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type, drawings, style, ideas
milagros
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The word “milagros” has been stuck in my head the last few days since I saw Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo last week. For some reason, the first time I saw “Miracles” - the neighborhood community center in the movie, I read it as “Milagros” - which sounded much cooler to me. My next project is to find the right t-shirts to paint it on in a couple of different styles. Oh, and the t-shirts will be shredded, of course.

Ink on paper

August 10, 2008
photography, portrait, women, style
Alter Ego
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I was invited to be in an art show called Alter Ego. For several months, I’ve had the idea to do some art/fashion portraits of the regular characters I inhabit in the theater of my head. I wanted to show the inner alter egos we all have, how we see ourselves in fantasies, daydreams, and also the male/female anatomy that makes up our psyche that may go unacknowledged. I don’t really express either persona on the outside at all, but maybe things do come out slightly and don’t get fully explained in my words or actions. This show gave me an opportunity to execute these ideas. There was one character I missed but I hadn’t quite thought her out yet, and I didn’t have the right outfit on hand anyways. Everything is completely self-styled, self-shot, and the shirts in both photos are my creations. These photos are amateurish, I know, but I think this gives them an intimate, honest and immediate feel.

Alter Ego I (if I were a guy)
May 2008
18″ x 24″ print

Most of the time I’m not a girly-girl. I call people “man” a lot. I feel more comfortable having male friends than female friends. And I wonder from time to time what it’d be like to be a guy. How would I look? How would I carry myself? Walk? Stand? How would I dress? Would I be considered good-looking or dorky or ugly? I was trying to think of all the guys I know and how they stand and position their arms, necks, shoulders… body language. It was actually physically uncomfortable to stand like a man. I had to mentally push my hips and butt out of the way, and the awkwardness showed in the shots where I was standing. Although I think my choice of pants had something to do with that - they needed to be looser and more concealing of curves. Here I look like a cross between my dad and my uncle (on my mom’s side). It’s weird. Closeup of the shirt is here.

Alter Ego II (the diva)
May 2008
18″ x 24″ print

This is the Diva. Dramatic, eccentric, elegant, bold, aloof one second, loud the next, ultra feminine. I like how the makeup came out. Operatic (female) but also drag queen (male). Detail of self-made shirt here.

Basic Self/Test Shot

Outtakes

I’ve been thinking about a shoot like this since last fall, and especially had the idea to wear a small hat or beehive hairdo thrust towards the forehead, but had neither the hat nor hair to do so. Also working against too little time & too much humidity in my non-climate-controlled studio.
photography, style, observations
Ft. Worth Foray
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As a working stiff, I don’t get no Spring Break, but I took a short one nonetheless. I didn’t take any furloughs during the busy seasons of last spring and fall wound up feeling ruined and depressed by Memorial Day/Christmas. A couple injections of sxsw chaos and a jaunt up to visit family in Cowtown were just what was needed.

Of course, I didn’t miss an opportunity to visit Ft. Worth’s museum district on a bright, cool spring afternoon. I always visit the Kimball, even if I don’t know what the exhibition is, it’s just a wonderful space. The current exhibit, Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art was extremely crowded (perhaps because DFW is the buckle of the Bible Belt) and mostly consisted of small objects like rings, glass and metal works, so it was difficult to get a close look at many pieces, and thus contemplate on them. The most interesting items to me were the carved stone sarcophagi and painted tombs with the names and exact ages of the deceased and touching, personal epitaphs written by husbands, wives, parents and friends.

Also intimate was the excellent The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888–1979 down the sidewalk at the Amon Carter Museum. Some of the earliest images were people photographing themselves myspace style, which shows this narcissism of the Millenials is nothing new. My favorite part of this exhibit were the autochrome photographs from the very early 20th century, a process which allowed the actual color of the object to be recorded onto the plate, rather than by post-process coloration. Hairstyles and outfits we associate completely in black-and-white sprung to life: what would’ve been a rather unremarkable picture of a young man sitting in a chair soared to fashion-plate level when the color version revealed him to be dandily dressed in a lime green shirt, lavender tie, green pants, green socks and white leather shoes.

