Natural High Fashion

German photographer Hans Silvester has documented the Surma and Mursi people of southern Ethiopia and their creative DIY/haute couture tradition of body decoration. "Natural Fashion," a book of the photos was published in 2008 and there is a small show of these works in New York through January 8, at Marlborough Graphics, 40 W. 57th St.

The exuberance with which the tribe members employ animal, vegetable and mineral for mark-making and other adornment is stunning in its inventiveness and sophistication. The images, which celebrate the art and physicality of people who wear nothing but fingerpaint, flowers, and seedpods, are utterly enchanting. You might very well find yourself inspired to frolic in nature and take up crafting.

Or, alternatively (since you are probably dressed entirely in black), you’ll be mentally placing Silvester’s photographs within the universe of ethnographic images made by Irving Penn and Leni Reifenstal, or those we’ve seen in Vogue, National Geographic and modern advertising. Before you know it, you’ll be pondering post-structuralist anthropology, the Western gaze, and the entire artistic/fashionistic industrial complex.

Perhaps we simply are what we wear.














Much thanks to Vito Zarkovic for posting about "Natural Fashion" on his FB page. The images here and many more can be seen here.

Haystack Mountain School

I’m back from two blissful weeks in Maine where I attended a fiber workshop at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.

CAMPUS
Founded in 1950 at Haystack Mountain, the school moved to its current facility in 1961 on Deer Isle. The campus is a collection of cabins and studios, built into a hillside at the water’s edge. Edward Larrabee Barnes designed the compound, and in 1994, having stood the test of time, it received the Twenty Five Year Award by the American Institute of Architects.

From Barnes’s 2004 New York Times obit:

His Haystack Mountain School of Arts and Crafts…was not a building but a village of shingled cottages linked by a grid of wooden decks leading to a spectacular ocean view. Its diagonal forms were a much-noted departure from the cubical massing of the International Style that prevailed at the time. In 1994, the American Institute of Architects honored the project's influence with its 25-Year Award for older buildings, calling it "an early and profound example of the fruitful and liberating fusion of the vernacular building traditions with the rationality and discipline of Modern architecture."

The breathtaking view shifts gloriously with the fluctuating Maine weather. We drifted off to the sound of crashing waves at night, and woke to outgoing lobster boats in the morning.

Barnes’s Haystack architectural model and elevation of the campus are in the collection of MoMA.



NATURAL LANDSCAPE
The sub-tundra terrain of moss, lichen, pine, and glacial erratics provided a fascinating and enchanting landscape …













WORKSHOPS
The atmosphere is very conducive to working. Studios are open 24/7 and having prepared (and delicious) meals is very freeing.

Experimentation and exploration is encouraged and the teachers of the six workshops in session during my stay were all so inspirational. At night we got to see and hear about their work.

For example:

Kristen Morgin works in unfired clay.
Topolino, 2003
Monopoly, 2008

Jerry Bleem works with a wide range of found materials. The intriguing surface texture on these sculptures was created with staples.
June 10, 1983, 2000
Found printing plate, staples

Float, 2004
Fish scales, staples

Matthias Pliessnig works in steam-bent white oak.



Look through the Haystack workshop offerings to see other instructors.

Anni Rapinoja and her "Wardrobe of Nature".

After the Edible Fashion and the Flowery Dresses / Weedrobes, here is the "Wardrobe of Nature" by Anni Rapinoja. The works from the Finnish artist, who has studied geography and botany, are the results of versatile studies, in which theory and art are combined. Plants, droppings of animals etc... are part of the cycle of nature.

Picture of the Earth, 2007

Autumn

Mother Earth

Spring

To see more on Anni Rapinoja

Miho Museum by I.M. Pei Harmonic with Nature in Japan

A few years back Gregg and I went to Kyoto Japan to buy Ikebana Baskets for a show we were curating at our Gallery in Santa Barbara. While there, even though we didn't have much time we made time to visit the Miho Museum. Off the beaten track, for sure, but so well worth the effort. The Museum is Southeast of Kyoto near the town of Shigaraki, in Shiga Prefecture. The Museum house the private collection of Mihoko Koyama the heiress to the Toyobo Textile business. The museum is named for her.

I.M. Pei the Architect that Mihoko Koyama commissioned to design the museum referred to it as "Shangri-La" Evidently because hi design for the approach to the museum involves a long walkway on a bridge across a gorge and then through a tunnel through the hilly landscape. When one emerges out of the tunnel "you have arrived in "Shangri-La".  

Pei used the same French Limestone he used at his Louvre Pyramid in Paris. The structural engineers were LERA. Leslie E. Robertson Assoc. 75% of the museum's structure was built into the excavated mountain top. The earth was re filled over the structure essentially making most of the museum underground. The effect is that the forested hills are embracing the museum and that the whole environment is harmonious with nature.