Artists to present 'Rag and Bone' workshop July 28

Artists Susie Brandt and Kristin Woods are seeking cloth donations for a special art process, ?Rag and Bone,? that they will oversee when they visit Skidmore?s Studio Art Program next week.

The process will result in the production of hand-made rope from discarded textiles, and is scheduled from 1:15 to 4:30 p.m. Monday, July 28, in the Saisselin Art Building on the Skidmore campus. Admission is free and open to the public.

Brandt and Woods are seeking donations of large pieces of clean cloth, including blankets, linens, clothing, and fabric. Those participating in the event will see their discarded textiles transformed into lengths of hand-made rope. Participants will work with the artists, processing their fabric into linear raw material, walking the ropewalk, and twisting the worn textiles into lengths of rope.

?Rag and Bone? focuses on post-consumer textile waste and resurrects a mobile version of historic ropewalks as a local exchange project. The duo was inspired by a recent New York City initiative to collect and process 195,000 tons of textile waste. Rope is common stuff. Long before rope making became a trade, it was a home industry. As an extension of yarn making, rope making is spinning writ large, according to Brandt and Woods.

Brandt?s studio work and collaborative site-oriented installation projects have been included in numerous national and international exhibitions. She is the recipient of a 2008 Creative Capital Foundation Grant. She earned a B.F.A. degree from Philadelphia College of Art in 1984 and an M.F.A. degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987. Brandt teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Woods is a collaborative artist who moves across media, addressing the built environment and the socio-political concerns that it structures and engenders. She is the recipient of a 2008 Creative Capital Foundation Grant. Woods received her B.A. degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and her M.F.A. degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Woods lives in Brooklyn and chairs the Fibers Department at Maryland Institute College of Art.

For more information call 518-580-5049.