EXHIBITION EXPLORES CLOTHING AS CHARACTER

The Cushing-Martin Gallery at Stonehill College presents Dress Code: Clothing as Character, from February 25 through April 11, with a reception and artist talks on March 13 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

In addition to the main exhibition, the Roses from the Heart™ Bonnet Project will feature bonnets made and embellished by Stonehill students and artists from the Boston area. Written and digital documentation will also be exhibited.

Clothing as Character is curated by Candice Smith Corby, Cushing-Martin gallery director, and Leslie Schomp, participating artist, and features work by six contemporary artists.

Each artist addresses how clothing represents facets of one's personality and is interwoven into the larger drama and sub-plots of personal narratives.

Influenced by various forms of literature, theatrical contexts, and historical representation, the artists work with a variety of methods and materials, such as photo-collage, fabric, seashells, paper and wax, and traditional drawing elements.

The artists use clothing as a surface and form to discuss larger issues present in their main bodies of work. The corporeal dress or piece of clothing is not necessarily the focus but rather how it serves as a surrogate for the physical body and its actions -- fantasy or real. 

Maryjean Viano Crowe, chair of the Fine Arts Dept. at Stonehill, will exhibit a large-scale photo-collage and a sculptural clothing construction made from paper and wax.

Crowe pulls inspiration from visceral memories of her adolescence -- a time in which a girl’s persona is very malleable and hopes and dreams are infinite. Although there is a confectionery feel to her imagery, there is also a sense that innocent delight is only temporary.

Alexandra Dooley teaches drawing and painting at the University of Northern Iowa and will exhibit ink drawings of empty dresses on waxed masa paper. These empty dresses have been discarded in the act of disrobing but still have the embodiment of the female form.

Through her titles and gestures, Dooley conjures up images from bawdy romance novels and classic love stories in which every detail of a woman’s costume was a symbol for veiled desire and presumed chastity.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison are known for their collaborative photography work, which explores universal themes of man’s relationship with nature, technology, and himself.

Tapping into their surreal imaginations, the artists have traditionally combined elaborate sets within vast landscapes and will exhibit a dress piece from one of these sets.  Their dress piece is a poetic manifestation concerning ideas of human limits and the human condition.

Leslie Schomp teaches drawing at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. and will exhibit an antique wedding dress in which she has used embroidery as her drawing implement. 

Schomp locates her work in the rich but grey area of intimate familial relationships. Her work often questions where boundaries begin and end between one’s self and others. Issues of dependency and individualism often physically reside on top of each other and are linked by mere threads.

Brian White, who works out of Maine, will exhibit an iconic wedding dress in a blue Tiffany box. Due to his physical proximity to the coast, his works reference mortality, sea-faring history and lore, and the long spans of time between life and death.

Although every little girl’s fantasy of “being rescued by her knight in shining armor” inhabits his dress; the viewer is also aware of the sharpness of the materials and that there is life, death, and sadness encased in the gathered sea shells which become encrusted pearls and rosettes.

Roses from the Heart™ conceived and curated by Tasmanian artist Christina Henri is an installation of 25,566 commemorative bonnets that pays tribute to the lives of the 25,566 convict women transported from the British Isles and Ireland to Australia; plus relevant documentation. For further information on the Project, please visit here. 

Gallery Information:

The Cushing-Martin Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. For directions to the gallery, please visit here. Gallery parking is located in lot #2. 

For press photos or for more information about the Cushing-Martin Gallery, this exhibition, or the artist, please contact Gallery Director Candice Smith Corby: csmithcorby@stonehill.edu, or by phone at 508-565-1755.

02/04/08