Designer Joanna Staniszkis embraces global silk art
21 Aug '06
2 min read
Textile artist Joanna Staniszkis immerses herself deep into the fabric to its genesis.
She had incorporated flax seeds into her linen venture as she integrates actual silkworms into her art.
Cocoons and a dust-colored moth are tonally in sync with the vintage silk shoe they adorn.
The shoe, along with oversize cocoons of PVC mesh, is displayed against the grey-green walls of her old boutique.
The Silk Project, an Aladdin's cave of saturated color displays her art and the dramatic clothing's she composes.
Fusing the two, Staniszkis screens photographs of cocoons onto the skirt of a dress dyed shades of purple; its top features the puckered design of Indian bandni work.
She also works with prewoven clothing obtained from China. She travels to tiny villages in India to work directly with weavers on fabrics like a double-woven wild silk to become elegant shawls.
Most of her fabrics are pure white and is tinted in shades of a palette of deep greens, or saffron shading to lavender.
The latter is stiffened with acrylic medium as it falls into sculptural folds when wrapped around the shoulders.
To make slinky body-clinging silk clothing is not her goal as she aims to fashion pieces that float about the body like mist around a hilltop.
Jacket or jewelry, Staniszkis' work is for women unafraid of being looked at.
She willbe continuing her silk explorations in her second studio in Provence, France.
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