Photographing Falling Water

How to get a silky water effect

I recently gave a talk about the techniques used for capturing a silky running water effect. If you ever wanted to know how it is done, here is my presentation outlining techniques to achieve this in your next photo outing.  

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Plotting the Digital Design Future: Out of Hand / MAD

Out Of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital
Museum of Arts and Design / New York City

By Susan Wacker-Donle
PHOTOS: Susan Wacker-Donle

3D Printing, Rapid Prototyping, CNC Machining
Polyethylene Sculpture: Roxy Paine

3D printing and computer assisted production is state of the art for the 21st century three-dimensional world. New York City’s Museum of Arts and Design’s (MAD) show, “Out Of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital” explores the technologies of computer assisted art, design, fashion, and function. The viewer is presented with an array of visually stimulating objects that cover a range from abstract to everyday. The ability to create, contort and replicate through CNC (computer-numerically-controlled) machining has given industrial designers, sculptors, architects, and artisans a new dimensional platform to explore providing access to detail and fractal geometry like never before. What is produced is fresh and organic, using familiar and new materials with patterns derived from advanced mathematics, putting a spin on conventional and contemporary concepts.
Doudou Necklace, 2009: Marc Newson / Boucheron

“Out Of Hand” covers three museum floors with eye-catching displays from 85 artists, designers and architects from 20 countries exploring six esthetic themes:

  Modeling Nature 
  Rebooting Revivals
  Pattern As Structure 
  Remixing The Figure
  New Geometries 
  Processuality 

Covered by the installation are captivating artworks created from 2005 to present day from such artists as Ron Arad, Barry X Ball, Chuck Close, Marc Newson and Hiroshi Sugimoto, to name a few.
Hyphae Lamps 2013: Nervous System

Highlights from the show include melting cascades of lava like polyethylene sculptures by Roxy Paine; Marc Newson’s stunning sapphire and diamond necklace spinning in a fractal lattice handcrafted by Boucheron; lung like hanging ceiling “Hyphae” lamps by Nervous System that cast a delicate organic pattern of light with their lace-like texture.



Knitwear Fall / Winter 2009-2010: Sandra Backlund

Fashion forward apparel by Sandra Backlund drape minimally featured mannequins creating new silhouettes. Boldly geometric dresses in tube and macramé knit patterns redefine what is possible for knitwear. A barnacle like textured 3D printed dress from the Iris Van Herpen Spring Collection is a showstopper. Intricate digitally knitted in one-piece bodysuits are showcased reflecting light in a spiraling celestial Swarovski crystal design created by Tamae Hirokawa for Samatas and worn by Lady Gaga.

My first experience with 3D printing was in my creative management role at Gillette in Boston. Those ergonomic, fast and furious razor handles are realized through an internal 3D printer growing from a CAD rendering into reality. No longer needed are time consuming out-sourced blueprints, hand fashioned models of clay or high-density foam with expensive reworking back and forth between model shop and designer. Prototypes are seamlessly created from desktop to conference room table. Tweaking and refinements can be implemented immediately.

3D Printed Dresss: Isis Van Herpen Spring 2013 in collaboration with Neri Okman

“Out of Hand” gives you the opportunity to try out and experience 3D printing technology with onsite prototyping from Shapeways; a New York based 3D printing marketplace and service startup company. Users upload design files, and Shapeways prints the objects for them from a variety of materials including food-safe ceramics. You can watch jewelry grow from plastic resins as well as create your own designs on a computer terminal. Nervous System.com can produce these designs for a fee in a variety of plastics and precious metals such as silver.…even gold.





The Museum of Arts and Design's exhibition is open until July 6th, 2014. It is a must see for anyone in the arts that needs a primer for our digitally fabricated future. 

Oh Void 1, 2006: Ron Arad

Through hands on interactivity and technologically inspired human creativity, you are sure to walk out of the exhibit illuminated, creative juices flowing, ready and eager to apply this new technology to your own craft.

Future Beauty: Avant-Garde Japanese Fashion / PEM

Future Beauty: Avant-Garde Japanese Fashion
Peabody Essex Museum / Salem MA

By Susan Wacker-Donle
PHOTOS: Susan Wacker-Donle

“Avant-Garde” : new and unusual or experimental ideas, especially in the arts, or the people introducing them.

Peabody Essex Museum’s new exhibition, Future Beauty, explores Japanese avant-garde fashion through the creations of Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, Yoshi Yamamoto, Junya Watanabe, Jun Takahashi and Tao Kurihara, to name a few. These designers, by rethinking form, technique and material recast fashion into works of art. Using cultural Japanese influences such as the iconic kimono, origami, macramé, calligraphy scrolls, and Harajuku, an alternate definition of beauty is on display that, in some cases, transforms the body into alien and architectural like shapes. This exhibition of skirts, dresses, gowns and suits is a celebration of radical fashion design that began in the early 1980’s, a force that reshaped western fashion for the first time in history. Their influence is evident today on the runway, clothes that embrace eastern world values of imperfection, asymmetry, simplicity, and subtlety.

