My topic is about the pressure put on Asian American youth to assimilate and succeed in Western society.  I wanted to create a piece that expresses a hybrid of Eastern and Western motifs and trends, representing the feeling of not belonging to one culture.

For my fabric and thread project, I wanted to evoke the childlike whimsy and organized chaos of my field site, the toy store FAO Schwarz. I decided to use felt fabric as I liked the look of the bold colors and clean lines, and cut and pasted shapes together detailing with embroidery thread to make individual toy-like structures. I overlapped the pieces to create a sense of chaotic mess, how toys may look after being played with and thrown in a pile. I was drawn to the idea of negative space within my fabric piece, and wanted to create something with a unique silhouette. I was deliberate with the placement of the fabric pieces, however, organizing them in a way that was aesthetically pleasing to me. I wanted to juxtapose the feeling of both wildness and serenity within my piece: the toy store was always bustling and lively, children throwing around display toys in a haphazard way. However, there were some untouched shelves that were lined up perfectly, rows and rows of identical toys facing forward like a colorful army. I used the fabric toy figures to create organic, wild negative spaces in between and overlapped them to create a sense of disarray, but also wanted to evoke the cleanliness, order, and newness of the unused toys in the store by using the solid, neat shapes of felt. I was also particular about the types of toys that I chose, as I wanted to represent all types of toys that I saw in the store, not only those of a specific genre.

This project was fun for me as I was pretty clear with my idea and intention from the start.  The part I had the most difficulty with was the sizing of each individual fabric piece, as I had an idea of what size each thing needed to be in relation to each other, and I needed to recreate that to scale.  In the end, with trial and error I was able to bring everything together.  As usual I procrastinated a bit more than I should have, but in this case the final product was satisfactory enough to me that I wasn’t disappointed at what I put out.  I liked the colors and overall mood of the piece, and I really think it speaks to the vibe of my field site.  In the future, as always, I want to be more on top of my schedule and planning so I don’t have to rush, because I might have been able to go even more detailed if I had given myself more time.