In September of 2004 while driving home from a family vacation Inez, her husband Jerel and their two children were in a severe car accident. The family vehicle ended up rolling over 3 times. Inez slid up through the top of her seat-belt allowing her head to crash through the sunroof and make contact with the road. Jerel broke through the passenger window and his shoulder and right arm were pinned under the car when it came to rest. Inez's skull had been crushed, after surgery and prayers, Inez survived; there are still staples in her scalp today. When she was released from the hospital, doctor's warned that chances for a full recovery were remote because of permanent effects of head trauma.
Upon release from the hospital, employment was difficult because of disability and enduring health conditions related to the accident. Jerel went back to school with the hope of retooling himself into a new carrier. Two years later Inez enrolled too, in spite of the academic challenges she faced as a result her traumatic brain injury. In 2010 Jerel graduated with honors and in 2011 was accepted to a Masters of Fine Arts Program. Inez is now scheduled to graduate from Utah Valley University Bachelors of Fine Arts Program in 2013 and as part of her course work needed to do a Senior Thesis project. Her son gave her the idea of creating the World's Largest Tie-Dye installation, and with encouragement and support from family, friends and teachers, she decided to take on the project.
In looking for help to make her project possible, one of the places Inez reached out to was here at Dharma Trading Co. After all, where else do you get dye for an attempt at the World's Largest Tie-Dye then from the folks that have been providing professional quality supplies for tie-dye since 1969?
We donated 130 lbs of dye to help Inez dye over 900 lbs, 1040 yards (3120 feet !) of cotton fabric. The fabric is tied now. The actual dyeing and breaking of the World's Record is to take place on March 7!
While we compile pictures from the Rinse Event last week, I wanted to post a couple of panorama shots we have put together.
The first shot is from the rinse, taken from standing down in the retaining pond. Thank you again to the Utah Valley University: Emergency Services Academy for their time and effort rinsing Liberty.
I'm taking a quick moment to link to some of the news reports covering Vibrant Protest. Christina Rendon from ABC4 Utah has done a phenomenal job covering our story and the Vibrant Protest: Liberty project. Christina's coverage can be found at the following links along with videos of their broadcasts:
Not sure what words to write for this post. I think Inez and I are still processing the day's events and will have to write more over the next couple of days. Until then these pictures will have to suffice, besides, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and if that is true then this will be a 111,000 word post. Enjoy the images we had a great day.
Vibrant Protest: Liberty's first stop will be the Woodbury Art Museum in Orem, Utah.
The opening reception is March 26th and it will be on display until April 27, 2013.
I should really be in bed right now, getting the rest I will need for tomorrow's event. With the help of some dear friends we were able to get the tie-dye loaded in the truck and ready to take to UVU tomorrow morning. Along with loading Liberty, Inez was interviewed by Christina Rendon a reporter for ABC4 here in Utah.
Christina did a wonderful story covering some of our history prior to doing this tie-dye. I was able to get some footage from the story that was broadcast this evening and posted it to our youtube channel for those of you who missed the story. The resolution is a little rough…
I hope you enjoy it. And wish us luck for the big event tomorrow.
We are one week out from the rinse event at Utah Valley University on March 7th.
Inez has completed the dye process and has moved on to working her special magic on the tie-dye adding her own elements and using her crystallization technique to really make the colors that Dharma Trading sent us *pop*. All of us around the studio are getting very excited to see Liberty once it is rinsed and stretched. There have been many hours of back-breaking labor and love put into Liberty. The images below cannot adequately convey the size of this project. Each bundled spiral in the fabric is 5 feet in diameter and the full length of Liberty tied has been doubled back on itself. There is approximately 1000 pounds of fabric, dye and zip-ties pictured in the photos below.
While Inez has been dying Liberty she has also been dying Shirts from the same dye batches. The shirts are made from 100% Domestic Cotton, Milled and Sewn in the USA. If you are interested in obtaining one of these shirts to proudly display your own Vibrant Protest, or just to show your love of Tie-Dye contact us, they are $25 each + shipping. There are a limited quantity of these shirts available.
We will need your help to rinse and stretch Liberty for the measure event next week at UVU, if you want to help use the form on the contact us page to register for the rinse zone. We look forward to seeing you there.
Inez was featured on a local news channel this past Friday March 22nd at our studio open house.