Unfortunately, because it was late in the day, I missed Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s and Martin Puryear the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
oracles, culture, advertising, style, critique
Vogueing Out
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A couple of things caught my eye as I cracked open the March 2008 issue of VOGUE yesterday.

1) Is high fashion trying to angle itself with high art? Art has been what I would call “street hip” for a couple of years now, but for me, the deer heads, power lines and raindrops are all blurring together. D&G, Prada and Nordstrom ads (and that’s just in the first 20 pages) showed models posed in completely painted scenes or art studios, taking a more high art direction. The merit of the art itself isn’t the issue and a critical person could say it’s insipid to hijack art to sell clothes, but it seems to me that the message is that art is still elevated above the clothes. Art is absolute, fashion is mutable, both are visual cousins and the weaker, more changeable entity aligning itself with the stronger can only serve to build its brand. If you see fashion as fantasy, these ads could be a prediction of our fantasies to come. While 99% of people probably won’t wear anything from a runway in their lifetime, the culture of fashion can serve as a compass to where larger popular culture might go.

On a side note, it’s always interesting to me how fashion ads rely almost exclusively on photography, and what little effort is made towards incorporating graphic design is often badly handled. I usually don’t care for the photography in Marc Jacobs ads, it is one of the exceptions where the design is well-executed and not overbearing. And I don’t think there should be more graphic design in fashion branding necessarily, when you have outstanding photography, a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, it’s just interesting to not to see it used more often, especially with younger designers up against the grand old fashion houses.

2) Older celebrities trying to look 19, growing old very un-gracefully. Highly disturbing.
www, style, life
Absence makes the heart grow…
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I’ve been too busy to post on, much less check, the wardrobe_remix group on Flickr for the last 6+ weeks. I’ve been a much happier person since I quit worrying about how many views my photos got, getting comments, acquiring new things to show off, being heavily influenced other people’s clothes. My absence has also solved a quandry I’d been facing for a couple of months that had been causing me some mental “wear” & tear: what is my style? Experimenting and trying new (to me) looks since I joined the group in December of last year has been a bold, positive step forward, but I felt like I was losing myself in the process. I felt like I had to be constantly searching for the perfect accessory, evaulating every detail of what I was going to wear the next day, growing tired quickly of what I already owned, stressing about wearing the same outfit twice, and jealous of what other people had on.

And yet I couldn’t stay away, even though I knew that was the key to release. Since work and extra-curricular activities have forced me to withdraw from the group, I’ve re-discovered some things about my habits and style.
- I’m definitely a fashion chameleon, changing constantly from day to day.
- I tend to get stuck on an outfit or accessory of the week or month that I wear constantly.
- I like looking, but not buying. I put a lot of things back before I check out at the register. It’s not just the money-spending that bothers me, it’s also that I don’t want to get things “for fun” that don’t fit in. I can usually tell when I’ll get tired of something quickly or never wear it.
- I like simple, elegant, interestingly-cut clothes with bold accessories.
- Fit is all-important.
- I like black, and bright colors. I don’t like neutrals or pastels.
- This could be interpreted as subconscious/psychological: I like either prim, ladylike styles or androgynous, un-feminine looks.
- Dressing my age is important to me. So ladylike is the operative adjective in the previous item; I don’t like to look girly.
- Trends aren’t that important. I have always chosen clothes intuitively and find I am much happier when I don’t pay attention to trends.
But wardrobe_remix also impacted me positively and really helped me grow as a person.
- Best thing: I’m not afraid to experiment anymore. In the past, when I’d get dressed to go out, I’d have on an unusual-looking (to me) or potentially too-dressy outfit that would never make it outside my bedroom. I’d change into something reliable at the last minute only to regret my conservatism later.
- I’m better able to put outfits together, which I think is also confidence-related. Some mornings, I still agonize about what to wear, but for the most part I find it easier to choose things now.
- Customizing and making my own clothes has become a cool new past-time.
- Being exposed and contributing to a global, online, fairly young community has provided feasts for thought.