cover reveals
Opening Reception on May 28 from 5-8pm
Saturdays, May 28 - July 2, 2016
Curated By Julia Freeman
Opening Reception on May 28 from 5-8pm
Saturdays, May 28 - July 2, 2016
Curated By Julia Freeman
A collection of 12 garments by 13 artists from London, Hong Kong, Chicago, Kansas City, Portland and Seattle.
Each garment challenges its traditional function of merely “clothing’ its wearer. These garments create an interface between the unique stories of their wearers, and the explicit expressions of their makers. Together, they are a small inventory of how garments can represent our individual and collective bodies, identities, politics, histories and futures. Isolated in the gallery context, these garments raise questions about whose bodies wear them, whose bodies created them, and the stories that are woven within the fibers.
Each garment challenges its traditional function of merely “clothing’ its wearer. These garments create an interface between the unique stories of their wearers, and the explicit expressions of their makers. Together, they are a small inventory of how garments can represent our individual and collective bodies, identities, politics, histories and futures. Isolated in the gallery context, these garments raise questions about whose bodies wear them, whose bodies created them, and the stories that are woven within the fibers.
“The body becomes a choice, a mode of enacting and reenacting received gender norms which surface as so many styles of the flesh.”
― Judith Butler
― Judith Butler
What are you choosing to wear?
How does it feel on your skin?
Have you stopped to notice?
Trying to catch someone’s eye?
Or perhaps the opposite, do you feel like blending in?
Not give two fucks?
Does what we wear control our identity -- how we are expressed, or perhaps how we are hidden? Each of these 12 garments presented bodiless on hangers, portrays garments not as expressions of innate truths, but rather help construct our ever changing identities. By changing our clothes, do we change who we are?
Clothing...“narrates invisible information such as the memory of a certain period when the piece was worn, and the reason why it was kept.”
― Yin Xiuzhen
Exhibitors Ellen Lesperance micha cárdenas, Patrisse Cullors, Chris Head, Edxie Betts, Josefina Garcia-Turner and Emma Wavely Dorothy Cheng Natalie Martínez and Lindsay Miller Joey Veltkamp Kate Daudy Jono Vaughan Michael Cepress Sarah Norsworthy and Krista Schoening Shenequa Alexandria Brooks Man Fung-yi Writer in Residence Steven Dolan |
How does your clothing speak for you? Do you have a different voice each day? What is the weave of that voice? What are the memories held within your clothes today? Did you wear that shirt to a funeral? Did you fall in love wearing pants? When is a garment a gift? Has your friend ever dressed you? |
...
Spanning time, clothing is a marker of lives lived. The moisture of bodies is embedded into the fabric, writing stories. The garments we wear on our bodies speaks a multifaceted language.
Spanning time, clothing is a marker of lives lived. The moisture of bodies is embedded into the fabric, writing stories. The garments we wear on our bodies speaks a multifaceted language.
Participant Bios |
Dr. micha cárdenas directs the Poetic Operations Collaborative, a design research lab at the University of Washington Bothell applying technological creativity to advance social justice. She is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences and Interactive Media Design at the University of Washington | Bothell. cárdenas is an artist/theorist who creates mobile media to reduce violence and increase health. cárdenas’ forthcoming book, Shifting Poetics uses practice-based research to understand trans of color movement in digital media, where movement includes migration, performance and mobility. cárdenas has been described as one of “7 bio-artists who are transforming the fabric of life itself” by io9.com.
Dorothy Cheng is a jewelry designer and artist, whose work investigates the historical underpinnings of contemporary social issues. Dorothy graduated with a BFA in Metal Design from University of Washington (Seattle) in 2008 and completed an MA in Conservation Studies from West Dean College (Chichester, England) in 2015. She currently works as a freelance conservator of art and historical objects. Ellen Lesperance was born in Minneapolis and raised in Seattle. She creates art in various media but often employs the visual language of knitting, having once worked for Vogue Knitting as a pattern knitter.[1] Citing inspiration from Bauhaus-era female weavers, the Pattern and Decoration Movement, and body-based feminist artists of the 1970s and 1980s, Lesperance’s gouache paintings on paper can be followed as patterns to recreate historic knit garments.[2] She sources these historic garments from archival images and film footage of women involved in Direct Action protest, including women from: the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, Earth First!, Occupy events, feminist-era protest events, and the feminist art canon.[3] She frequently displays her paintings with her hand-knit textiles, which she says she hopes will “beckon a new wearer.”[4] Joey Veltkamp makes soft paintings (in the form of flags, blankets, quilts, and banners) which frequently incorporate rainbows. His work has been shown at Seattle Art Museum, Frye Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Henry Art Gallery, Greg Kucera Gallery, SOIL Gallery, Hedreen Gallery, and many more galleries and coffee shops throughout Seattle. Kate Daudy is a British conceptual artist. Her work applies an ancient Chinese literary tradition to the field of contemporary art. What she makes occupies a liminal space between written and visual work, the 2 and 3 dimensional, the sublime and the throwaway. She is interested in the ephemeral nature of our existence and encouraging the viewer to pay profound attention to the world around us. A committed peacenik, Daudy has shown her work all over the world. Upcoming works include a land art project on a hillslope at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, UK. Daudy has three children and lives in London. Jono Vaughan holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, a Masters of Arts in Teaching in the Visual Arts from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of South Florida in Tampa. Jono’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, in both solo and group exhibitions. Her awards for teaching include the Sylvia G. Wexler Memorial Award for