 All right. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Web Chat Wednesdays. I'm Christy and I'm here with Artie. We're here from the studio at the Long Beach Public Library and we're really excited about our special guest for today, Carol Frances Lung. Carol is a textile artist, performance artist, professor of fashion, fibers, and materials at Cal State LA. And through her work and the work of her alter ego, frau fiber, she advocates for fair labor practices and sustainability within the garment industry. Carol, we're so happy to have you here today. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, welcome Carol. Yes. Is there anything you'd like to add about your bio that maybe we left out or you want people to know? No, I think it'll all kind of come out in the, in the conversation. Yeah. Okay. So maybe we'll just get right into it then. So in the bio intro, there was mention of an alter ego named frau fiber. Who is frau fiber and what inspired you to create an alter ego? So frau fiber is a former East German textile worker turned super hero. She's a kind of a symbol of, she's a symbol of historic garment workers in terms of the folks that used to sew during like the turn of the century around the triangle short waste buyer time. So primarily German immigrants, although I think her symbolism crosses over into contemporary immigrant textile workers. And I think it's important to note that the way that we decipher between each other. So I, Carol Francis Long, am frau fibers archivist and biographer. I'm kind of the artist that monitors the actions of this character frau fiber. And I think she came about through how do I want to say this? Like she came about as a way to process my life experience in the garment industry and to give it some kind of distance and to create a narrative that became more universal outside of my experience. And I think she also came from my kind of performative life before I went to grad school. I would go to Burning Man and have like various costumes that I wore and I would go to Mardi Gras and create different kind of personas for a day. And also like grew up doing cat belly and jazz and always kind of performing and wearing costumes. And so I think that was another thing that kind of influenced this very unique character that while as a symbol for my work is also very unique to me and to my narrative. Awesome. And for those that don't know frau wears a uniform. Is there something significant? You know, what's the uniform about? So if you think about the relationship between like Diana and Wonder Woman, every superhero has their, their like, their like action uniform, the thing that they wear when they're in context or whatever it is their superpowers are. So frau's uniforms typically embody whatever the context of that action is. For example, the sewing rebellion uniform, which is one of many, is all made out of upcycle denim jeans and t-shirts, but the materials that are often and they are repaired in the sewing rebellion. And the sewing rebellion also has this kind of reference to scouting and also to the young pioneers, which is an East German kind of version of scouts. So there's patches on the uniform and things that resonate within the context of that where a uniform for like the commemoration of the triangle short waisted fire. Well, it's a similar silhouette. There's always a hat and some kind of dress or skirt and blouse. The triangle short waisted uniform is a silhouette of what would have been worn in the 1911. So like a blouse and a skirt. It's a very similar like military style hat. Oh, interesting. Yeah, that's so fascinating how you're taking from, you know, fashion history to create this character. What is frau fiber's mission, what'd you say? Yeah, but again, her what? What is frau fiber's mission? Her mission. Her mission is to I want to say this. Well, one of the things that we talk about in terms of frau's mission is to make the label behind the label transparent. So kind of using the skills that frau has as someone who works in a factory, using her skills in public spaces to make transparent how things are made, you know, much in the same way that like the slow food movement or like the performance of food in restaurants is happening. So people can know how things are made and how they should value these things that are being produced very invisibly. I think that's her kind of current mission. Although she's she's kind of shifting. I know this is a question for later on, but we she is shifting to be interested in the big ship era and the supply chain in terms of shipping. And that's why I have the background. I figured there was a connection there as soon as you started talking supply chain, of course, like, you know, the ports, it's so specific to, you know, our community here in Long Beach. But shifting gears a little bit back to Sewing Rebellion. Can you tell us a little bit about how Sewing Rebellion got started? The Sewing Rebellion was actually started as my MFA thesis project. And when it first started, Rao was the leader of the Sewing Rebellion. And it was hosted by a space in Rogers Park in Chicago, where I was in grad school at the Art Institute of Chicago, the School of Art Institute of Chicago. And Rogers Park is known for its kind of labor history. There was a lot of activism that happened in Rogers Park historically. And so the Sewing Rebellion was started there. And it kind of started out as just like creating a space for people to come and use the equipment and to mend their clothing. And over time, the Sewing