{"id":1054,"date":"2018-01-24T19:20:15","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T19:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thebirthofeverything.com\/authorsite\/elizabeth-whelan\/"},"modified":"2018-08-19T19:26:35","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T19:26:35","slug":"elizabeth-whelan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/authorsite\/elizabeth-whelan\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Whelan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Elizabeth Whelan<\/a> weaves innovation into the textiles she designs for industry.<\/p>\n

Coupling a refined aesthetic sense with a sophisticated proficiency in textile manufacturing processes, Whelan applies a futurist’s sensibility<\/a> to fabrics that function as integral and beautiful elements of consumer products that are sold worldwide.<\/p>\n

Melding three elements — function, performance and beauty —successfully requires a set of skills spanning art and technology. “I work where visual, structural and functional design meets technical materials,” says Whelan. “For a long time, I didn’t want to be described as a technical textile designer because my background is in fine arts, but there are so many technical advances in what fabric can do, and I work where those advances meet design.”<\/p>\n

It was the mesh textiles for Diffrient’s Liberty Chair that launched Whelan’s reputation as a fabric futurist, capable of seeing possibilities and applications beyond a client’s original notion of a textile’s role in product design. Other projects have included creating light-responsive fabrics for Nike, to keep runners safe before dawn and after dusk. Using Whelan’s textiles, entire garments, not just sewn-on stripes, could glow in the dark and reflect headlights. Tumi tasked her with designing a new fabric using Tegris, a light thermoplastic composite for luggage. The result—a fabric Whelan dubbed Zipperweave and called Tegris-Light by Tumi—makes for lighter, stronger hard and soft luggage. For KnollTextiles, she designed a wallcovering using paper yarns that a remote Mexican mill with vintage looms fabricated into a textile far more refined than the mill’s customary end products — laundry hampers and cowboy hats. For Spinneybeck, Whelan created a woven leather collection inspired by the exoskeletons of ladybugs that is produced in Italy.<\/p>\n

Leading cultural institutions have recognized her work, which is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.<\/a> The international textile industry has recognized her work with numerous awards. Most recently, her design for Tumi was awarded Launch of the Year for the 2017 Future Textile Awards<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Monofilament Stripe Weave Drawing – Polyester and nylon monofilament yarns.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Flywire Color Swatches – 100% Polyester, yarn dyed, Hand-woven swatches to show color studies for Flywire pattern for Nike<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Flywire Pattern Study – Pencil on paper, Flywire study from Brooklyn Bridge drawing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth Whelan weaves innovation into the textiles she designs for industry. Coupling a refined aesthetic sense with a sophisticated proficiency in textile manufacturing processes, Whelan applies a futurist’s sensibility to fabrics that function as integral and beautiful elements of consumer products that are sold worldwide. Melding three elements — function, performance and beauty —successfully requires […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-interview","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/authorsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/authorsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/authorsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/authorsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/authorsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1054"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/authorsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1089,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/authorsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions\/1089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/authorsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/authorsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/authorsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/authorsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}