Art Making and Art Appropriation

Creativity

• Creativity signifies an open-ended, process-oriented conversation rather than being goal-oriented.
• Art transcends being merely an area of study, becoming a way of life, integral to an artist's character, involving continuous searching, looking, thinking, and feeling.

Soulmaking (Art Making)

• Art making is a fun and rewarding way for people to express themselves and to learn a broad range of skills and concepts.

The Art Making Process: Phases

• Phase One: Begins with sketching, grid-lining, drawing, or filling in under-paintings.
• Phase Two: Includes adding multiple layers of tone, color, or paint within an artwork.
• Phase Three: Concludes with students adding final details and craftsmanship to showcase finished projects.

Stages of Art Making

• Inspiration: The exciting moment when inspiration strikes.
• Percolation: The time that elapses after an idea is conceived but before art creation begins.
• Preparation: Involves gathering and organizing supplies, and creating a blueprint for the artwork.
• Creation: The period of focused art-making.
• Reflection: The post-creation phase that includes sharing, delivering, or displaying the artwork.

Seven Da Vincian Principles

• Curiosita (Curiosity): An insatiable curiosity and quest for continuous learning.
• Dimonstrazione (Demonstration): A commitment to testing knowledge through experience and learning from mistakes.
• Sensazione (Sensation): Continual refinement of the senses to enliven experience.
• Sfumato (Going Up in Smoke): Embracing ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty.
• Arte/Scienza (Art and Science): Developing a balance between logic and imagination.
• Corporalita (Of the Body): Maintaining a healthy body and mind; keeping our bodies fit is a function of keeping our minds fit.
• Connessione (Connection): Recognizing the interconnectedness of all things and phenomena.

Appropriation

• Appropriation is creating new work by taking a preexisting image from another source and transforming or combining it with new ones.

Cultural Appropriation

• Cultural appropriation involves the adoption of elements of a minority culture by members of the dominant culture.
• It differs from cultural exchange due to a colonial element and power imbalance.
• It can involve the use of ideas, symbols, artifacts, or other aspects of human-made visual or non-visual culture.
• Cultural appropriation is often portrayed as harmful and claimed to violate the collective intellectual property rights of originating, minority cultures.
• Often unavoidable when cultures come together, it can include using other cultures' traditions, fashion, symbols, language, and songs.
• The original meaning of these cultural elements is often lost or distorted, viewed as disrespectful or desecration by the originating culture.

Why Cultural Appropriation is Bad

• The dominant culture appropriating elements is usually ignorant of the original context and doesn't bother to learn it.

Types of Cultural Appropriation

• Object Appropriation: Transferring possession of a tangible object from one culture to another.
  • Example: The removal of decorations from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin.
• Content Appropriation: Reproducing non-tangible works of art (stories, music) from another culture.
  • Example: Halle Bailey's portrayal of "The Little Mermaid."
• Stylistic Appropriation: Artists taking stylistic elements from another culture without reproducing specific works.
  • Example: Iggy Azalea's "blaccent" in her song "Fancy."
• Motif Appropriation: Artists influenced by the art of another culture without creating works in the same style.
  • Example: Picasso influenced by African carving.
• Subject Appropriation: Representing members or aspects of another culture.
  • Example: Ella Cruz's role as an Aeta girl in Daryl Yap's "Gluta."

Individual Activity: Art Recreation or Appropriation

• Research and choose a painting from any era of art.
• Appropriate the imagery in a way that copies it but alters it at the same time.
• Make the artwork your own, with yourself as the subject.
• Print the picture of your art appropriation side by side with the original painting on A4 sized vellum/photo paper.
• Write an Artist Statement (Yellow Paper), including:
  • Who/what is your source artwork?
  • How did you make your source artwork your own?
  • Is your appropriation considered theft or merely inspiration?
  • Acceptable or bad appropriation? Justify your answer in 8-10 sentences.
• Deadline: October 14, 2024, before 5 PM.
• Outputs must be submitted as a class.
• Late submissions will be given point deductions.

Textile Art

• Textile art is the process of creating something using fibers gained from sources like plants, animals, insects or synthetic materials.
• The craft of designing or creating textiles spans global cultures and represents one of the earliest human technologies.

The T'nalak

• The T'nalak is a traditional cloth woven by the T'boli women of Lake Sebu.
• It represents birth, life, union in marriage, and death.
• The T'nalak is sacred and represents the Tboli uniqueness and identity as indigenous group of people.