Rebellion created various kind of like projects that had critical language connected to them that would draw attention to, let's say, migration. There was a Sewing Rebellion project that happened last year that was called Matisse Migration Corporation. And it looked at like the history of Syrian textiles and then kind of mashed that together with the upcycling of t-shirts to make a coat. But it drew attention to kind of what was happening in Syria with people from the country. And I feel like things have changed so much since that conversation even last year. Like, yeah, I talked about it now and it seems like it was like decades ago that that was happening. But it was just like 12 months ago. I think we've all lost our concept of time over the course of this year. News stories, too. So anyway, the Sewing Rebellion has, it also been incorporated bow frows, which is where the library came in, and training of people to host their own rebellions within their communities. And that lasted for about five years. And then this January, the Sewing Rebellion has been kind of, it's on hiatus, if you could say, and the bow frows have been retired. And part of that is because there is so much more sewing skills knowledge out in the world than there was in 2006 when the Sewing Rebellion was started. We are doing some site-specific rebellions in partnership with the different institutions. That is just frow engaging with the community. So it's been very scaled back. It's also kind of timely with over the half. That's awesome. Well, I can definitely speak to the impact that Sewing Rebellion had on our community at the Long Beach Public Library. Those were some of our first, as a studio at least, are some of the first sewing workshops that we've done. And they really took off and the community responded tremendously to just being able to have access to the machines, have access to staff who are knowledgeable. And then even though Sewing Rebellion has gone on hiatus, we've been able to kind of take that seed and transform it and keep it going, even though the frows have been formally retired. So we're really excited to keep up kind of what Sewing Rebellion has started within our community here at the library. Well, I think you guys are a great model to what the two libraries did in Long Beach, and then also like the Boulder Public Library, that you guys were like some of the strongest row frows. And you really did a good job of embodying the mission and making it your own. And I think when I saw that, I realized that like, oh, it didn't have to happen under the umbrella of the Sewing Rebellion anymore. But it could expand. It could be so expansive that it just exists. So awesome to hear. Thank you. Thank you, Carol. Yeah, last year, Frow had an exhibition at the Huntington Beach Art Center called Frow Fibers Mission in America. Can you tell us a little bit about that project and how it came to be? Sure. So I actually have a history with the Huntington Beach Art Center. I helped to open that space before I went to grad school in the 90s. I was there like education director and then also ran the store and also did the annual big fundraiser for the Huntington Beach Art Center. And I had gotten involved with them when I was actually doing this like mural project on the seawalls and Huntington Beach that I was part of. And of course, the Art Center has had a lot of transitions since then, but the director reached out to me and asked if I wanted to have an exhibition. And it felt like this full circle moment, like from the time when I wasn't really a practicing artist, but I aspired to be to like 20 years later being asked to have a show in the whole gallery, which is a huge space. I agreed. And basically the exhibition was kind of a retrospective of Frow's work for the last 10 years. So there was one part of the gallery exhibited all her uniforms that she wore domestically. And then also brought in the whole kind of like storefront workspace of the Long Beach studio and put that into the gallery and Frow hosted the Taylor maid project, which is she does tailoring for people, but they have to spin the wheel of wages and it lands on a certain country that imports goods into the United States. So let's say it lands on Cambodia, then the person pays like 60 cents for their alteration. And then the gallery also had video work of the Frow fiber versus the machine videos were frow in honor of John Henry, the African American man that took on the steam engine in the 1800s. There's like a famous song about John Henry takes on industrial textile production. So she takes on a knitting machine, she takes on a ring spinning machine, and then she also takes on like a sock knitting machine and tries to work as fast as those machine, of course she fails every time, but she's persistent. And then the other part of the exhibition were like some banners that were produced for various events. So a lot of it was like archive of performances that then become objects that can exist within the gallery. And that's so cool that you know you got to put something together that you know just kind of encompasses so much of Frow's history and I definitely think that idea of spinning the wheel of like wages and you know different parts of the world. You know the super you know eye opening and that sounds like you know a really powerful installation. Yeah it's always a good it makes people think about how they value how they value their clothes as well as how they value the labor of the people that make those clothes because of course a lot of the