The anxious wait for the results of the first round of
judging for the World of WearableArt came through a week ago.
This is a day when nothing gets done in a WoW designer's life from
9am in the morning whilst you try and distract yourself by refreshing your
email inbox 30 times a minute. As you can imagine, this wears out your keyboard
and the patience of everyone around you, be it at home, work or on holiday. As
my partner and I work from home, sharing the same office studio with the cat, I
had two to annoy all day with my distracted demeanour and attention focussed
only on my screen. The computer, my tablet and my phone. Changed days from when
I first started entering in 1995, when results were sent out by snail mail
which could arrive anytime in the week, depending on where you lived and the postal
service!
The private messenger groups we have all formed were buzzing
with anticipation, nervousness, impatience and then finally celebration, relief
or sadness depending on whether the email started with 'Congratulations...' or
'Thankyou for entering...'
The designer facebook forum started to fill up with pictures
of simply amazing pieces that weren't selected. We aren't party to the judges criteria,
or to the curation of art for the show. You can only make a piece from the
heart, to the best of your ability and hope for the best. If the section has a
brief, answer it, if not, design your own brief.
My piece for this year was selected for the Weta Workshop Costume and film section, the theme is Science
Fiction. Part of the 2017 brief is 'Create an extra-terrestrial being from an
alien world or a human being as you can imagine them living in the year 3446'.
I've reimagined something in the cyborg realm. Other than that I can't tell you anything except to
say it's super creepy and it took me a while to show my family what I'd made in case
they thought I'd lost my mind. I love what I've done and once again I pushed
beyond the boundaries of what I know I can do into the territory of what I
could do if I used my grey matter and learned a few new skills. Each year I learn
more and this is what keeps me on the WoW marathon. It's bootcamp for the
creative being.
Come the award night, I'll be able to post my entry all over
social media, so you'll have to wait until September 22nd. I can however show
you the piece that didn't get in. Yes, there's always the one that got away. My
friend Vicky Robertson and I made this from a selection of recycled items. Her own gorgeous piece got into this year's show
too, but whilst our combined entry didn't, we had fun combining skills and
effort, and drinking wine when it was all over!
It was for the Illumination section where things light up
under UV light, with the theme Float, Fly Flow. Thank you to Werner Kaffl for
the photography and to Shonty Rogan for the studio and coordination to get our
WoW pieces captured so brilliantly on one fine day in Trentham!
Danse de Lumière
Inspired by Guimard’s Chandelier
The float, fly, flow theme lends itself to a performance
piece based on a reimagined interpretation of the French architect, Hector Guimard’s
work of 1914. Three separate models, with wing spans and lightshade head
pieces, come together in formation, to create multiple concepts for a
chandelier. We scoured recycling centers and dumpsters with a portable UV light
for the parts that make this entry up. Lampshades, a beer keg bladder, venetian
blinds, curtaining rods, spa pool filters and lastly a harness repurposed from
a previous UV finalist entry.
We purchased the black morph suits and split rings.
The entry is open to choreographic interpretation. All parts
are easy to wear, UV reflective and provide huge scope for movement; floating,
flying and flowing across the black stage. We considered the performance
aspects of dance in this creation and what would work for performers to create
the final ‘vision’ of light.
When it comes back to us, we will take it pieces and recycle the useful bits and back to the tip shop, all the rest will go.
So- this first pic is not the entry- it was our inspiration!
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| Hector Guimard's Chandelier |
1 comment:
Congratulations xoxo
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