|
|
| Gild the
Lily Artists'
Biography
Jacquelyn Rice and Uosis Juodvalkis, a.k.a. Gild the Lily, create
wearables with flowers that fly and butterflies that dance.
Jacquelyn Rice and Uosis (pronounced "Wasis") Juodvalkis are the
collaborators, who are wife and husband, using a camera, scanner, Macintosh
computer, and ink-jet printer to imprint on silk, what seems like the
entire miraculous pageant of nature's pigment and pattern bounty.
Butterflies and flowers -- such as orchids, tulips, and hellebores, a white,
winter-through-spring bloomer, perhaps Rice's favorite -- form the basis of
many creations.
Tunics and jackets are completely reversible and, given that the two sides
of the fabric are printed differently, in designs related in feeling and
yet starkly dissimilar, to turn a garment inside out is to be surprised and
astounded.
Artists' Technique
"A lot of artists don't know how to use a computer, or what they do know
isn't much," says Juodvalkis, explaining the couple's rare combination of
artistry and computer skill. "The technology for knowing about computer
color management and dyes is very rarified, so to have the aesthetic and
the technical very well covered doesn't usually occur in one person. We
feel the confluence of the two of us is really in the miracle category."
Rice, to this day, expresses amazement that an artist like herself, used to
building with her hands and proclaiming the value of handmade objects over
the computer-aided, immediately became, as she says, "hooked" when her
husband showed her the Blend Tool of Adobe Illustrator software, which
allows the transformation of shapes into new forms.
At the end of the design process, Juodvalkis will often make color
adjustments to help the printer bring out what shows on screen or to add
his own interpretation to the design. The printer is 60 inches wide and
houses four cartridges holding cyan, magenta, yellow, and black acid dyes
for silk and wool. On silk, 20,000 dots of color per second are shot out,
and at only .003 inch in diameter, the dots produce nearly continuous tones
of color. Most silk and wool crepe is premounted in 15- to 20-yard rolls.
A reversible fabric is flipped on the paper and run through the
printer again.
The final fabric process of steam heating and washing offers yet another
chance for adjustments. Rice never knows what the fabric will look like
until it is removed after three hours in the steamer, a seven-foot-tall,
missile-like machine that sets the dye.
|
