I'm Erin Curry, maker of sculptures, quiet comics, drawings, and textile things. This is primarily my research tumblr with the occasional glimpse of things made by me. For more of art I create, see the links in the menu. For tumblr feed of just my work see erincurryart.tumblr.com
Anni Albers (1899-1994) is held in high regard as one of the most paramount textile designers of the 20th century. Albers attended the Bauhaus in 1922 and begrudgingly participated in the weaving workshop as it was the only one available to women at that time. By 1931, Albers had received a diploma for innovative work and stepped into the role as head of the weaving workshop, a rare occurrence for a woman at the school. When the Bauhaus closed in 1933, Albers accepted an invitation to teach at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College. She stayed on as an assistant professor at Black Mountain College until 1949 where she was known for her experimental approaches to materials and processes.
Albers broke new ground within the world of weaving and graphic design, taking printmaking techniques into uncharted territory. In 1949 she was the first textile designer to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and spent the remainder of her life making and showing art. Despite her prolific artmaking, Albers left behind very little evidence of her working process aside from one unassuming notebook dating to the latter part of her life.
Anni Albers: Notebook 1970-1980is a delightful glimpse into the mind of Albers. A facsimile of her simple composition notebook, the publication is replete with spontaneous works and preliminary ideas sketched out in pencil and occasionally red ink. Most works are dated, and a few have titles corresponding to subsequent prints and printed textiles. This is the only known notebook of Albers and a joyous wellspring of inspiration for any textile artist or designer.
Anni Albers: Notebook 1970-1980 was published in 2017 by David Zwirner Books out of New York.
“Folks, there’s nothing left from the Linguistics division. We lost all the indigenous languages collection: the recordings since 1958, the chants in all the languages for which there are no native speakers alive anymore, the Curt Niemuendaju archives: papers, photos, negatives, the original ethnic-historic-linguistic map localizing all the ethnic groups in Brazil, the only record that we had from 1945. The ethnological and archeological references of all ethnic groups in Brazil since the 16th century… An irreparable loss of our historic memory. It just hurts so much to see all in ashes.”
Webtoy by Andy Matuschak uses neural network-trained SketchRNN dataset to visualize in realtime potential sketch marks whilst you are drawing particular objects:
This pen’s ink stretches backwards into the past and forwards into
possible futures. The two sides make a strange loop: the future ink
influences how you draw, which in turn becomes the new “past” ink
influencing further future ink.
Put another way: this is a realtime implementation of SketchRNN which predicts future strokes while you draw.
Currently works best in Chrome, you can try it out for yourself here
"There are books, that one has for twenty years without reading them, that one always keeps at hand, that one takes along from city to city, from country to country, carefully packed, even when there is very little room, and perhaps one leafs through them while removing them from a trunk; yet one carefully refrains from reading even a complete sentence. Then after twenty years, there comes a moment when suddenly, as though under a high compulsion, one cannot help taking in such a book from beginning to end, at one sitting: it is like a revelation. Now one knows why one made such a fuss about it. It had to be with one for a long time; it had to travel; it had to occupy space; it had to be a burden; and now it has reached the goal of its voyage, now it reveals itself, now it illuminates the twenty bygone years it mutely lived with one. It could not say so much if it had not been there mutely the whole time, and what idiot would dare to assert that the same things had always been in it."
