IAF auctions - look at all this cool art

[kate_schaefer]

I posted about the rolling Interstitial Arts Foundation auctions when they started some days back. I think the hat I made for the auction based on Camilla Bruce's story, "Berry Moon," comes up tomorrow or possibly the next day. Another piece based on the same story, "A Binding for the Moon," a bound handmade limited edition book made by Erzebet Yellowboy, is up for auction now.

Edited to add: And a third piece based on "Berry Moon," a skirt made by Pam Noles, will come up for auction in a few more days.

I've been drawn to the bookshaped and booklike objects in the auction; there's another handmade book, "A Binding for Memory," a blank book made by Lise Bernier based on "The Long and Short of Short-term Memory," by Cecil Castellucci. My favorite piece is "Je me souviens," made by Wendy Ellertson, also based on "The Long and Short of Short-term Memory." Go ahead and look at it, but that auction is over; that memory book will live with me. I hope I like that story when I finally read it.

Here's the full schedule of auctions, with thumbnail images of all the pieces in the auction.

This is what I wrote about the hat:

This cocktail hat is based on Camilla Bruce's short story, "Berry Moon: Laments of a Muse." In some ways, it's a straightforward illustration of the story, which is about the interplay between inspiration and fiction, or more precisely an illustration of the words of the story, which are dense with image and texture and color. The hat is divided, with a clutter of objects – a rose, an origami frog (a crumpled candy wrapper in the story), pebbles – beneath a bent dark red moon caught in a net along with words, mostly pronouns, words devoid of specificity but full of implication in their relation to each other.

All the materials used in making the hat were either recycled or repurposed, just as the muse's inspiration is repurposed in making fiction. Much of the fabric is recycled from Anita Rowland's wedding dress, with the rest recycled from a shirt I made a few years ago. The fabric beads wrapped in gold thread and the semi-precious stone beads are from Anna Vargo's stash; the small semi-precious stones used as cabochons were Elise Matthesen's ("Here, do something with this," she said). The origami frog is made from holographic wrapping paper.

The extremely soft-sided fabric box holding the hat is an improvised liner for the utilitarian box, intended to make shipping the hat easier. Sometimes improvisations spin out of control, and that one certainly did. It will serve to protect the hat, as long as the buyer keeps the acid-free paper as padding.

The hat has two toupee clips to hold it on the wearer's head. They snap open like little snap barrettes, and as long as they are able to grab a few hairs in the combs, they'll hold the hat on most securely.

This is at least the fourth piece I've made based on a work of fiction. The first two were pieced vests made for Ursula K. Le Guin and Mary Doria Russell as part of the prizes for the 1996 Tiptree awards; the third was a carrier bag based on the phrase, "Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction." Usually, when I work with fabric, it's the fabric itself that moves me, the way it looks, the way it feels, how it drapes, the techniques suitable for working with it. For these pieces, I had other people's words and images in mind, and that's an odd experience for me when making art. I expect I'll try it again.