Art Education given by The University of the Arts and the Rookie Teacher of the Year for High School Level in Seminole County, FL. Jono has received grants for a variety of visual art projects from The Arts Council of Hillsborough County, The National Performance Artist and Visual Artist Network, Art Matters Foundation, and the Pollination Project. Jono currently teaches Fine Art at Bellevue College and works in her studio in Seattle, WA. Michael Cepress holds a BA in Art from the University of Wisconsin Green-Bay, a Masters of Fine Arts in Fibers Arts from the University of Washington, and has worked professionally as a fashion designer, artist and educator for over 11 years. An intense interest in the cultural impact clothing can make has led Cepress to focus on the design and production of his own fashion label and theatrical costumes, and he has written on clothing's relationship to gender and popular culture. Cepress has exhibited his works and lectured nationally and internationally. In Spring 2014 he dressed 104 members of the Seattle Symphony for their performances at Carnegie Hall, and has worked as costume designer for legendary theatre director Robert Wilson. His designs have been published in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, OUT Magazine, Surface Design Journal, and a host of books on the subject of Wearable Art and fashion design. His costume designs have recently debuted on national television, and as Producer and Designer of The Robbie Turner Revue at the Hard Rock Cafe, Cepress' work will soon be touring nationally to theatres and performance venues across the nation. An Instructor in the University of Washington's School of Art for 11 years, he has developed curriculum on multiple facets of fashion design, wearable art, and the history of style and clothing. In fall of 2015, he became Guest Curator at the Bellevue Arts Museum, and debuted a 9000-square-foot museum exhibition titled "Counter-Couture," featuring over 150 authentic garments from the American counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. This summer Cepress will be an instructor at Penland School of Crafts, and in May 2016 he will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in his hometown of Wausau, Wisconsin. Sarah Norsworthy is an artist from Anchorage, Alaska currently living in Seattle, WA. She received her B.A. in Studio Art from Dartmouth College in 2002. She earned her MFA in painting and drawing at the University of Washington last spring. Previous to her return to Seattle for graduate school she taught art to adults with developmental disabilities in Fayetteville, AR. She is a painter who also often works with textiles, creating embroidered clothing and designs. Krista Schoening is a painter, draftsman and printmaker. She recently earned her MFA in painting and drawing at the University of Washington, and is now pursuing an MA in art history at the same institution. Previously she studied painting and drawing with Anthony Ryder, in NM; and with Michelle Tully and Timothy Stotz, in France. Schoening has taught as assistant faculty at Studio Escalier, and as a teaching assistant at the University of Washington. Before becoming a painter, she received her BA from the University of Notre Dame in anthropology and Spanish. Schoening also spent time as a humanitarian aid worker, and as a graduate student in anthropology (PhD track, Cornell University). She is an avid gardener. Shenequa Alexandria Brooks was raised in Miami, Florida. She received her Bachelors of Fine Art with an emphasis in Fibers at Kansas City Art Institute. A resident alumna at Charlotte Street Studio Residency Program in Kansas City, Missouri, Brooks is currently pursuing her Masters in Design for Fashion, Body & Garment at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Brooks has exhibited her work in various group shows at Deviation 2015 Art & Design Auction, You People, and Think Tank at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago just to name a few. A Featured Artist for Ties that Bind in American Craft Magazine Brooks discusses sisterhood, use of synthetic hair in braiding, and weaving sculptural objects/ wall pieces. She is interested in creating bonds between the African and African-American cultures together. Man Fung-yi is a Chinese artist. She obtained her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1999 and Master of Arts (Daoist studies) in 2008 at CUHK. Man established the CHIC Studio (Artists' House) and became an artist and art educator after graduation. From 1999 to 2001, she worked as a part-time lecturer at the Department of Fine Arts of CUHK. Exhibits in which she has participated include Century—Women Art Exhibition (National Art Museum of China, 1998), The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art Exhibition (the University at Buffalo Art Galleries & the China Millennium Monument, 2005), 30 years of Chinese Abstract Art (La CaixaForum Barcelona, La CaixaForum Palma, and La Caixa Forum Madrid, 2008), Yi Pai – Century Thinking Exhibition (Today Art Museum, Beijing, 2009), and Hong Kong International Arts and Antiques Fair (Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, 2009). She was awarded the Freeman Foundation Fellowship for Asian Artists, U. S. A. in 1997 and the Critic Award, Century. Women Art Exhibition, Beijing in 1998. She was the Award Winner of the Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition in 2003. Her works are collected by the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, the Nanjing Art Museum, the Foreign Cultural Exchange Association of China, the Hong Kong Housing Department, the Hong Kong Airport Authority, the MTR Corporation, and private collectors. Natalie Martínez is a poet at heart and scholar of rhetorical studies. She received her BA in Literature from Westminster College, MA in English Studies from Western Washington University, and her PhD in Rhetoric, Composition, and Linguistics from Arizona State University. In 2008 she was a CCCCs Scholar for the Dream Award Recipient, for emerging scholars from historically underrepresented groups. In 2009 she was a RSA Queering Rhetorical Studies Workshop Participant at Penn State University. Her research and writing has focused on the rhetoric of anger and melancholia among queer latin@ writers and activists and the productive ways those emotions have been mobilized. This is Natalie’s 12th year teaching at the college level, and her fourth year at Bellevue College. She loves teaching, as her students teach and inspire her daily. |