Spring Break
'Dress' exhibits perceptive fashion
by Morgan Manley
Arts | 9/23/08
Posted online at 10:50 PM EST on 9/22/08
How do others perceive you? How do you view yourself? What aspects of yourself do you allow others to see? Do you associate memories with material things? Are you what you wear?
These are the questions that the eight artists featured in the exhibit "Dress, Redress," an event developed by the Epstein Women's Studies Research Center, asked attendees to consider. And, while each artist worked with very different media, they all sought to ascertain how people's external appearances expose their internal beings. The artists also urged visitors to discover what their appearance, particularly what they choose to wear, reveals about themselves.
On Friday, I had the opportunity to join a small group on a tour called "Afternoon Art" that allowed Waltham residents and visitors to hear directly from the exhibit's curator, Lisa Lynch. Throughout the tour, Lynch expounded on each individual work included in the exhibit and discussed how the featured artists have attempted to the answer the aforementioned questions.
Many of the participating artists took a "green" approach to answering these inquiries. Andrew Thompson and Candice Smith Corby, for example, used material or clothing in their works that were either found or previously owned. Sandra Eula Lee, in her piece "Openings," created a hole-filled shirt using various household objects, explaining that "The opening to who we are is oftentimes these objects."
Her most significant work, "Clothing Inventory-under 2" tall" is a group of paper doll-sized representations of shirts she actually owns. These miniature shirts are arranged on pillars of office paper in an exploration of how the work atmosphere can blend with the private and the internal. After the piece is no longer on display, the paper will be returned to its original purpose: "[to fill] our copy machines and our printers."
In general, nature is an important motif for these artists. Some literally gave nature an identity. One artist, Laura Wilcox, did so by "dressing" trees in huge pants or skirts of lacquer paint and stainless steel screens. Others incorporated nature into their art, as Aparna Agrawal did by making plaster-based babies' clothing decorated with shells.
These are the questions that the eight artists featured in the exhibit "Dress, Redress," an event developed by the Epstein Women's Studies Research Center, asked attendees to consider. And, while each artist worked with very different media, they all sought to ascertain how people's external appearances expose their internal beings. The artists also urged visitors to discover what their appearance, particularly what they choose to wear, reveals about themselves.
On Friday, I had the opportunity to join a small group on a tour called "Afternoon Art" that allowed Waltham residents and visitors to hear directly from the exhibit's curator, Lisa Lynch. Throughout the tour, Lynch expounded on each individual work included in the exhibit and discussed how the featured artists have attempted to the answer the aforementioned questions.
Many of the participating artists took a "green" approach to answering these inquiries. Andrew Thompson and Candice Smith Corby, for example, used material or clothing in their works that were either found or previously owned. Sandra Eula Lee, in her piece "Openings," created a hole-filled shirt using various household objects, explaining that "The opening to who we are is oftentimes these objects."
Her most significant work, "Clothing Inventory-under 2" tall" is a group of paper doll-sized representations of shirts she actually owns. These miniature shirts are arranged on pillars of office paper in an exploration of how the work atmosphere can blend with the private and the internal. After the piece is no longer on display, the paper will be returned to its original purpose: "[to fill] our copy machines and our printers."
In general, nature is an important motif for these artists. Some literally gave nature an identity. One artist, Laura Wilcox, did so by "dressing" trees in huge pants or skirts of lacquer paint and stainless steel screens. Others incorporated nature into their art, as Aparna Agrawal did by making plaster-based babies' clothing decorated with shells.
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