labels of these garments are on the like they're being made in the countries but the wheel of wages draws to and so people are able to make that connection and think about the value of the clothing. That's really interesting. Yeah definitely a powerful statement. I've got a question Carol. Do you remember or can you share a story about a memorable sewing experience? Sure so I started sewing. My grandmother was a steamstress on my father's side. She had her own like kind of tailoring shop that brought in extra money to the household and then I also had on my mother's side a second cousin who brought like home economics and was really into making functional textile fiber work blankets and clothing. Anyway so I made my first garment when I was about nine years old and it was a blue corduroy jumper and it was a hot mess as it can happen but my mom was so great she just like she let me do my thing it looked terrible and I would wear it all the time and never take it off and my parents let me do that they weren't like oh you don't look good enough for anything you know they just let me proudly wear this terrible blue jumper that I made. That was a great story. I feel like I've been making jumpers ever since like it's so much it's so similar to the frau uniform and everything. So I'm curious because corduroy comes in different sizes was it the very thin corduroy? Yeah the thin corduroy wasn't so popular back in the 70s. Okay yeah I've always been in my world. That's cool you were happy with it. That sounds like an iconic look. So you used to have a studio here in Long Beach up until recently uh what first what first brought you to Long Beach? I think that um well Long Beach in terms of like geography was like halfway between between where my parents lived and where I was teaching when I came back to California because I was gone for a long time and I think I also wanted to live in a coastal town that wasn't a beach town you know what I mean like it's not like Huntington and it's a little grittier and of course then ultimately it's been the fascination with the port and watching that system also my dad when he got stationed he was in the Navy and that's what brought our family to Southern California and he was originally stationed in Long Beach like the Seal Beach naval weapons station so I think it also it's a place that was familiar but not Huntington where I grew up. Yeah I know okay do you have any favorite places in Long Beach? The Belmont pool and the port. Oh my favorite oh and the library of course. Okay that was an but the pool the pool was so great and it's I haven't swam for like a year it's so sad I know it's open again but the hours are whack. Yeah one day one day you'll get back on the yep. So where have you traveled and has your travel your travel experiences influenced your art? I mean definitely I think that I when I was in grad school I did a study abroad at the Bauhaus University in Weimar Germany and I went there very intentionally and that experience it was totally formative in the development of brow fiber and in giving myself permission to say that my skill set as a seamstress and as a pattern maker and as a designer is my art practice and is what I wanted to do as an artist and that was a pretty profound moment when I gave myself permission to do that and open the first kind of like public publicly engaged sewing project to my knowledge which was SL mode one size fits all so I opened the shop in Germany and just gleaned all my materials from the community and at the time in Weimar there was a lot of abandoned and the real estate it's not the pace anymore and the owner let me just kind of squat it for two months and I think I paid the elective bill which is like 50 euros or something like was all very affordable and that that travel was really profound and had a huge impact on my practice you know since then I've had the opportunity to like travel to China, travel to Ireland, travel to Africa and meet other fellow people that are working in the industries in those regions and every experience I've had has added more layers and more understanding like the bigger picture of garment workers around the world. Wow that's an amazing story squatting story yeah getting harder and harder to do you know yeah um so you're a professor at Cal State LA it's kind of a two-part question what do you teach at Cal State LA and also how how do you're teaching and your art practice inform each other so I'm at Cal State LA in the Department of Art and the fashion fiber materials option which originally was the fashion and textiles option um but I think I I think I had a unique position in that there's not too many fashion programs that are in the context of an art department there might be fashion programs in the context of an art school like the Art Institute of Chicago or the California College of Art um and I think that the they were looking for a bridge between someone who was in the industry and who was also an artist because of that and it has allowed me to build a curriculum that is very unique um and really approaching um but I want to say the production of apparel and textiles from a critical social justice perspective versus just for making more goods to be in the supply chain um and because I am in an art department I think that I've had a lot more freedom in creating a program that is reflective of my practice and I would have if it would have been in a like a fashion and merchandising that makes sense so you know the students have to take like a common core that's art-based and critical