Textile Artist, Lauren DiCioccio’s latest project with the innovative Workshop Residence in San Francisco uses local Bay Area resources to celebrate the beauty of objects facing obsolescence.

Textile artist Lauren DiCioccio wants you to slow down, and fall in love… with plastic bags. Except these bags aren’t plastic at all. “My work has been about these objects that are beginning to obsolesce, things like newspapers, books and magazines, which are being replaced with technology. So when San Francisco decided to outlaw plastic bags, I started to think about plastic objects that are being replaced for good reasons.”

Her meticulously embroidered organza recreations of throwaway grocery bags are so beautifully rendered that they force you to stop, look closer, and ultimately question if our day-to-day experience of reality is wrong.

Not a bad trick to have up your sleeve when you’re part of San Francisco’s innovative Workshop Residence program, a recently-opened incubator for artists and designers that’s looking to readdress ideas of what a luxury product can be, and transform local patterns of manufacturing.

Working with Braden Weeks Earp, the Workshop’s director, DiCioccio has been developing a functional version of her artwork as part of her residency with the organization, “I’m really excited,” she says. “I think we were very lucky to find some very talented local embroiderers right here on our doorstep.”

In addition to providing the carefully selected artists and designers with living accommodations, workspace and funds, the organization develops and supports relationships with neighborhood manufacturers by sourcing all the materials the participants use locally. In this case, breathing new life into one of the few Bay Area embroidery houses still operating and encouraging greater sustainability in the future.

“The technician who is scanning her stitching in is not just an embroidery artist, he is also a studio artist, says Weeks Earp. “He takes a lot of pride in what he does and is happy to be working on an art project and translating something from an art project into a usable product.”

They are making different takes on the bags ranging from an evening version to a tote style designed to bring your groceries home in. A number agreed upon by the participant will then be made available for sale at the Dogpatch district space and through local retailers and online, along with items from internationally-recognized past participants like Martha Davis and Aurore Thibout. Proceeds are split 50-50 between the artist and The Workshop Residence.

Another part of DiCioccio’s residency has been spent developing a workshop open to the public – this Sunday – to make an embroidered letter. “I’m making trompe-l’œil blue lined writing paper fabric and people can actually mail them to who ever people want to.”

“It will make a nice day playing on a tradition of a sewing circle, meeting new people and sharing the experience of being in the workshop – and they’ll get something really beautiful and thoughtful to send to someone they really care about,” DiCioccio explains.

Like her artwork, which reminds us that the mundane we take for granted becomes something richer upon closer and careful examination, DiCioccio hopes that the opportunity to take the time to sit down and make something will be positive for the local community. ”People forget how much is lost when we don’t make the time to make things anymore. I know, as an artist, I get most of my ideas while I’m doing something meditative, like sewing.”

If the Workshop Residence seems like a new vision for the future, DiCioccio feels it’s a development echoed in the changing fine arts movement.

“There is this new respect for craft again. There’s enough people using the medium in really interesting ways right now that it’s gained steam and has fought its way into being respected again, which naturally trickles down into other parts of society,” says DiCioccio.

Images: Lauren DiCioccio

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