Future Beauty explores four design concepts:

In Praise of Shadows

Author Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's 1933 essay, "In Praise of Shadows" is credited as the foundation for this eastern design movement. It is a celebration of Japanese aesthetics illustrating their skill with light and shade, qualities found in shadows. This writing has been referenced as the influence for the famous Spring/Summer 1983 collections shown in Paris by Rei Kawakubo and Yoshi Yamamoto. Their runway looks used a monochromatic palette described as "Black, White, and Stark". These dark, asymmetric, deconstructed ripped and unraveled garments went against the vibrant color collections of leading French designers of the period such Yves Saint Laurent, creating quite a stir among the fashion establishment . Yamamoto's white silk/wool satin dress with twisting and wool flannel little black asymmetric dress are examples from this movement displayed at the museum.

Tradition & Innovation

After WWII there was an explosion of synthetic and industrial fabric development. A new generation of technically advanced synthetic fibers was born creating a wide and sophisticated variety of fabrics for the Japanese

textile industry. With the banding together of technologists and fashion designers, new dying methods and weaving techniques expanded creative capability producing never before seen fabrics made up of diverse visual effects. 

"Techno-Couture" became known for unconventional tailoring techniques using origami folds instead of darts; use of processed silk, paper, polyester and stainless steel

fibers for new visual effects, voluminous constructions using fabric as a sculptural material. "Future Beauty" features ethereal chiffon honeycomb ensembles from Junya Watanabe's Autumn/Winter 2000-2001 Collection. A real show stopper is Hiroaki Ohuya's bright red polyester film cape and skirt from his "Wizard of Jeanz" series. These creations straddle both "Flatness" and "Tradition and Innovation" categories. Ohya's conceptual garments start out as closed books that unfold like giant oriental lanterns creating vests, pants, one piece jackets, capes, skirts and capes. His constructions are a modern twist on traditional Japanese paper fabrics used for a type of kimono worn by priests, the kamiko. 

Flatness 

"Flatness" explores the Japanese concept of "Ma" as applied to fashion: the use of negative space, the tension between form and flatness, creating garments that achieve an abstract relationship with the body by transcending physical shape through line and mass experimentation. The conventional Western emphasis on form-fitting tailoring for couture is replaced with a new language of asymmetry and deconstruction referencing traditional kimono draping, honeycomb lantern construction and the art of paper folding, origami. Highlighted in this exhibit is a black wool jersey dress from the Autumn/Winter Collection 1983-1984 by Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons. A minimal feature sculpted white mannequin stands against a super sized photographic print by Naoya Hatakeyama from the Kyoto Costume Institute draped in this garment. The Lambda print from 2009 captures the dramatic and stark geometry of Kawakubo's garment laid flat. It's essence is unmistakeably Japanese in both it's abstract flattened image or draped dress presentation. 

Cool Japan

"Tokyo is now the world capital of street style".
-------------------Suzy Menkes, 2000

Cool Japan explores the explosion of youth fashion culture emanating from the city's Harajuku and Shibuya districts.
The style is all about "personal transformation through fashion" without any clear social messages.
Ensembles displayed cover various sub-trends within the category:
"Lolita": Based on Nobokov's mid-1950's book expressing fashion in a child-like sensibility using frills, petticoats, and ribbons with a ultra-feminine color palette
"Cosplay": A contraction of the words costume and play; participants wear outfits and accessories to represent a specific idea or character
"Gothic": Creations in the all-black style of Western Goth subculture
"Manga": Designs based on Japanese comic characters such as Hello Kitty and one of my childhood favorites, Astro Boy
"80's Hip Hop/Punk"

Tao Kurihara's overdress and tunic from her Spring/Summer Collection 2010 included here is a hybrid of "Goth-Loli" with the rebellious attitude of "Punk". A white overdress of finely torn synthetic cotton and silk, twisted and knotted using a macrame like technique, is layered over a sheer black polyester tunic. The effect of the knotted overlay is one of a dramatic, bold accessory. This ensemble is edgy, strong and totally haute-couture!

In addition to the nearly 100 provocative garments on display, designer's fashion shows run on a continual loop throughout the gallery on large format video screens. Contemporary couture pieces hang on one wall for visitors to try on. This show is on view till January 26th, 2014 where it will travel to Japan's National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto in March. If you love fashion and have a passion for the avant-garde, I highly recommend taking in this exhibit!

