Graduate craft and material exhibit examines wearable art

Michael Todd
Staff Writer

From lace veils to pigskin brooches, nothing could be said to be “off” about the opening reception of “ON/OFF” this past Friday evening at the FAB VCUarts Gallery of the VCU Fine Arts Building.

The exhibition features the recent work of VCU craft and material studies graduate students and their exploration of body adornment through “wearable objects and sculptural forms.”

The work of April Dauscha, who is currently teaching this semester’s art foundation fiber class, is heavily influenced by the ideas and social customs of the 19th century, particularly the elaborate mourning rituals of the Victorian Era.

Dauscha’s piece “Penitence,” a veil constructed from black handmade teneriffe lace, draws inspiration from the Victorian custom of women wearing black veils for a predetermined amount of time, differing depending on the woman’s relation to the deceased, as an outward display of their inner grief.

For Dauscha, the piece acts as a type of physical manifestation of grief from her own life and perhaps, through its construction, as a type of catharsis. As an in-progress piece, she plans to continue adding more lace to the currently 250-foot veil which, from its mounted place on the wall, winds its way through the moderately sized gallery space, ending in a coil around the space’s support beam.

Additionally, “Exposed: An Armory of Physical Longings,” a collection of wearable sculptural forms, draws inspiration from the complex Victorian corset, as well as “prototypes of the fashion industry … (and) soft armor from the middle ages,” according to Dauscha’s website.

The construction of each garment is left almost entirely exposed as a representation of what Dauscha describes as “a longing to fill the void.” These dress forms of muslin, boning and thread are meant to protect and speak for the wearer as a source of “strength and empowerment … because they speak of her desires and struggles,” Dauscha said. “They seek beauty in her burdens.”

Much of the work of first-year graduate student Bebhinn Jennings deals with loss, memory and more internal subject matter given visual form.

“We’re all dealing with the same time,” Jennings said of her fellow artists in the exhibition. “We’re all referencing each other.”

“It can be exhausting, alienating,” Jennings said of the creative process. “You put something up and it’s exciting, but (sometimes) there’s a lot of doubt to work through.”

Jennings’ works from the show, some as recent as the new year, were the products of “experimenting with how to manipulate materials to show age and death,” she said. The result of her pieces “Enough” and “Release” were, she said, somewhat of a “happy accident.”

“Yeah, I take a torch and set them on fire,” Jennings said of the plethora of scorched plastic pearls winding from their sterling silver locket casings, each piece displayed on its own pedestal with an additional mounted to a light box on the wall.

“It’s almost like painting, essentially,” she explained because she is never quite certain how they will react to the process. “Some melt, some go up in flames … (I) don’t know what’s gonna happen.”

Besides being fascinated by the effect of the flames on each piece, Jennings is also interested in the history of the pearls before they came into her possession.

“All the pearls are found, reclaimed – they all had a life before me,” she said.

Jennings’ obscure brooches, mounted to a light box, feature the same pearls as her previously mentioned piece, but with one major addition: pig skin, washed and stretched into a wearable object.

“I wanted to see if you could rust dye (the guts) almost like a fabric,” she said of the unusual material.

“These pieces are a lot about the dichotomy,” said Shauna Kirkland, the final artist of the trio on display in the ON/OFF exhibition, of both her “My Pretty Weapons” and “Power Suit 1-3” series.

“My Pretty Weapons” consists of a collection of brass knuckles cast from shark teeth, a bobcat’s jaw and more equally aggressive “natural weapons.” The brass is mixed with glitter and painted with automobile paint of pinks and blues in order to achieve an irony at the “juxtaposition of the glossy (and) sparkly” with the vicious subjects, she said.

Kirkland’s empowerment of the wearer continues in her “Power Suit” series, which consists of three wearable handmade shoulder and head pieces constructed from various unrelated materials such as fox and mink fur, plonge leather, painted brass and cotton yarn.

These pieces, as was with Dauscha’s corsets, reference armor and war regalia, as well as seek to further the idea of juxtaposition of the unusually paired materials, some of which have been elevated from their original state via their incorporation into these wearable works of art.

Photos by Amber-Lynn Taber

“ON/OFF” will be on display from now until Feb. 9 in the FAB VCUarts Gallery located just inside the front doors of the Fine Arts Building at 1000 W. Broad Street. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.