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Woven works by US-based Alec Judelson!

Woven works by US-based Alec Judelson!
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January 13, 2022
in Academic Institutions, Artists, Industry, What’s on Your Loom
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As a part of our continuing What’s On Your Loom series, featuring the works woven (on the TC2) by artists from across the world, here’s featuring the creations by US-based Alec Judelson. Alec is a Fiber major at the Maryland Institute College of Art and will be graduating in the spring of 2023. 

This semester, the Maryland Institute College of Art reopened in-person classes allowing access to the studios and large-scale tools such as the TC2 loom. I was extremely excited to start learning how to weave on the TC2 since I was intrigued by the photographic capabilities that it could produce. With the support of my professor, Liz Enz, I found myself using loom to create both wall hangings and bespoke yardage for my garments working around central themes of identity, privacy, and the conflation between personal histories and the histories of the land we possess.

The picture (to the left) above is of a 38” x 50” woven tapestry, where I’ve used ~1,500 pony beads, cotton, and wood. On June 13th, 1942, four Nazis landed on the Atlantic beach in Amagansett to carry out a mission to destroy America’s ability to manufacture vital equipment and transport them to the war in Europe. On the right, is a detailed shot of the woven structures illustrating three policemen searching the dunes for Nazi equipment. I now inhabit this land and couldn’t think about the conflict between the beach’s violent past and the way that I interact with it now.

The picture to the left shows work in progress on the loom. Thinking similarly about the beach, I used double weft structures to impose images of bottles and cans onto a historical photograph of the beach. The picture to the right is a detail shot showing the different weft colors. For the second weft, I alternated between a pink and an orange shuttle to achieve this striped effect.

The above series is titled Fisheye and for this weaving, I was thinking about privacy and surveillance.

This picture on the left is yardage that was created to be used as fabric for a skirt (seen in the image to the right) and uses double weft structures to highlight aspects of the ID in a pink weft. This ID pencil skirt and mesh long sleeve is part of a larger collection that I am currently working on. The collection is based around identity and community and uses the image of real and fake IDs to comment on the community that my fake ID granted me access to. But it also comments on the way that while growing up in NYC, fake IDs felt like a right of passage and a gateway to freedom, self-liberation, and getting older.

Since I’ve just recently started working on the TC2, I’m still exploring different organizations of structures and compositions. So far I’ve primarily been using satin structures and have been narrowing down my image to around 6 structures per weft. Since some of my weavings are being used as garments I’ve avoided long floats for the stability of the cloth. When I’ve used the woven cloth for garments, like in the ID Pencil Skirt, I’ve added an additional stabilizer, such as interfacing, to further support the longevity of the garment.

Looking toward the future, I am excited to further explore the capabilities of the loom while I build up my portfolio and collection. I’ve enjoyed being part of this community of TC2 weavers and look forward to connecting with others to share tips and processes of working on this loom. Feel free to follow my process on Instagram @luckyroark or contact me at judelsonalec@gmail.com.

About…

As an artist, Alec Judelson’s main practice revolves around using traditional craft mediums as a platform for bold, colorful, and unapologetic commentary on queer American history and culture. Primarily in handmade textiles, his work blurs the line between art and fashion resulting in expressive garments and sculptural wall hangings.

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