visual critical studies base and then with us we're able to offer courses that we call like um surface where the students are exploring the surface of a textile and how to decorate the surface of a textile through like printmaking and applique and embroidery and then we have a course called structure where they're learning about the structure of a textile by learning how to weave and crochet and knit and then we have a course called form where they're learning how to think about textiles in a three-dimensional matter in a three-dimensional manner both off the body and on the body so we're breaking it down in a different way and talking about it very differently than you would in a traditional fashion program. Awesome. Christy did you have some questions? Yeah so kind of back on the track of um you know the garment industry um was there a particular moment or experience that made you want to bring attention to labor conditions within the fashion industry? I think that um I think it had a lot to do with like how I was personally treated in the industry um and you know I worked for a bridal gown manufacturer which I don't think she really exists anymore but um we were producing gowns that retailed between let's say $2,400 and $12,000 so we were doing a lot of um like really high-end luxury goods and so the materials that I worked with were always kind of the best but like the labor practices even within that were were often very exploitative like there was a worker that um like I had hired I had worked for the company off and on and I had hired her when they moved to Pennsylvania and seven years later I came back to work for the company again as like the production manager assistant designer and she'd gotten hired in making like $5.75 an hour this was in the 90s and she was still only making $6.50 and she had been there for like 70 like a loyal employee for seven years and um so it's like reflecting on moments like that and through my experience in the industry I was able to first of all do all parts of it because small fashion houses you have to do everything from emptying the garbage to sitting down and sewing a garment to designing a collection to selling a collection to going out on the road to to sell directly to customers um and so it's through that experience that like I'm processing that experience through my art practice so but I've kind of focused on the material like um thinking about the the abundance of materials in the supply chain as well as the labor practices there was also a moment um or like so my body was insured by the company for a million dollars so if I broke my arm or was killed the company would get a million dollars and I had no health insurance owners had health insurance they insured themselves but they wouldn't even like figure out a way to make it so we could pay into an insurance plan and that you know I stopped working for them in 2004 so we're talking about the late 90s early 2000s that that was happening so I mean nothing has changed you know and I was working in a great I like a lovely place like the facility was lovely there was air conditioning because we were working with all these luxury fabrics but but yet the labor was always just not valued yeah the irony of you being insured for the company for a certain amount of money while not being able to get health insurance on your own is yeah it's pretty striking and telling of you know the industry as a whole um so what is something that most people would be surprised to learn about the garment industry one of the things um I wanted to answer this question from the perspective of my students because you know I'm teaching these students that they want to be in the industry they want to have jobs they also want some level of security and the fashion industry provides none of that especially if you want to be in the design field uh the jobs are super low paying and the the place where the money is is like in the supply chain and like managing production overseas so if you're willing to go like live and be based in Hong Kong and manage production for a big company that's where the money is but for whatever reason the student actually of course the reason is because the way that pop culture is embedded in the fashion industry and everyone thinks they can be a star but like the design jobs are the worst paying and oftentimes you have to work for nothing as an intern for one to two years before you're even able to get your foot in the door so it makes it so that it's really hard for students that don't have privilege right that don't have parents that can support them through that journey and through that process and of course unlike science the fact the creative industry most internships are unpaid yeah the buddy that that interned vans for two years unpaid yep yeah he was doing he was doing tech packs and designing shoes right he kept all of his designs yep um nothing belonged to him and he was disposable and they let him go and two seasons later he sees his designs in the children's section of like some store like they used his designs on kid shoes yeah and he's like that's that's my shoe but it's not my shoe but i don't remember him telling me some stories about two years of free tech packs for vans yep did he ever get a job after um he did he actually ended up getting his own design department with a skateboard company and he he had a team but then the company had some bad management so they had to lay off a whole department and he was actually happy with it because he got laid off just before the pandemic