Artist's Statement

A few garment-related items in this window caught my eye: the Kalamazoo T-shirt, the ads for dry cleaning, clothing and furnishings, and the McCall Style News. The juxtaposition of a mass-produced T-shirt and the McCall home-sewing magazine brought to my mind the contrasts of slow and fast fashion.

Wanting to incorporate the sounds and rhythms of both home sewing and factory environments, I sampled my own 1960’s Singer, a pair of fabric shears cutting through cotton cloth, and I sourced sounds of sewing and industrial knitting machines from freesound.org.

McCall magazine states “Insist on a McCall Pattern – it’s the short cut to Paris style.” The two references to Paris, in this magazine as well as The Paris Garment Cleaners and Dyers, gave me the desire to incorporate a “Parisian” element.

Serendipitously, the sample of the old sewing machine that you hear in the background throughout this piece creates a rhythm in triple meter – and at the perfect tempo for a French waltz.

Attribution for samples:

• “Freesound Singer SK29.july08.1of6.wav” by juskiddink – License: Attribution 4.0
• “FACTORY 04” and “FACTORY 10” by pauliepaulpaul – License: Creative Commons 0

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