Shradha Kochhar sculpts and draws with textiles. I love and am therefore featuring her sheer compositions for their scale, delicacy and the light play that they cause.
Murray Odessky's (1931-2015) journey making hats began serendipitously on a New Year's Eve in 1979 when he brought some things to a party in a paper bag. When he went home, he emptied a size 12 bag and turned it over his head. It was a good fit, and he formed it into a hat. Thank you
Having moved to Hawaii and changed his name to Moses he revisited his love of hat making as a way to protect himself from the strong Hawaiian sun. His designs kept coming, each hat inspired by a person, thing or idea, so that over roughly a decade Moses created over 250 hats
His background as a a package and graphic designer for Mattel and other firms informed his work. Up until the last weeks of his life he could still be found at the Starbucks in Kamuela wearing one of his paper bag hats. He donated all his hats to the Mingei Museum in San Diego.
"Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding is an exhibition of work by artist Delaine Le Bas presented within an expansive and layered installation. Delaine’s objects, environments, textiles, costumes and performances exist at the intersection of the personal and the political, aligning their experiences as a Romani person with perspectives on land, movement, gender, and discrimination.Across the exhibition, Delaine evokes forms of social and psychological commentary through the recurrent use of texts, the reactivation of personal and archival ephemera, and symbols from classical mythology and popular culture. The installations are populated by a cast of extraordinary figures such as goddesses, visionaries and witches, applying a feminist lens to narratives of both emancipation and domination.Tramway was previously the Glasgow site of 'To Gypsyland', 2013, a travelling research project by Delaine and collaborator Barby Asante that explored Romani, Gypsy and Traveller presence in cities across the UK. In the intertwining of elements from past projects with new figures and narratives, Delainia reflects the ongoing address in the work of the mythologisation and demonisation of Romani, Gypsy and Traveller peoples in the UK and Europe. These concerns are amplified within present-day contexts of housing crisis, border control, forced displacement and environmental breakdown. Delaine’s work activates and reclaims space for new rituals and imaginaries of resistance against historical and contemporary environments of hostility." Delaine Le Bas
Rien Bekkers is one of the most renowned costume designers in the Netherlands and, for forty years, has worked as a costume designer for a.s. ‘Toneelgroep Amsterdam’, the Nederlandse Opera and a large number of foreign productions. Since 1980 is an independent clothing designer for large and small subsidized groups in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany with prominent Dutch directors.
He has worked on more than 150 theatre, ballet, opera performances and film productions.
The most fascinating thing about Bekkers’ design is the tension between the past and the present: it’s always on its way to the new, the unknown and unprecedented, while still being seduced by beauty and enchanted by the imagination. It is inspired by several historical styles that reflects and interprets in its own way guided by the love of craftsmanship. He never just copies. The garment of a particular era serves only as a starting point. Bekkers doesn't think it's dusty to design costumes that often have to look like they were worn hundreds of years ago. On the contrary, he looks for ways to update historical garment.
"My job is to give the actor a feeling that fits his role." “I use beautiful, high-quality fabrics, combined with good panties,” Bekkers continues.
His creativity flourished on the fashion course at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. There, during an internship at Toneelraad Rotterdam (the precursor to the current Ro Theatre) he discovered his love of costume design. "I am an inventor. I find inspiration everywhere. In a flattened aluminium tube I see a collar.".
After forty years in the profession, Rien Bekkers is far from finished and has shifted his attention to objects of art. “Now I’m making my job my hobby again.” Although he hasn't stopped making theatrical costumes, he now focuses mainly on his costume objects, as he calls his works. This has a big advantage about theatrical locker room: Bekkers isn't restricted by director or actor.. “A singer must be able to hear well. So such an outfit couldn't cover the ears. And with a necklace you have to consider someone's moving larynx. It doesn't bother me anymore.”
Amidst their latest designs: a series of 25 costumes on child-sized mannequins that could theoretically be worn, but are thought of as an object of art.
“Theatre is not a fashion show. There clothes must support an actor. Even the grand and monumental costumes. Now I'm free and all attention can be directed to my designs as an object.”
"From my experience as a costume designer for theatre and opera, I create costume objects." Without an actor, singer or dancer in motion, a costume acquires the characteristics of a monumental sculpture, it becomes an object."
From fantasy, interest in the material and love for craftsmanship, a shape, an atmosphere and a silhouette, which I hope evoke wonder and intrigue, gradually emerge through modeling and experimentation. Different artistic traditions of my own country and other cultures are a source of inspiration. There is no substantive link between the source of inspiration and the final object in which it appears. It's purely about the shape and atmosphere it creates.From relatively simplicity in lines and tones to very lush.
"There's always something sculptured about it, and a little absurd always stimulates my imagination, seeking timelessness."
