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Artist Name: Kennedy Parham
Title: Lost & Found
Medium: Scrap textiles, found fabric, & acrylic on canvas, digital collage
Year: 2020
Artist Statement:
I have always been concerned about my creative path as an artist. What do I stand for? More specifically, as a fashion designer and textile artist, what do I have to offer? While fashion and consumer industries continue to be responsible for the depletion of our natural resources and ultimately the warming of our planet, how can I consciously and sustainably contribute? The content in this course has taught me how important it is for the individual artist to think beyond themselves when creating. For me, I’ve decided this means rethinking the materials I use in my designs. By educating myself on the life cycle of my materials, specifically the impact of post- consumer textiles on the environment, I learned that 95% of all used textiles have the potential to be reused or repurposed. Currently, we only recycle textiles at a rate of 15%. By combining repurposed post-consumer found fabrics and samples from my past designs, Lost & Found is meant to honour the simple, raw beauty of the textile materials we normally discard.
Citation
O’Connor, Morgan, “The Monster in our Closet: Fast Fashion & Textile Waste on the Rise.” Center for EcoTechnology, 9 March 2020. https://www.centerforecotechnology.org/fast- fashion- textile-waste/