Miles Payne

My work is a constant investigation of the past and city environments, it's relationship with nature and urban decay. I draw much of my inspiration from historical architecture in San Antonio and other cities. So much of the  small details on and within buildings that we see everyday, or have some type of interaction with goes underappreciated by the masses. I lift these motifs and recontextualize them into clothing by blocking printing.  What else attracts me is decaying, hand painted, and overlooked business signage/ advertisements. So often when traveling or even just around town you can see remnants of business painted over with new business signage and its interesting to me that things disappear so often. So when i see, say, a sign for an automotive store that's been closed for years I'll take a picture of it and save it, then later down the line i'll make it into an embroidery or graphic. I think of it as paying homage to someone's dream or archiving what I see and like in the city before something eventually takes it place. When it comes to my art and its relationship with nature, I utilize natural dyeing techniques in my clothing design with local flora around San Antonio.  This practice gives me another layer of appreciation of my environment as it literally becomes infused within the fibers of my work.