Dale Chihuly: Utterly Breathtaking / MMFA

Dale Chihuly: Utterly Breathtaking
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal

By Susan Wacker-Donle
PHOTOS: Susan Wacker-Donle

“I’m obsessed with color-never saw one I didn’t like”-Dale Chihuly

Experiencing Chihuly’s latest exhibit at the MMFA is like tripping the light fantastic through a fantasy garden of glass. Galleries filled with breathtaking color, mesmerizing reflections, and elaborate organic shapes cascade from an illuminated vacuum of darkness surrounding the viewer in patterns of light.

An explosion of orange and yellow glass titled “The Sun” greets you on the steps of the museum. This 16 .5 foot diameter sculpture jumps off the cool stone museum façade, sparkling in the Canadian autumn light. You cannot help but smile and be warmed by it’s rays of glistening glass tendrils.
"Turquois Reeds": Dale Chihuly 

Inside, ascending the staircase to the Galleries of the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion, visitors are framed by “The Persian Colonnade”. Walls encrusted with vibrant fire colored glass florals, lead you upwards to the tranquility of The Turquoise Reeds, a forest of glass rods springing from trunks of red cedar. 

From here you encounter “The Persian Ceiling”, a cacophony of transparent shapes layered overhead. Undulating conical florals arranged in color groupings radiate backlit chromatic splendor. Concentric swirling lattices produce hypnotizing, kaleidoscopic reflections on the chamber walls.
"Pineapple Chandelier": Dale Chihuly

The next gallery displays “The Chandeliers and The Tower”, a magical interior of fantastic stalagmite and stalactite forms with graceful coiling tendrils that pierce brilliant light thru the blackness of space. The “Towers” are Chihuly’s chandeliers “pictured upside down”. Re-created specifically for this exhibition is “The Pineapple Chandelier”; a multi-pod shaped ribbed and twisted array of fervent rouge glass. This blown glass sculpture is constructed on a steel frame, weighs several hundred pounds, dramatically hanging from the ceiling reflecting into a black mirrored pool.

Continuing on, Chihuly opens up our eyes with “Mille Flori”, a play on the Italian word “milleflori” meaning “one thousand flowers”. This environment made up of spires, grasses, reeds, herons and sea grasses “embodies his lifelong passion for nature and flowers” inspired by memories of his mother’s botanical gardens. Additional environments “The Boats” and “The Glass Forest #6” contain orbs of color and texture reminiscent of Venetian glass art, brilliant flower stems and vines as well as dozens of flattened globs of blown white illuminated neon glass.
Bowl Detail from "The Macchia Forest": Dale Chihuly

The final room, “Macchia Forest” (“macchia” means “spotted” in Italian) displays large, ruffled bowl shaped objects glowing brilliantly upon black steel pedestals. Here, Dale and his team of talented artisans used the full range of 300 colors available to them in the hotshop. These presentations of organic textures and unique reflective surfaces such as simulated mother of pearl are brought to life with dramatic columns of light.

“Dale Chihuly: Utterly Breathtaking” is an exhibition of hand blown mega objects, a grandiose abstract interpretation of the natural world using a fractal glass language that captivates the imagination and stimulates the soul. This exhibition closes October 27th. Current exhibitions include the Halycon Gallery in London till November 10th, 2013 with ongoing installations at The Seattle Center, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and the Tacoma Art Museum. If you find yourself in Las Vegas be sure to see the “Fiori di Como” installation in the Bellagio Hotel Lobby.
"The Persian Ceiling": Dale Chihuly

Upcoming shows opening in November can be viewed at The Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, and the Traver Gallery in Seattle. If you love glass design the way I do, be sure to take in one of these shows!

Modern Nature : Georgia O'Keeffe and Lake George

Modern Nature: Georgia O'Keeffe and Lake George
The Hyde Collection

By Susan Wacker-Donle
PHOTOS: Susan Wacker-Donle

Alfred Stieglitz’s 36-acre family estate located on Lake George, New York influenced the work of Georgia O’Keeffe from 1918–1934, forever changing the way we view beauty of the natural world. The recent exhibit of O’Keeffe’s paintings at the Hyde Collection in Glen Falls, New York brings together, for the first time, work produced during the 16 years she summered on Lake George with the famous photographer and gallery owner. Stieglitz was responsible for introducing Ms. O’Keeffe to the NYC and International art community through his gallery 291 in Manhattan.

