This month’s artwork is called “Kisses”. 18’ x 18’ cotton blend reusable napkins with Setacolor Fabric paint.
This month I was inspired by food, fine dining, and Maison Margiela, a fashion designer. Of course this month was Valentine’s day, so I wanted to something romance-y, indulgent, but not too cheesy. I have always liked this shirt from Margiela (but it’s $12,000!) and thought it was interesting. I also saw some shirts at Marshalls that had a kissing pattern all over it, which was too much.
I recently visited a fine dining restaurant in Chicago, and I was pretty astounded with the size of the napkins. I don’t have a picture but these napkins were huge! They were like blankets. That was an interesting source of inspiration for me.
Another source of inspiration was my trip to the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto. I attended a presentation by the artist Barbara Klunder, who so gracefully printed her artwork on some paper placemats for us. I appreciated her commentary on the world and her artwork “The Death of Truth”, and “Poisonous Insects”.
Overall, the themes of this month’s artwork “Kisses” encompasses disgust, love, passion, indulgence, and dirt. After some TikTok research of folks duplicating the Margiela shirt, most of them recommended using lipstick and never washing the shirt (yuck!), or painting it on with a paintbrush (which looked bad!).
I’m a big believer in functional beauty - that everyday things can be beautiful and well used at the same time. So I put a lot of effort into making things in my house and around me, beautiful.
This month I wanted to push myself to combine mediums - fabric and a linoleum stamp. Instead of using regular ink, I subbed it out for fabric paint. This means that you’ll be able to be able to wash this artwork with the rest of your clothes, and it will last a very long time. Part of Humankind is sustainability too, so I’m hoping this replaces your regular cloth napkins, or your regular paper towels.
First, I started off with gathering some supplies which included fabric paint, a linoleum stamping kit, white cloth napkins, and some tracing paper.
Also was a lipstick I pulled out of my makeup case, and I did the stamp with the lips myself. You can see it on a scrap piece of paper.
Can you spot the artwork from a previous Humankind blog? ;) Next, was carving the linoleum stamp and stamping it onto the cloth.
You can see the bits of the linoleum shavings on the side. The reason for the placement at the top of the cloth is where folks would typically wipe their mouths. I thought it would be funny and weird that my lips were in the exact place people would be wiping their mouths on. Also, I wanted to give the appearance of an already used cloth napkin. But I assure you, they are very clean, and I have never kissed the napkins.
One special edition I made for a customer and his partner is a pair of these napkins, shown here. These napkins were stamped at the same time and have intertwined kisses between them.
All other napkins were stamped by themselves. For Valentines day, I thought it would be funny and ironic that the rest of these napkins are “singles”.
That’s it for this months’ artwork. Use it as napkins during dinner, dishcloths to clean up your messes, or iron (on the cotton setting) and frame it. You can wash them in your washing machine on cold with like colours, and afterwards put them into your dryer on the hottest setting. Enjoy, and I’ll see you next month!