Thank you to ABC4 Utah, Christina Rendon & Tyler Gibbons for coming down and helping us get the word out about Liberty.
Inez and I also want to express a sincere thank you to Luana Turetzky and her family for putting the block party together and supporting us in our effort to break a world record and raise awareness about US Domestic Cotton.
The following is the initial live report from Friday evening. We will update the post with the 10 PM report when it is posted.
Thank you to Christina for taking an interest in our project. We had a great time talking with her and sharing ourselves and this project with her. I will post again when the video from the interview is posted.
I know, I know... Last week I told Inez that I was going to be cracking that joke when she started applying the dye to Liberty and she gave me the *one eye*, a look that said, "You'd better not…"
Today marks the beginning of the dye application. Thanks to Dharma we got all of the dye we needed last week and we were able to spend the weekend doing last-minute preparations for the dye process. As we were grocery shopping Saturday evening Inez and I were going over concerns we had about dying Liberty while it was sitting on its drop-cloths (plastic sheeting) on the floor. Inez did not want Liberty to sit in the puddles of runoff color, muddying up the fabric. We spent some time shooting ideas back and forth on what we could do and then looking up at the storage racks in the store the idea hit us, that the wire racking they used on their shelving would be perfect for what we needed. This morning (Monday) I did a little research and found a company up in Salt Lake City that stocked the racking we needed and picked up two sections. The racking fits perfect over the troughs we used for dye-prep and work perfectly for keeping Liberty raised out of the dye runoff. I love those little moments of inspiration when they hit us and we are able to see a simple solution to a potentially perplexing problem.
Inez was also joined by a couple of volunteers today to help her to move the fabric and tie shirts that we bought for the event. The shirts are amazing. We bought them through Dharma Trading Co. they are Made in the USA, sewn in Los Angeles. I have included a picture of the tag from the shirt. The quality of the shirts is impeccable, the stitching is the highest quality that I have seen on a t-shirt and the fabric is a wonderful heavy weight cotton.
We wanted to give a special thank you to one of our newest sponsors, Dharma Trading, Co. They have been our source for dyes and supplies for over a year now. We are grateful for their support in our attempt to break the World Record and spread our message of, "Invest in America, Buy Domestic."
We got our "Care Package" from Dharma today. It is chocked full of the supplies we need to dye the fabric. Inez has come to trust and depend on the quality of dye that Dharma supplies. When she began using their products it opened new vistas in her work that we didn't have before Inez found them. Dharma has graciously donated the dye we need for this world record attempt.
We have posted another video on Youtube chronicling the progress of Vibrant Protest thus far. We are excited to share with you the work that has been going on. We still need your help to complete this project.
The process of tying the fabric was completed the end of last week and we have moved on to the pre-dye preparation of the fabric. This process is a tedious job of soaking the fabric in solution in large troughs provided to us by C-A-L Ranch. After the fabric is soaked in the solution it is laid out to dry, waiting for the next step in the process to occur.
Today we moved the tie-dye today to Wise Guys in Wolverine Crossing. Thank you to all of our friends that made this move possible. Without your help it would have been a truly daunting task.
The studio space we that had been lent to us was being leased out and we needed to move the tie-dye to another space within the same complex. We asked for anyone who could make it to meet at our space on January 28th. Once the fabric was lifted and outside we could not put it down until it was in the other studio. The tying of the fabric was mostly completed by the time of the move. The tied fabric is around 100 yards long, and again it weighs 850 pounds.
Thank you to Wolverine Crossings for the studio space. It is good to be out of the unheated studio at home, especially with the temperatures plummeting the way they have been. All of Jerel's glazes have frozen solid. We moved the drill of fabric from our unheated studio to the one at Wolverine Crossings so I can begin tying it in preparation for the big event. I shot this short video documenting the move. Jerel built the ramps and frame for the drill.
My Palette
In September of 2004 while driving home from a family vacation Inez, her husband Jerel and their two children were in a severe car accident. The family vehicle ended up rolling over 3 times. Inez slid up through the top of her seat-belt allowing her head to crash through the sunroof and make contact with the road. Jerel broke through the passenger window and his shoulder and right arm were pinned under the car when it came to rest. Inez's skull had been crushed, after surgery and prayers, Inez survived; there are still staples in her scalp today. When she was released from the hospital, doctor's warned that chances for a full recovery were remote because of permanent effects of head trauma.
