KELLY COBB and CONNIE HWANG Con’t
ART MUSEUM DUST COLLECTION
March 2009



 

 

JEMA’s Director, Sean Miller (with Phil Stoiber), both Seattle Art Museum (SAM) employees, originated the Art Museum Dust Collection in 1996 while working at the SAM. They began collecting dust from SAM and numerous other art museums in the U.S. Some of the dust was collected by sympathetic Museum Employee Dust Donors (M.E.D.D.’s) and other dust was hand-collected by Miller and Stoiber. In 2001, Miller began a microscopy series documenting the collected samples. Recently the dust collection has expanded and new collaborators such as Kelly Cobb (Garment Research Specialist), Connie Hwang (designer), and LuLu LoLo (JEMA’s Dust Collecting Specialist) have joined efforts to use art museum dust as a medium and subject. Cobb and Hwang have created new works utilizing microscopy images by Sean Miller which document art museum dust from around the world. Connie Hwang has created an Art Museum Dust Montage which covers JEMA’s walls. Kelly Cobb has transformed art museum dust imagery into a digitally woven fabric and Cobb’s Art Museum Dust Collection Weaving is exhibited as a floor treatment for this exhibition in the JEMA galleries. In addition, Cobb is currently working with Sean Miller on designs for a JEMA Director’s Suit woven from the dust of museums. Cobb and Miller are also co-authoring an article discussing art museum dust and their collaborative process that will be published in an upcoming issue Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture.

> View Kelly Cobb and Connie Hwang’s Exhibition
> View Art Museum Dust Collection in Genoa, Italy


CONNIE HWANG BIO

Connie Hwang places great value and sensibility in enduring creative excellence. She takes a practical yet intuitive approach to design with projects that heighten mindfulness across time and culture. She is the principal of Connie Hwang Design, San Francisco, Ca. Her studio continues to evolve and reinvent, striving towards building a strategic communication platform based on vision and diligence.

http://www.conniehwangdesign.com


CONNIE HWANG STATEMENT

Connie Hwang Design is a graphic design studio that places great value and sensibility in enduring creative excellence. The studio takes a practical yet intuitive approach to design with projects that heighten mindfulness across time and culture. With an eye for quality and the desire to reinvent, the studio continues to grow and evolve, striving towards building a strategic communication platform based on vision and diligence.

Connie Hwang has worked extensively in the area of brand communications. Her insight and award winning design has enabled such companies as Beringer Wine Estates, E*TRADE Financial, Outcast Communications, Tealeaf and Zenprise to achieve successful corporate and brand launches. Her work has been featured in AR100, Communication Arts, Graphis, HOW, Print and STEP Magazine. Hwang earned a MFA in Visual Communication Design from the University of Washington, Seattle. She is the principal of Connie Hwang Design and teaches full-time in the graphic design program at San José State University.


CONNIE HWANG SELECTED DESIGN AWARDS

HOW In-House Design Award 2009
Worldwide Logo Design Award 2008
American Graphic Design Award 2008
International Academy of the Visual Arts and the Communicator Award 2008


CONNIE HWANG SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

UCDA 38th Annual Design Exhibition 2008
Spazio Utopia Contemporary Art 2008
The Contemporary Museum Baltimore 2008
Florida Artist’ Book Prize Exhibition 2008


KELLY COBB BIO

Kelly Cobb is an Instructor of Fashion and Apparel Studies at The University of Delaware. She holds a BFA in Fiber from The Maryland Institute, College of Art and an MFA from The University of Florida. In her personal work Cobb tailors functional sculptural systems complete with matching outfits. She has taught Textile Design at the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University, The University of The Arts and The Maryland Institute College of Art.

Cobb is a Philadelphia based creative designer. Currently she is applying concepts utilized in current agricultural sustainability Initiatives such as the slow/ local food movement and community supported agriculture to textile and apparel production by focusing on slow and local production of an heirloom product via artesian methods.

http://www.garmentresearch.org/wpress


KELLY COBB STATEMENT

The process of transforming fiber is inherently collaborative; we work, learn and make together. My work is a tactile form of participation, I utilize traditional fiber processes such as spinning, dyeing and weaving as systems of collective and transformative interaction. What unfolds reflects an honest dialogue that develops between individuals; a tactile signature of a collective at a specific moment in time.


SELECTED EXHIBITIONS/PERFORMANCES

on the prairie, The University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 2009.
Merge Visual, Macon Museum and Science Center, Macon, GA, 2009.
Stuttering in a New Light, Carroll Mansion, Baltimore, MD, 2008.
Clothing: Fantasies and Realities, Towson Arts Collective, Towson MD, 2008.
Gestures of Resistance, Grey Matters Gallery, Dallas TX, 2008.
Dress Me Slow, I am in A Hurry, Evergreen House Museum, Baltimore, MD, 2007.
Socially Responsible Fashion, Philadelphia Green Festival, Philadelphia PA, 2007.
Reenactments-Drawing, Currents Gallery, Baltimore, MD, 2007.
Stretched Threads, Sound and Video Weavings, Atlantic Center for the Arts, FL, 2007.
Homework, PS 122 Gallery, New York, NY, 2007.
Locally Localized Gravity, ICA Philadelphia/LURE, 2007.