Costume Work
Following the completion of my BFA studies at the University of the Arts, I traveled abroad to Cote d’Ivoire in West Africa for a two-month academic jaunt under the auspices Drew University. I returned to South Philadelphia to live in a predominantly Italian immigrant-based neighborhood. The very apparent differences between Ivorian and American culture and design inspired me to respond through making a series of “printed dresses” that felt indigenous to the new area to which I moved. My new home in the Italian section of South Philly called up on my own history as a third generation Irish/Italian American with parents originally from Long Island, New York. I started looking at old family photos taken during my childhood. Noting the different fashions of the times past, I felt a need to preserve the sense of style that lived in those times by creating dresses made entirely of layered and colored plastic wrap. The cellophane was a response to being abroad where the conveniences we take for granted in America were nonexistent. The 5 varieties of color that were then available from the Reynolds Wrap company offered us the very American opportunity for having preferences. The tailored dresses and ensembles reflect, through their use of pattern and scale, a sense of nostalgia for a neighborhood that has remained un-phased by modern conveniences. The look is somewhat vintage and abstract, using colors in tune with an earlier time. My goal was to make dresses that would have appeared in old family photographs in South Philadelphia, capturing a time when the neighborhood was in sync with current trends. The plastic wrap has since become a metaphor for memory and preservation. I made this work full knowing that eventually one day the variety offered of this product would prove excessive and soon be unavailable. Two years later, the Reynolds Wrap company officially discontinued the yellow. This work has an awareness of trends and the inevitability of changing times and fashions. It seemed fitting to provide context for these pieces through photography, outside, on the street, where the architecture of the houses and the layout of the neighborhood provided an appropriate backdrop for a particular period in time.
costume
Objects/Objectified
During my undergraduate years in the Fiber Department at The University of the Arts I spent most of my time working on constructed surface projects. I developed close relationships with materials, studying how they behaved and what they could imply or represent. I found myself attracted to hobby craft materials for all the derogatory crafts associations they carry. Implications of “fine craft” out of hobby craft materials were at once a bratty jab at serious craft based work being made in a reputable Crafts department and the freedom I felt from being in a Fibers program that was free of the need to conform to such direction. The Fiber Department at Uarts encouraged material exploration first. What happens when low-brow art materials are handled with serious care? What followed was an experiment in tinsel pipe cleaners that led to several projects for my senior thesis. The pipe cleaners became a tool for glamorizing ideals that were questionable in a sort of wear-this-and-you-will-become-it way. They were based on nuclear assumptions of American femininity and how expectations of beauty lead to expectations of sex. The craftsmanship of these objects was as much a part of the discussion as the material and the underlying message of the form.
objects
