At a glance: Outreach in Design and the Arts.
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Learning while doing at the Oakwood Village retirement community. For many years, Prof. Mike Hunt has conducted research and taught courses on space planning and design for the elderly. But the way he taught and did research changed the day he met John Noreika, the Director of Oakwood Village, when they were both speaking on a panel. Their conversation led to a class project at Oakwood, which led to a request for applied, collaborative research. Over time, a continuing relationship has developed in which students in Prof. Hunt’s Interior Environments class learn how to |
| Students take measurements of Senior Housing At Oakwood Village | do real-world consulting by conducting need assessments, planning, and post-occupancy evaluations for Oakwood Village. Learning in the course has increased, and Oakwood Village reaps the benefits. Demand for slots in the course has skyrocketed. |
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Combining the physics of textiles with practical outreach. Prof. Majid Sarmadi has opened a new field of applied science, pioneering new methods of modifying the basic characteristics of textiles by treating them in cold plasma fields (plasma is the 4th state of matter –after gas, liquid, and sold—and consists of free ions, such as is found at the center of stars). His four patents hold promise of producing textiles with uniquely engineered abilities, such as the ability to prevent the growth of bacteria in surgical and food industry garments. But Prof. Sarmadi also has more immediate and localized impacts on the world we live in. Annually he offers evening courses to workers in textile-related industries in Wisconsin (such as Lands End), traveling to the community in which |
Professor Majid Sarmadi |
At the end of the workshop, the hands that made them hold their beaded prayers
Taking the arts off campus: The Beaded Prayers Project. Prof. Sonya Clark’s project began with her knowledge of art and cultural traditions from West Africa, where people write a secret prayer and sew it into an enclosed pouch. These beaded prayers come in the wildest variety of colors, textures, and designs, both in Africa and now in other countries too, thanks to Prof. Clark’s project.
Display of beaded prayers
Over 4,500 individuals from 35 countries have participated in her workshops, including many Wisconsin school children. Watching the quiet intensity of participants stitching the edges of their beaded prayers, one quickly realizes that even such simple acts can carry spiritual significance, like the best experiences of art.
Sample “wallpaper” from an exhibition by Prof. Angus.”
Art exhibitions and outreach: Can bugs be art? Prof. Jennifer Angus has taken her exhibits on the road to art galleries across the nation. And yes, the medium for her art is spectacular insects, which she mounts in breathtaking patterns. Visitors are equally enthralled by viewing the patterns from a distance, and viewing the details up close. Her installation, "Carpet Beetles: Patterns from the Orient," was on view recently at the Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery in the Home Economics Building on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln East Campus. Reviewer L. Kent Wolgamott called the exhibition “one of the best shows in Lincoln this year.” (Click here to see his review.) Other recent exhibitions included the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin; the Wisconsin Academy’s James Watrous Gallery in the Overture Center for the Arts, Madison, Wisconsin; and the North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks.
Members of the Textile and Apparel Design Student Association meet to sew infant bereavement gowns
SoHE designs infant bereavement gowns, project goes national. A unique line of patterns for infant bereavement gowns has gone national, through a partnership between the Pregnancy and Infant Loss Program at Madison’s Meriter Hospital, and the School of Human Ecology. Thanks to the Textile and Apparel Design Student Association members who dedicated hundreds of hours on the project, the hospital now offers a package of patterns (“Threads of Remembrance”) to other hospitals for gowns to fit micro-preemie, preemie, and term infants. SoHE Lecturers Anna Stevens and Marian Lichtenwalner created the designs. Stevens then taught a service-learning course in which students produced a prototype packet of patterns in multiple sizes, along with an educational video and other resources. The prototype was further developed into the final package for distribution to other hospitals with the help of a Beckner Outreach Grant from the School.
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"Gazelles” textile designed by Paul Poiret for Schumacher, United States, 1925-1930 74.25 x 29.5 in. |
“Fragment” Textile Fragment from Chancay Culture Central Coast of Perucirca 1000-1476 C.E. 13.5 x 8 in |
Making a research collection into a public resource: The Helen L. Allen Textile Collection. The Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection features close to 12,000 historical textiles and costumes representing a wide range of eras, places, and techniques, making it one of the largest university textile collections in the United States. A privately-funded Image Database Project creates digital images of key pieces, making the collection available to classrooms and researchers around the world. Items from the collection appear in exhibitions every year, notably including a 2004 exhibition at the Elvehjem Museum of Art in Madison entitled “Quilts: Artistry in Pattern from the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection.” This exhibition featured 28 quilts from the collection selected by curator Mary Ann Fitzgerald. The exhibition was one of the most successful in recent Elvehjem experience, both in numbers of visitors and in the percentage who were first-time visitors to the museum. Historical textiles draw the interest of large audiences because they mark the progress of technology, cultural history, and art, through a medium that each of us experiences daily and intimately: our textiles. See more at their web site: http://sohe.wisc.edu/depts/hlatc
Bringing the public to our building: The Design Gallery
While most of the School's outreach is conducted out in the community and around the state, the Director of SoHE's Design Gallery, Jody Clowes, does just the opposite. She brings the community onto campus by coordinating and curating a series of exhibitions each year. Work by faculty and undergraduate and graduate students in Interior Design, Textile and Apparel Design, or Design Studies is the focus for many of the gallery's exhibits, while others showcase the work of artists and designers from off-campus. Recent exhibits include the exhibition "New School Knitting: The Influence of Elizabeth Zimmermann and Schoolhouse Press," curated by graduate student Molly Greenfield as part of her M.S. in Design Studies, and "Disposable Dresses: Throw-Away Design from the 1960s," curated by Clowes to examine a significant collection of paper and nonwoven garments from the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection.
Design Gallery events and exhibitions are free and open to the public. For more information, visit the gallery's website at http://www.designgallery.wisc.edu/.
