Full Review: San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles
Five members of the Bay Area Older Adults community visited the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles during their TECHstyles exhibit, a unique combination of technology and textiles including artists from ten different countries. Artwork includes quilts featuring traditional hand-work and high-tech pieces of quilted binary and other code. Digital processes like jacquard weaving, printing, 3-D rendering and laser engraving are also used.
The museum is inconspicuous except for its awning. It is located next door to the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. There is metered parking on the E. San Fernando Street, the side street that intersects with S. Market where the museum is located. Bring a lot of quarters since other parking structures are further away at S. Market and E San Carlos St.
Museum exterior
We visited on first Friday of the month, when entrance to the museum is free, and arrived at 10 AM when the museum opened. There were not many other people, so we had plenty of room and time to see the entire exhibit. The exhibit was in one large room and included wall hangings, statues and high tech displays.
Colorful quilts
Dice pattern LED racing kimono
One quilt was a combination of a screen projection of moving waves with a backdrop of a forest which gave an impression of peace and meditation. Quilt sculptures in the middle of the room were made from re-purposed photographic mylar ribbon. There was a CD quilt hanging from the ceiling in front of an html code quilt. It was made from discarded CDs, dried leaves (on the back of the quilt), paint and hand-dyed cotton. It was designed to relate the biological information stored as DNA in the leaves to the digital information stored in the CDs. There were examples of cotton quilts woven with a traditional loom but whose design was created digitally to create networks and overlay of patterns creating topographic quilts. Blankets on three beds were created with screen printing ink and textile adhesive and reflective glass oxide.
Wave-forest Large wall quilt
Quilt sculptures CD quilt
Bed quilts Digital jacquard
Another non-traditional textile was a statue made from interwoven recycled recording tape. A textile ribbon was created from digitally printing magazine and newspaper text on silk.
Full Review: San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles
Five members of the Bay Area Older Adults community visited the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles during their TECHstyles exhibit, a unique combination of technology and textiles including artists from ten different countries. Artwork includes quilts featuring traditional hand-work and high-tech pieces of quilted binary and other code. Digital processes like jacquard weaving, printing, 3-D rendering and laser engraving are also used.
The museum is inconspicuous except for its awning. It is located next door to the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. There is metered parking on the E. San Fernando Street, the side street that intersects with S. Market where the museum is located. Bring a lot of quarters since other parking structures are further away at S. Market and E San Carlos St.
Museum exterior
We visited on first Friday of the month, when entrance to the museum is free, and arrived at 10 AM when the museum opened. There were not many other people, so we had plenty of room and time to see the entire exhibit. The exhibit was in one large room and included wall hangings, statues and high tech displays.
Colorful quilts
Dice pattern LED racing kimono
One quilt was a combination of a screen projection of moving waves with a backdrop of a forest which gave an impression of peace and meditation. Quilt sculptures in the middle of the room were made from re-purposed photographic mylar ribbon. There was a CD quilt hanging from the ceiling in front of an html code quilt. It was made from discarded CDs, dried leaves (on the back of the quilt), paint and hand-dyed cotton. It was designed to relate the biological information stored as DNA in the leaves to the digital information stored in the CDs. There were examples of cotton quilts woven with a traditional loom but whose design was created digitally to create networks and overlay of patterns creating topographic quilts. Blankets on three beds were created with screen printing ink and textile adhesive and reflective glass oxide.
Wave-forest Large wall quilt
Quilt sculptures CD quilt
Bed quilts Digital jacquard
Another non-traditional textile was a statue made from interwoven recycled recording tape. A textile ribbon was created from digitally printing magazine and newspaper text on silk.
Recycled recording tape Digitally printed ribbon
Orange plastic bag Mural quilt
BAO group