BALENCIAGA
GRAPHIC / PRINTS
2021 - 2022

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45220
UNDERGRADUATE THESIS
2020



45220 seeks to explore the limitations and restraints that exist within the University of Cincinnati’s DAAP facilities, primarily in knitwear. By using new methods, materials, and approaches, it attempts to circumnavigate these restraints, juxtaposing humanistic errors in craft to manufactured-machine perfection, to create exploratory pieces using new methodologies with older outdated machinery that put forward a commentary on the state of the school.


Deadstock and unconventional fibers manifest in a plasticized cold-to-the-touch red/cyan topstiching thread 2 piece, the color contrast creating an optical moiré effect, with a dropped stitch machine-error inspiring the piece to be positioned with the error as a center-front line. Traditional shibori dye is replicated on a ribbed sweater in BIC pen ink, a reference to the culture of using ballpoint pens in industrial design sketching. A green shift dress and a ecru/white rib top mirror a foundations 2D design course project all DAAP students complete their first semester about proportion and graphic. Cotton rib pieces are modified from their original banal colorings through airbrushed bleach, with the stretch of the body creating illusionary optical warps. A blue rib dress features accidental perpendicular razor thin lines at the waist and bust, where some of the 4 combined lace-weight threads haphazardly snapped during creation. A university logo, mundane and commonplace, is expanded and knit in intarsia by hand selecting needles with a pixellated logo as reference, as the knitting machines of the university are not computerised. Accessories are found objects, collected during internships over the course of my 5 years at DAAP (from Cincinnati to New York to Paris), failed 3D printed prototypes (again enforcing the theme of man v machine), and a statement necklace linking together various 3D printed iconographic buildings and objects of the University.