Lara Grant

Lara Grant 
Opening August 2nd, 7-10pm. On view until August 30th

Walking through a textile exhibit gives me a certain kind of frustration, this goes for almost any show. The pieces I see in front of me made of materials that look smooth, fluffy, delicate or heavy can only be determined as such through sight. Each time my interest is triggered by the thickness of a paint stroke or the drape of a fabric I get up so close that my eye ball almost touches the piece. I scan every millimeter for more hints of technique and material, so as I can virtually feel it without laying a finger down. While I am grateful for the spawning of this kind of hyper-awareness from deprivation, I still have a very hard time with the fact that I can not reach out and touch these pieces.

Push Reset is an collection where the work is meant to be touched, explored and worn by the person who comes upon it. Some having more to give back than their physical properties through sound generation and manipulation. There are many fibers and materials to explore, the items in Push Reset are the beginning, continuation and for some the conclusion of a lifelong need and want to be able to enjoy textiles the way they are meant to be.

Also Sarah Grant will be showing her interactive piece, Hot Probs, a chat application designed for the Subnodes project, an opensource initiative that enables people to easily set up a Raspberry Pi to create portable local area networks for anonymous, local communication. link subnodes below to http://www.subnod.es

Lara Grant is a textile artist, fashion technologist, designer, fabricator, and educator living in San Francisco. She acquired her BFA in Fashion Design in San Francisco, moving to NYC to focus on wearable technology and electronic textiles at NYU's ITP. Her experience over the years includes working in the fashion and costume world as a seamstress, pattern drafter and production manager and has worked on contracts for NASA, Victoria's Secret, TechShop and various innovative fashion and tech start-ups. She enjoys teaching and has developed several workshops and classes for a variety of events and institutions. After living in NYC post graduate school, Grant returned to San Francisco to start Chartreuse Circle, a company focused on costume and tech solutions. She has recently taken up a Senior Lecturer position in the Interaction Design Department at California College of the Arts and is developing the course, Wearable and Soft Interactions. She is currently working as a Fashion Technologist for the wearable tech company Agent of Presence. Her work has been shown at Mass MoCA, PS1, NIME (Oslo / Ann Arbor), GAFFTA, 319 Scholes, Maker Faire, CCA, amongst others.