Self Portrait

Tanner Frost Bowen

Interview by L. Valena

March 2, 2022

Let's start from the top. Can you please describe to me the prompt that you responded to?

Off the top of my head, the image that I have in my mind is this red, abstract landscape, with these thread-like lines going through it. I was inspired by one of the shapes in the landscape to make my piece. It was kind of circular and to me looked like one eye. So that’s what I got from it when I was looking at it, when I was taking it in.

Where did you go from there?

I love red. Red is my color. I think in patchwork it's fun to mix shades of colors and I love mixing red, so I knew I wanted some red patchwork. In my piece, it’s like the head of the headpiece, like the skin of my face. So I started there. I love making headpieces because they're challenging in a way, but they're also for me, and I never know what they're going to look like. It’s a discovery process and I like that. I think the best things that I've made, I had absolutely no idea I was going to make them when I started. And then it all snowballed from there.

I'm also kind of obsessed with adding tongues to things right now. The shape is fun to me and because patchwork can be so flat, so two-dimensional, I like adding these protrusions in the seams so that it kind of sticks out. So that's what I did with the tongue on this headpiece. I've been adding them to other pieces I’ve made too, not necessarily to look like tongues. The shape is just fun because it gives a three-dimensional aspect to my work.

You said that you don't really know how it's going to come out. How do you physically begin a headpiece?

I like to start just by making patchwork. That's how I start everything. I just start sewing fabric together. I discard a lot of things, deciding that it's not something I want to add or cutting something off and moving it aside. I just start making. For this piece, a lot of the red is actually from a shirt that I made that I don't like. I had made the patchwork and I loved it so much, and so I added to that. It's also logistical; it has to fit my face. So I have to cut out shapes that will go on my head and look the way that I want them to. So I just started sewing. To me, it's all about making choices in the moment about what goes together in my brain, and then just going with it. I don't backtrack a lot. I make do with things. The decision that I'm making that moment, that's the right decision and I just move on with it. That's what I was doing with this piece.

I've been playing with three-dimensional shapes. I've really tried in the last several months to make my work more sculptural, three-dimensional, interesting to look at. Not just a flat piece of patchwork sewn together, but something you can walk around and look at. I had it in my head to make a spiral tube of patchwork, and it worked out. It's the green that's around my head. That's one tube that’s sewn in a way that makes it go around and around and around, but they're straight lines. I always love finding out a technical way to make something. I'll make a lot of those in the next six months because it was so fun to find out that I could do that. My favorite thing about this piece is probably that I learned how to do that, in my own weird way of figuring out stuff.

Are you constantly trying it on, like that sort of process? You add a little bit, try it on, add a little bit, try it on.

Yes! And I do take a lot of pictures, especially with something that I can’t see through. The challenging part is there's no eye openings, there's no mouth opening. I played with trying to add lips, and have it be my mouth but not my lips, but that looked so weird and I didn't like it, so I sewed that back up. But yeah, I pin something to it, try it on, take a picture, see if I like it, sew it on, throw it away, you know, again and again and again. And I don't measure anything. I don't have time for that. So it's a lot of trial and error. I was sitting across from my boyfriend when I was making it and he thought I was crazy because I was putting this weird thing on my head again and again. I don’t know why I want to do it, but I do.

I know the feeling! I think that it's so important to chase that stuff. Who knows why we make the things we do, but for whatever reason we’re inspired to do it and we have to just go after it.

Yeah, I'm making a flower headpiece right now. I'm obsessed with the idea of someone's face being the center of a flower with all these sculptural petals all around. But I don't know why. I just need to do it. [laughs] It has to be done!

For your submission, there's a picture of this sculpture, and you're inside it. Would you call it a self-portrait?

I would! Yeah! I'm really interested in this intersection of fabric and patchwork with digital collage and digital renderings of things. I was kind of inspired by like the idea of a wanted poster, like what if this was a fugitive in some other world? That's the idea that I had. I wanted it to be like Game of Thrones, but the exact opposite at every point. It’s the exact opposite in terms of color, and it’s not serious at all because he's stupid-looking with his tongue hanging out and one eye to the side. I wanted to treat it like it was as important as the Iron Throne. He is desperately running for his life, but he's a silly criminal.

I’ve been making digital collage lately. I'm traveling for work right now and space and convenience are factors, so I’m making a lot of work that I can photograph and digitally manipulate. Also, I can't keep around a huge flower sculpture forever. But I can make a self-portrait, show myself in this way, and then I can have the photo. I want the collage to digitally stand on its own because it's a moment in time. I tried it on and got it just the way I wanted, and I wanted that moment to be that idea, you know? And to be there digitally. And then I'll probably reuse some pieces for other stuff. So I'm really interested in that lately. I want to do more self-portraits, fabric faces of me but not me, like you wouldn’t be able to tell it’s me from looking at it, but I’m under there. I've been dreaming about that recently. So you’re exactly right, it’s a self-portrait.

Can you tell me about this border?

It's just some digital effects in Procreate. I wanted it to look like a futuristic like wanted poster, so I used some feature in Procreate that takes the color and magnifies it. That's why there's all the polka dots and things. I don't know why I do a lot of stuff. It just seemed right to me. I like the lime green bringing out this shade of green in the cylinder. When I make a digital collage, most of the time I pull a lot of the color from the fabric that I use because it's really easy to do that in the app. I love this remnant of fabric I got at Joann Fabrics. I love the color so I've been using it a lot.

Do you love to go fabric shopping?

Yes, I do. I exclusively use upcycled materials in my work. I don't buy new fabric. I also exclusively use solids, so I don't use anything with a pattern. I feel like it's my job to make the pattern. I like the idea of using just straight colors. A pro tip is to go to the Goodwill bins. Not the Goodwill store, but the bins. It's like a dollar a pound for fabric or clothing and I get all my stuff there. They're usually stained or ripped clothes, dingy stuff. I wash it, upcycle it, and use it. like I bet I could tell you. The tongue is a teenager’s crop top, the yellow is like a grandma-robe-jacket-thing. The red is placemats, and the two greens, besides the lime green, are sweaters. Say, yeah, I don't know. Oh and the reds are also pants. A lot of pants. I wanted to make red patchwork pants at one point, so I had all these red pants around, but that never happened.

I love that.

I liked this exercise because I was just trying to make something that I liked and I thought was fun and was just a gut response. And it was cool to wind up with this silly thing. Not all art is that serious. I think it's fun to make funny things sometimes. That's what I try to do. This isn’t my job. I have a job, you know, I have a boring adult job. Patchwork and this part of my life is for me to have a creative endeavor and to have fun. So I never do something I don't want to do. That's why I don't do a lot of commissions or anything. It has to be a really specific set of circumstances for me to take on projects like that because I lose interest really easily. I just want to do what I want all the time! I don't want to be beholden to some concept that I thought of three months ago. So it's a fun space that I've created for myself.

And do you have any advice for another artist approaching this project for the first time?

I would say to use it as an opportunity to maybe try something that you haven't done before. I hadn't done this type of self-portrait, you know, that isn't my face. I liked that opportunity. I've done a lot of collages, but I hadn’t done them in this way, and so it was a good excuse to do that and just see what happened. So I would say to just go for it and have fun along the way. That's important.

Call Number: M50VA | M51VA.boSe

Tanner Frost Bowen is a textile artist expressing identity through color, pattern, and texture.