and he just started making masks now he now he makes masks for professional skateboarders and like he's kind of got he's got his niche market like he yeah he just he just kept grinding and he stuck with it and he's like no i built up my network and this is what i'm gonna do now i'm gonna make masks so he's making masks at his house there you go and he's connected to so through his like foundation that he set up with his connections in the skateboard world he understands the supply chain where the materials come from like he knows every single step of the way and he knows people that are connected at every level so he's super hands-on small batch skate masks is what he called it yeah i mean i think that's also like the future of the industry is kind of like what your friend is doing for all the people that want to be creative and want to be hands-on and realize i think that's the other thing too is that the industry like the the fashion industry is not hands-on it is sitting at a computer making tech packs for eight to twelve hours a day yeah that's what he was doing yeah so now through his through his network that he's built in the skateboard skate world he's created his own supply chain so all the masks are made from upcycled repurposed or old inventory skateboard t-shirts so he got the companies to donate his material which kept his costs low and he did everything by hand he's got a small team that he's now like getting to like yeah got the patterns and he's just trying to figure out how to scale up now so he figured out a way to use his network to create the supply chain and keep things out of the waste stream it's scaling up is the problem true like i told him i told him why why does he need to scale up i think people we need to start asking ourselves like why are we scaling up like what's the point of scaling up and the mat it's it's really interesting about the masks and the whole covet thing in terms of supply chain and in terms of the connection to the fashion industry for the spread of covet throughout europe um and even into the united states because it spread during fashion week last spring and it went from china to italy and and it like there's documentation of who the super spreaders were which were these like elite a luxury luxury like dilatants who were traveling for fashion week with covet throughout asia and europe and just spreading it everywhere oh wow yeah i did not know that anyway but the scale up thing it's like scaling up is not sustainable on any level and and you know like i was kind of hoping that we were making some progress towards being more conscientious about our waste but then with the like the masks and i see masks all over the ground now of on the beach like and then with all the home delivery stuff that's happened like yeah yeah i see it i i i challenged him not to scale up i said yeah don't scale keep it keep it small and boutique and unique that's it and if you're making a living and you're like if you're able to do what you want to do with that scale then like yeah it's this drive it's capitalism yeah yeah yeah he's also he's also got a tough demographic because the skateboard industry is pretty like there's a big ego attached to it you know well any sport really they're athletes yeah he's kind of got that like mentality because that's the industry he exists within yeah operates within and so yeah i just kind of told him maybe you should reconsider scaling up remember all those like small brands that you supported along the way yeah they never expanded like there are still some of those brands that have built their legacy or you know their fan base or whatever it is their support by keeping it small you know yeah tight team keep small yeah less is more anyways i didn't mean to take but yeah yeah and on so we already kind of touched a little bit upon kind of like the the hopelessness of you know feeling uh like we're um you know trapped in this capitalist cycle with how we consume you know clothes and products um do you think there's any hope for ending our relationship with fast fashion so um the thing that i like want to talk about in terms of this is that it's so much based around class and it's a class issue you know um you have the one percent you could say of the population that shops luxury can afford the prices of kind of the sustainable luxury brands that are that are trying to scale back or provide actually what i like to call guilt-free shopping so it's like you can feel like you're being a good citizen through your purchases and it's solving some problem although it doesn't really um and then the the remaining like working class of the united states in particular um they can't afford you know those brands and and so they are relying on kind of like cheap clothing so that they can also feel the freedom of their purchasing power um and i think that this is a super cynical statement but i think it all really needs to collapse in order for something for a new economic system to come into play that isn't so dependent on capitalism so if you think about like universal income if we were all given universal income how would that change the way that we um go after like scaling up so if everybody is provided with enough to have food housing healthcare and education without having to provide that for themselves or for their children like what how does that change the notion of work and and the motivation of work and um you know i am a person who feels like there shouldn't be this disparities between the rich and the poor that we have in this country that