The T'nalak Process

• Step 1: Kedungon or Abaca plant Harvesting: Harvesting the abaca and stripping the fibers.
  • Before harvesting, a prayer table is set up, and a prayer is said to Fu Dalu.
  • The tree is slashed diagonally with a sharp knife.
  • Six abaca plants must be harvested to produce a 14-meter long t'nalak.
  • The plants must be two to three years old with a trunk diameter of about 14-18 inches.
  • The trunk is stripped, and the first few pieces are laid on a triangular offering table for Fu Dalu.
  • Succeeding strips are inserted between a block of wood and a large knife to separate the pulp from the abaca fiber.
• Step 2: Word or connecting: Segregating the fibers and connecting them from end to end.
  • After air-drying for at least 24 hours, fibers are grouped into wrist-size bundles.
  • The women hand-rub or squeeze the abaca strands to soften them.
  • This produces a zigzag pattern to help segregate the strands according to quality.
  • Once dried, women individually connect the fibers from end to end by tying tiny knots.
  • The ends are cut with a sakt'bong (small weaver's blade) to make the connections invisible.
  • They are then bundled together by winding the threads around a bamboo warp frame.
  • It can take a weaver up to two weeks to complete the standard length needed for the T'nalak.
  • Around 35-40 blitus or bundles, with each bundle having 100-200 fibers of 1.5-2.5 meters in length, are needed to complete a 10 meters by 63 centimeters wide piece of t'nalak.
• Step 3: Semdang or setting: Preparing or setting the fibers on the loom for knotting.
  • The connected fibers that make up the warp are set on the Gono Smoi or loom.
  • This loom is composed of a comb-like wooden frame to preserve the fibers' length and silkiness.
  • After the fibers are smoothened out, they are placed evenly and closely spread on the gono smoi.
  • They are held in place by a teladay or wooden bar.
• Step 4: Mebed or designing: Knotting the fibers prior to resist-dyeing.
  • This task determines the design of the t'nalak.
  • It can take up to four to five weeks as knot after knot is tied into place.
  • The women carefully tie knots on the warp according to a mental picture of the traditional design.
  • The knots determine the area which must not be dyed.
  • The first knots tied are reserved for preserving the natural color of the abaca.
  • The second set of knots are for the areas to be dyed red.
  • This whole process takes place during the day where there is plenty of light.
• Step 5: Temogo or dying and Hemto or untying of knots: Gathering and preparing the natural dyes, dyeing the warp and untying knots.
  • A t'nalak is defined by using the three traditional colors: black, red, and white.
  • In coloring the abaca strands, the T'boli women make use of natural dyes found in vegetation around their area.
  • This process of resist-dye is commonly known as the ikat method.
  • Hitem, or the black dye, is derived from leaves of the K'nalum tree.
  • Once a rice sack full worth of leaves is gathered, pounded, placed into a large pot of water, and boiled.
  • After two to four hours, the bed or tied fibers are placed inside.
  • The cooking of the fibers takes an average of three weeks with the fire being refueled three times each day and the leaves and berries replaced every two days.
  • Once fully absorbed with the deepest black, the tied fibers are removed and rinsed in running water through a stream until the water runs clear.
  • It is then air dried for about two days before the knots that have been tied, reserved for the red portions, are carefully removed with the sukt'bong or small knife.
  • Hulo, or the red dye, is taken from the roots and bark shavings of the small-leafed loko tree.
  • Around one kilogram of the loko's bark and roots are boiled in water for another half hour.
  • The bed is then added and allowed to boil from five days to one week.
  • Once done, the bed is removed and rinsed thoroughly until the water runs clear and then air-dried.
  • On the next day, the knots that were used to protect the bukay, the natural creamy white or ecru color, of the abaca strands are removed to reveal its natural color.
  • Finally, the last stage involves the gentle separation of the untied and dyed fibers and combing them to prepare the bed for weaving on the backstrap loom.
• Step 6: Mewel or weaving: Setting the dyed warp on the backstrap loom.
  • The T'boli backstrap loom or the legogong, is a form of horizontal two-bar or two- beamed loom where one bar is attached to the ceiling bamboo beam of the T'boli longhouse and the second beam, or the backstrap, is attached to the weaver's lower back.
  • The longhouse is a structure built for the production of the t'nalak.
  • The length of the t'nalak can exceed over 10 meters.
  • The t'nalak must be woven in specifically a cool area or the fibers will snap.
  • After passing the shuttle through the threads, she pushes the threads to tighten using a flat piece of coconut wood made smooth and shiny with use.
  • She does this three times in order to ensure that the weaves are tight so that when help up against the light, the t'nalak blocks as much light from passing through.
  • The weaving stage can take around 14 days to a month depending on the "character" of the fiber and the complexity of the design.
• Step 7: Check or ironing: Burnishing the surface of the t'nalak.
  • The final phase of producing the t'nalak involves burnishing the surface with a suki or cowrie shell, while the fabric is still moist.
  • This shell is attached to one end of a bamboo stick with the other end attached to a hole in the ceiling of the longhouse to help apply additional pressure to the procedure.
  • Once the burnishing is done, the t'nalak is washed in cold water at a steady flowing stream after which it is hung and dried.
  • When completed, the t'nalak is stored by rolling it and wrapping it with a separate cloth to protect it from damage.

