01 / 05
[dry pigment going down on the blanks]
[ice packed over the whole run]
[hour three, melt water running color]
[the rinse, first look at the break]
[the line dry, whole batch hanging]
dry pigment first, matched to the city
[raw cotton blanks, stacked]
01 — The blank
Heavyweight cotton, grown and sewn in the US. We buy them undyed and keep them that way until a city gives us a reason not to.
02 — The freeze
Dry pigment goes down first, matched to the city's palette. Then ice, packed over the whole thing. From here on the melt is in charge — we just keep the room cold enough to make it slow.
[ice packed over pigment, close]
[melt water running color, hour three]
03 — The melt
As the ice melts, the pigment splits into the colors it was mixed from. That's the break — the marbling you see at the seams. It can't be repeated, which is why no two pieces match.
Roughly 14 hours, if we've done our job.
[first rinse, color holding]
Every journey starts as a wall of photos, swatches, and things we shouldn't have brought back through customs. Belgrade's looked like this.
[kafana matchbook, flat]
[pigment jars in a row]
[tram photo, motion blur]
[fabric swatches held up]
[thread cones, stacked]
[spritz on a marble table]
[magazine tear, gray towers]
[embroidery hoop test]
From souvenir to stitch
[the souvenir itself, photographed on the trip]
01 — the souvenir
02 — the drawing
03 — the stitch