Wearable Art Celebration Kick-off & Sea Glass Combinations Re-imagined for a Fall Collection
The years that I have chaired the biennial Celebrate Wearable Art runway show are the most challenging to balance time creating my own work vs. creating a highly evocative and colorful event to showcase the creative talents of the seARTS Wearable Art Group and many others who will be joining us. The charter for this event has continued to evolve and in addition to putting on a spectacular show, we are also pursuing the all-important mission to educate people about “wearable art.” In a recent video-podcast I was asked, “how does it feel to own and wear a piece of wearable art?” It gave me a wonderful opportunity to really think about this and my response is – “It makes you feel special, beautiful, and proud – just like your favorite painting hanging in your home. Most importantly, you feel connected to the artist in a most intimate way.” This Boston Globe article hit the nail on the head! And if you want to hear even more about wearable art, tune into the recent podcast I did with the CWA curator, Martha Sutyak.
But like every other creative person, the pressure of preparing for a big event forces one into new directions. One of the biggest challenges has been finding ways to appeal to new audiences with both work and outreach. Also, making sure that the collection has something for “almost” everyone. So this year the emphasis will be on a wider range of bracelets which have been well received over the past few years. Taking the basic design of the stainless steel and silver metal cuffs, the new designs are going to appear on leather, brass, and wired bracelets of varying widths. The leather is colorful and light, easy to wear and contemporary. It provides a nice complement to fabrics and feels great to wear. It also helps sea glass find its way into every-day jewelry that can be worn year round. Over the years I have made an immense effort to fight the stigma that sea glass could only be worn in the summer and with summer clothes.
I will also evolve the “bottleneck beauty” collection, add more earring styles and of course, have a robust collection of hair accessories for all types of hair as the staple of the collection. So looking forward to welcome everyone to Celebrate Wearable Art on October 1 and our Cape Ann Artisans Fall Tour on October 7-9.
