Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 7, 1995 TAG: 9502080016
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHLEEN WILSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Sporting it around, don't try passing it off using the term ``wearable art.''
Regional artists such as Susan Brittingham, Sarah Kidd and Sally Edelman would surely reprimand you.
``Wearable art is something one-of-a-kind,'' points out Kidd, a Blacksburg jeweler and fabric artist.
It isn't something that was mass-produced or assembly line manufactured. It is something precious to which an artist not only set her hands but her imagination and ingenuity as well.
Now if Leonardo da Vinci had put his paintbrush to that T-shirt - rather than canvas - to paint the lady with the mysterious smile, that would be wearable art.
The T-shirt probably wouldn't be on your back, either. It would be hanging in the Louvre.
The Louvre didn't come up on Kidd's wish list of places she hopes her wearable art might take her, but the Smithsonian, the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum of Art did.
``Actually, any of the national galleries would be fine with me,'' she says.
For now, Kidd's happy with her recent show at Studios on the Square on the Roanoke City Market.
While the pieces she showcased there were her larger handpainted silk wall hangings, her name was suggested by several local artists in a search for artists who also make things you can wear.
Kidd was surprised. Her jewelry and larger works are far more popular that the scarves others mentioned.
Sarah Kidd's scarves, priced between $85 and $200, are dramatic and vibrant. They're rectangular - measuring about a foot in width all the way to 6 to 8 feet in length. She begins with a length of fine white silk, draws her design and then handpaints the fabric with fiber reactive dye.
Her jewelry has a look all of its own as well. She describes her pieces simply as ``big.''
``I have a hard time with simplicity,'' Kidd admits. ``I want something out of the ordinary. I want something that makes a statement. I want someone to walk up to someone wearing something I made and ask, `Where did you get that!'''
Kidd's jewelry begins with a love affair with a precious stone followed by the challenge to build a setting around it.
Holding a 5.85 carat Ceylon sapphire, she says, ``I bought it because it was a helluva buy.'' She hasn't done anything with the stone, yet, but when she does, the buyer will shell out at least $1,300, she figures.
The softness of silk and the sheer strength of a stone might seem at opposite poles to most artists. But according to Kidd, she couldn't paint silk without making jewelry, or vice versa.
``Both are very strong materials,'' she points out. ``Silk is the strongest fiber known to man. With silk, it's a cleaner process and I get to work on larger space. Jewelry is literally dirtier to do. I get to take my inhibitions out on my jewelry. Without doing one or the other, I think my life would feel lopsided.''
Susan Brittingham's quilted garments are unlike any you've ever seen. You'll find a deliberate lack of calico.
An instructor in the fashion design department at Radford University, Brittingham views the future of fabric art with much encouragement.
``It is essentially non-reproducible,'' she says. While the color copier has made possible high quality reproductions of watercolors and drawings in what she calls ``Xerographic'' prints, intricate fabric pieces cannot be replicated cheaply with any fidelity.
One look at her quilted vests and jackets will make that quite clear.
Where Kidd's passion for a piece of jewelry might be inspired by a Ceylon sapphire or the Burma ruby she has her eye on - which at wholesale will set her back a cool $3,000 for the stone alone - Brittingham's inspiration for her garments usually begins with a special piece of hand-dyed or marbled fabric.
``Some consider marbled fabrics difficult to use effectively in design because the pattern itself is very strong,'' says Brittingham. But Brittingham is a marbler herself, often making the very fabrics that go into producing the eye-catching quilted pieces she sews.
It's an intriguing method of patchwork construction that effectively showcases the marbled fabric without letting it dominate the design.
``Sometimes I think much of what is being called wearable art is neither wearable, nor art,'' says Brittingham. ``Wearables are even more rigorous in their design demands than any two-dimensional artworks.''
That's because one of the purposes of any garment is to flatter the wearer, but not overwhelm her.
Brittingham has a hard time figuring out how much time she puts into each of her pieces. She doesn't price them on the time involved, rather on the intricacy of her work.
She points to a sensational quilted wall hanging on her studio wall she just sold for $3,000.
How will she bear to part with it when it leaves her studio?
``That's why we take pictures,'' Kidd answers for her, empathetically.
The inspiration for Sally Edelman's ``boyfriend jacket'' comes from the high school days when your best guy would take his jacket and hang it on your shoulders with a squeeze.
She recycles men's suit jackets with paint sprays and brushes and applique to give them a decidedly feminine and offbeat twist. You'll find her largest selection at Blue Ridge Crafters in downtown Roanoke.
And while Edelman's prices fall far lower than those of Kidd and Brittingham, her boyfriend jackets certainly qualify as wearable art.
``No two are the same,'' she says. Edelman figures her average jacket retails for between $35 and $49.
``It's important to keep the prices low,'' she stresses. ``I think everyone out there wants something original and unique. That's why wearable art should be affordable too.
``Because art should be for everybody.''
by CNB