Best Wishes
Best wishes to all in this festive season. Peace. Nicole
2013 Environmental Art Calendar
Start the new year off with the 2013 Environmental Art Calendar by Amber Lotus Publishing. Photo Solar Resource is featured in February. I am in good company with other artists such as Steven Siegel, Patrick Dougherty, Chris Drury, Karin van der Molen,( whom i met during Land Art 360 Mongolia) Chris Booth (who exhibited during the Earth Art in Vancouver) and Diana Lynn Thompson (who lives on Salt Spring Island here in BC). What an honour! http://www.amberlotus.com/productdetails.cfm?sku=13EA&isbn=9781602376113&title=2013-environmental-art-wall-calendar
Hot Art Wet City interview
Met up with Chris Bentzen from the Hot Art Wet City gallery in Vancouver for a chat about my artwork in my studio. Super nice guy who is doing his part in trying to keep the art scene alive in Vancouver with his gallery. Not an easy feat in this high real-estate town! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u71QBpZ0r_8]
The Little Green Dress Projekt
The Little Green Dress Projekt was an outdoor installation in the Earth Art Exhibition at VanDusen Botanical Garden in the summer and fall of 2012. For a full description of the project and to view photos please visit the LGD blog. I was on site for 2 months creating these pieces and installing them one at a time in the perennial garden. They were left to change and decompose over time to emphasize the process of nature. Each dress was made for an individual woman who supplied the leaves and flowers for her dress. Four women worn their dresses for …
The Nomadik Harvest Dress
The Nomadik Harvest Dress was completed during a 2 week art residency at the McMichael Art Gallery in June 2012 in collaboration with the Fashionality Exhibition. This wearable architecture is the second piece in the Urban Foragers {house of eco drifters} series, which began with the Mobile Garden Dress. The design is based on the yurts I experienced while in Mongolia. The skirt is created from a folding bamboo fence and Willow struts sewn into a wool waistband. The traditional felt outer covering is replaced with crazy quilt of woollen sweaters, which have been shrunken and dyed. The covering contains …
Lady Calla
It was always my intention to do a street intervention with one of the dresses from the BBG gig and so i met with actor and playwright Miranda Huba and we developed a strategy for bringing Lady Calla to Manhattan. BBG supported this project by providing a small crew to document and deal with logistics. The aim was for Lady Calla to ask New Yorkers where she could find sustainable fashion. After interacting with garden visitors, she took the subway from Brooklyn to the Meat Packing District and then took a stroll down the new High Line Park. New Yorkers are …
Brooklyn Botanical Gala
I was invited by the Brooklyn Botanical Garden in June to make 3 dresses for their gala event celebration the opening our their new “green” Visitor Centre. I loved my time there, Brooklynites are such warm and genuine people. Bill Cunningham came to the event and wrote about it for his page in the New York Times. Big thank you to all of the staff at BBG who really supported my work and the volunteers who came and helped to sew garden cloth and moss! The models for which the dresses were tailormade were: Sonia Kwiatkowski, Nikeva Stapleton, Justine Watanabe. Merci les belles.
La Robe Jardin Mobile
La Robe Jardin Mobile (The Mobile Garden Dress) was in Montreal this spring for the Rendez-vous Horticole garden show at the Montreal Botanical Garden. Dji Haché animated the dress for 3 days and her enthusiasm was infectious with the thousands of people who came through and watered her plants and tasted her herbs. These were selected and donated by Josée Archambault of Les Aromes du Petit Coteau. The month of May was also the time of nightly demonstrations on the streets of Montreal, which became known as Les Casseroles. We heard about lawyers actually protesting so we took La Robe Jardin Mobile …
Suface Design Journal
Check out the Spring issue of Surface Design Journal which features the article Decomposing Couture, written by Leesa Hubbell, which talks about my Weedrobes series. The Lilac Swing Coat, worn by Nita Bowerman is featured on the cover. The whole issue is dedicated to dress and it has many wonderfully creative artists and projects in it. Decomposing Couture-Hubbell
Cranberry Beaded Mini
This mini dress was made entirely from natural materials- Wear it and Compost it! The intention of this outfit made with super antioxidant cranberries was that it would be trashed as the dancer wore it. We did a formal studio photo shoot of the dress intact and then let model/dancer Nita Bowerman go wild and dance her little heart out. The result is that cranberries were squished and Chinese Lanterns went flying! This is my first foray into video so it will be a while until i have an edit of this fantastical performance but i am really looking forward to this project. …
FASHIONALITY
FASHIONALITY, dress and identity in Contemporary Canadian Art Fashionality is a new exhibition curated by Julia Pine at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection Gallery in Kleinburg Ontario. This exhibit features 23 Canadian artists who work with the theme of the garment. The show runs from May 5th to September 03, 2012 and the opening reception is on Sunday May 13. I will be showing photos of my IceShifts and my Weedrobes series, plus a new video on my work. I will also be doing an art residency at the McMichael from June 17th to July 1st. There i will create a …
Pharos
Pharos consisted of six blocks of ice with fabric embedded in them created during the Winterlude Festival in Ottawa Canada in February 2012. The 5 foot high blocks of ice were created outdoors in situ and the garments were meant to represent the early days of winter Carnivals. The piece was installed in Confederation Park, along with 10 other artists who were part of the BlizzArt exhibition. It took a week for the ice to freeze due to the unseasonal warm weather in Ottawa- they even had to close down the Rideau Canal to skaters for a few days. Big thanks goes …