everybody should be more equal and that that would change the way we even approach how we work and i think everybody should stop like you know like the whole COVID thing has made it so that people are working in their homes all the time and like set your timers and only give your employer that eight hours and don't work all the time anyway yeah total collapse burn it all down i think it's like it's a terrible thing to say because people are going to suffer people are going to suffer but we're not going to have change and and i'm one of those people that that um you know like through COVID my husband works in the food industry and there was a lot of problems with that and fortunately we're in a position where i could support him because he never heard from the florida unemployment office he has never heard and we applied on like march 20th so the system is f***ed up and broken sorry i used a curse word maybe that's not good but it's really broken i've been dying to use a beep option for these web chats okay now i opportunity um yeah i don't know i don't know i still am on my mission to get people just to stop consuming so much you just have to stop christy did you have some more questions i feel like you kind of answered um this in your in your last question about like how can consumers of clothes support the people who make them i do have a bit more direct response yeah go for it go for it oh i could be informed use your dollars wisely purchase less buy classic and don't follow the trends and then brow likes to say if you're going to shop shop to last not fast oh so dr susie with it huh yeah dr susie but also a little bit like consumer reports that's a good mashup right there it's like being actually being oh i just never thought about it this way being a consumer is about being a good citizen about citizenship because they're so intertwined now pretty profound oh yeah yeah all right what are you gonna write it down self note to self um so we're we're just about to close it up here um so what are what are some projects you're currently working on or planning for for the future well one of the things i've been i'm having a really hard time planning for the future but one of the things i'm continuing to work on as i started um when i went into quarantine on march 19th making a mask a day for frau and i that is becoming this ever-growing archive of the time of covid and so you know there's a section during the protests where i was making blank masks and i started writing the names of people who were who have been killed by the la pd and that project is something that is providing me with kind of like a grounding making practice when i can't really do anything else as you mentioned i closed the studio in long beach and i'm now located at the loft in san pedro um and so i moved studios and i'm working on some new like thoughts on a chalkboard but nothing has i'm still in this like transitional space and not having a hard time thinking about what's going to happen in the future but also watching the ports and thinking about that so okay can you tell us a memorable library experience you've had like i said earlier like i love the library and i'm so sad that the library has been closed i'm sure you guys are too it's you know like all the libraries are such important spaces um uh and one of the things that i wrote down for this was it's hard to pick one moment um because each sewing rebellion or time i brought my students to the library was like a memorable experience but when i think of the the library i think about community and what a great community it is and that's what makes it memorable it's like so much about community and you know the libraries are like our last public space for organizing or for being activists where we can come together and and i think we're doing that like through zoom you know spaces like k-market books or like what you guys are doing and other public institutions like trying to keep community together um is so important right now yeah um christie do we want to do a bonus question i know we're kind of running a little bit late but uh should we should we skip the bonus question on this one uh let's go for already already shoot what what you got what you got for us today yeah it's right though let's see what is something people would be surprised to learn about you i don't know um maybe i'll say this is that i cry a lot and but my friend jennifer moon who's an artist here here in LA um she once told me that crying as a superpower so i think it's it's totally about like releasing my superpower energies when i cry awesome that's that's a person oh wow that's great all right all right so um carol thank you so much uh right now is uh a time for you to toot your own horn and give yourself a promo shout out where can people find you online where's where should people go oh yeah not on social media i have a wiki page you can see me at carol france's one on my wiki page i have blogs um right now i think i'm in a period of kind of um recharging my battery in preparing to start doing work in public again and so you might not hear too much from me for the next couple years okay sounds like a good recharge time yeah yeah yeah uh christie do you have anything else or was that a wrap for for today or what i think this might be a wrap uh thank you so much for joining us uh you're a fabulous guest um we're super happy to get a chance to talk to you about your work what you do a little bit of your your origin story um so thank you so much for joining us you're welcome thanks for having me