T'nalak and T'boli Art

• T'nalak weaving is an art form perfected over decades of practice by Tboli women, and only a handful of master weavers can be considered true 'dream weavers', the works of whom are highly valued.
• T'nalak is a deep brown abaca-based cloth tie-dyed with intricate designs, produced by women of Mindanao's T’boli Tribe. It is one of the best-known cultural products of the Philippines.
• T’nalak designs have been passed down through generations and come to the best weavers in dreams, brought to them by their ancestors.
• The T’boli believe that the T'nalak is infused with spiritual meaning.
• One should not step over a weaving in progress, and doing so is to risk illness.
• Cutting the cloth will cause sickness or death, unless done according to traditions.
• If a weaving is sold, a brass ring is often attached to appease the spirits.
• While weaving a T'nalak, T'boli women practice abstinence in order to maintain the purity of their art.

Dagmay

• The Mandaya is one of Mindanao's surviving minority tribes of the Philippines.
• They live in the mountainous areas above the coastal town of Davao Oriental particularly in Boston, Cateel, Bagangga, Caraga and Manay.
• For many generations the Mandaya have woven cloth from fibers of native abaca tree.
• The finest grade of hemp extracted from abaca stalks is stripped pounded, combed then prepared for dyeing by tying thus, the word tie-dye. The dyes are made from mud, root and other organic materials.
• It is distinguished from other tribal weaving by the intricate figures and patterns depicting the folklores and religion of the tribe.
• The unique culture of dagmay weaving by the Mandayan tribe earned them the title "Lumad that Weave Dagmay."
• Each design is an expression of the weaver.
• The designs that included the binaybayan, the oteu (man), the patolla, buaya (crocodile), bilaan and the wtae and the kallngizan (which refers to the poles where the dagmay cloth is rolled, represented by stripes in the design).

The origin story of Dagmay

• In Sildap's version, a tamisa was in a river when he saw a beautiful cloth in a rock near the Balete tree.
• The cloth was so beautiful he decided to bring it home.
• When the Tagamaling (spirit living in the Balete) found that he lost the cloth, he was very mad and cursed the one who took it.
• “You’ll die, wrapped by the cloth you’ve stolen.”
• Right in that instant, the boy died and the people asked forgiveness from the Tagamaling.
• The Taganaling appeared in their dreams, finally appeased, and taught them how to make the dagmay.

Pis-syabit

• Pis Syabit is the traditional cloth tapestry made from cotton or silk worn as a head covering by the Tausug of Sulu.
• This is characterized with intricate geometric patterns of colors segmented into the smallest squares, triangles and diamonds.
• Their bold contrasting colors, evenness of their weave and their faithfulness to traditional designs.
• The most recognized community of Pis Syabit weavers in Sulu are from Barangay Guimba Lagasan in the town of Parang.
• This is also where the late master weaver Darhata Sawabi, a GAMABA Awardee of 2005 (National Living Treasure) came from.

Seputangan

• These putangan is the most intricate design worn by the women around their waist or as a head cloth.
• The warp and primary weft are of cotton and the supplementary weft is silk.
• The supplementary weft work is discontinuous, a type of work in which the various colors are inserted in the proper place by hand.
• The Yakans settled originally in Basilan island and in the early seventies, due to political unrest which led the armed conflicts between the militant Muslims and government solders, some of them settled in the region of Zamboanga City.
• The Yakan Village in Upper Calarian is famous among local and foreign tourists because of their art of weaving.
• Yakan people are recognized for their remarkable technicolor geometric weaves and the distinctive face decorations used in their traditional ceremonies.

Inaul

• Inaul is a time-honored weaving tradition of the Maguindanao people usually made into malong or wraparound skirts commonly and regularly used by both sexes.
• The Maranaos of Marawi City also have this weaving tradition.
• Inaul has more than 20 designs with riyal the heirloom piece being the rarest since it is no longer being produced and hard to find.
• Other notable designs include umpak which is embroidered-laden and hard to do, binaludto or rainbow, batokabi or taro, and-the rare tie-dye binaludan called ikat by the Tboli and the people of Cordillera.
• The three types of threads being used in weaving are tanor which is cottony, the silky rayon, and katiyado which is the shiny type. Rayon and tanor can be mixed together to form a malong called "mestiza."
• The colors are also reflective of the Maguindanao culture.
  • Red means bravery, green for peace, black for dignity, white for sadness and green means peace.