Fifty-eight bold, color-filled paintings make up this show accompanied by a companion exhibition, “A Family Album: Alfred Stieglitz and Lake George”. These thirty photographs by Stieglitz are a nice addition to the exhibit, giving you an intimate look into the people who resided at the country retreat known as “The Hill”. A short video, “Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life in Art” narrated by Gene Hackman created by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe documents the artist’s life with sound bytes and images spanning her career from New York City to New Mexico.
Walking the gallery, visitors are invited to dial in and use their cell phones as they view the artwork. Influences and themes are highlighted as well as comments from the painter herself adding a deeper understanding to selected pieces. Use of this state of the art technology to engage with the paintings is an impressive touch for such a tiny museum located an hour north of Albany and less than ten miles from Lake George.

“Modern Nature” is divided into six themes: Landscapes, Barns and Buildings, Abstractions, Tree Portraits, From the Garden, and Lake George Souvenirs.
Classic O’Keeffe paintings including “Petunia’s”, 1925 and lesser known “From the Lake”, 1924 and “The Chestnut Grey,“ 1924 are examples of some of the works on view. 

"White Birch", 1925

Having my own home in Vermont, Georgia’s images of leaves, trees, and wild flowers are more real to me than ever. I was enamored with the painting “White Birch”, 1925; a visual fusion of abstract and reality capturing vibrant fall foliage. Another showstopper is a series of Jack-in-the-Pulpits lining one wall of the exhibition. The sequence starts with a somewhat realistic graphic representation that transforms from painting to painting into an up-close vision of aubergine and green flowing lines and color. On the final image, one bright crimson accent defines the abstract essence of the wildflower’s heart.

Other works such as “Brown and Tan Leaves”, 1928 and “Fall Maple Leaves”, 1925 capture autumn in rich browns, gold, and hues of rouge defined by forms of fractal abstraction as seen thru O’Keeffe’s modernistic eye.

The exhibition has closed but heads to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe (October 4 - January 26) and then to the de Young Museum in San Francisco (February 15 – May 11). I highly recommend taking in this exhibit whether you are new to O’Keeffe’s work or a long term admire of this American Master. You will always discover something new and fresh in O’Keeffe’s iconic imagery. Her images are timeless, her vision passionate and sensual using shape and color reduced to it’s simplest abstract essence to reveal nature’s heart.

Tripping Back Into Fashion Time: Hippie Chic / MFA Boston

Tripping Back into Fashion Time
Hippie Chic 
Museum of Fine Art / Boston August 2013
By Susan Wacker-Donle
PHOTOS: Susan Wacker-Donle

For a fashion experience crafted to engage all your senses, take in the current exhibit, Hippie Chic, at Boston’s Museum of Fine Art. Curator Lauren Whitley has brought together fifty-four couture designs inspired by the Woodstock Generation.

For the first time in fashion history, designers took their cues from the street, using the youth vibe of the sixties and seventies to inspire haute couture. The resulting display is a collection of hallucinogenic influences derived from psychedelic pop art, patterns cut in vintage and Edwardian silhouettes, and a colorful array of vibrant fabrics embroidered with ethnic bohemian peasant motifs.

Thea Porter / Nomadic Coat, 1969

Walking thru the exhibit, music of the era transports you back to a world of fantasy and tie-dye. The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields, Hendrix’s Purple Haze, and The Grateful Dead’s Sugar Magnolia set the stage radiating nostalgia from an illuminated juke box circa 1960’s diner. Along the era inspired wallpapered and wood paneled walls, long haired mannequins pose draped in patchwork and ribbon dresses by Yves St. Laurent and Giorgio di Sant’Angelo.  There are bold, bright textiles by Peter Max, maxi dresses and a crushed purple velvet three-piece suit sold at Granny Takes a Trip, the first psychedelic boutique in London. Also included is a tie-dyed Halston pantsuit ensemble as well as an Arnold Scassi sari created in 1970 for Barbra Streisand.  Two show highlights: a beautiful ethereal rouge caftan embroidered with an intricate golden thread panel and a nomadic middle eastern inspired peasant coat both designed by Thea Porter circa 1969.

Missing from the exhibition: the iconic mandarin collar Nehru jacket inspired by India’s culture and popularized by such bands as The Monkees and The Beatles.
Giorgio di Sant’Angelo / Ribbon Dress, 1970  

What is most intriguing about the clothes is how these designers interpreted anti-establishment fashion trends into highbrow fashion. Creations rich in texture and brilliant color palettes, these ensembles speak elegance and sophistication far removed from the flower child salt of the earth, grassroots references. 

Hippie Chic runs through November at the MFA. A preview of the exhibit can be viewed on line at www.mfa.org/exhibitions/hippie-chic. You can listen to the curator explain her inspiration for the show, go behind the scene of the exhibition with collection care specialist Allison Murphy, create your own retro album cover, and listen to great tunes of the times celebrating Peace, Love, Rock and Roll. Take a trip down fashion’s Penny Lane and enjoy!