MFA Candidate: Lily Smith

A jewelry/metals student, Lily Smith says, “I’ve always been really interested in work that goes on the body. . . . I’ve also worked a lot with fabrics in undergrad and grad school.”

She uses the term “jewelry” loosely as work that goes on the body and talks about the body. She combines the ideas of jewelry with those of garment and fashion, finding an interest in the colliding of fields. For her piece that will be in the Georgia Museum of Art, she combines hand-dyed silks and thinned-down silicon with added pigment painted on fabric to create the textures of fleshy forms. The result is a wearable piece that recalls the feel and form of different parts of the body.

She explains her interest is not only in work that goes on the body but also is about the body. The garments she creates mimic natural forms of the human form but are exaggerated. With a skin-tone color palette and materials that resemble skin as much as worn fabrics, she makes voluptuous plump forms that hang around the figure when the piece is worn.  

“This work talks about our standards of beauty and the ideal female figure. They're like dresses but rather than accentuating a thin figure they're fatty forms with multiple breasts and bellies, celebrating the fact that maybe that can be just as beautiful as a thin more fit person. Celebrating the curves and the fat and flesh in general,” she says.

Her creations take beauty to a richly authentic level with their yearning to be seen and felt. These garments continue to evolve with her interest in the process of making as well as the intrigue of the final state. They hold the viewer captive while evoking feelings about their own personal connection to the human form.

Smith’s work will be shown at the “Master of Fine Arts Degree Candidates Exhibition” at the Georgia Museum of Art from April 11 to May 3, 2015.

http://handgrownjewelry.weebly.com/lily-smith.html

"Emilio Pucci in America" exhibition brings designer back to UGA

Group photo of early Emilio Pucci hostesses uniforms for Braniff. Braniff Airways Collection, History of Aviation Collection, Special Collections Department, Eugene McDermott Library, The University of Texas at Dallas.

Italian designer Emilio Pucci and the world of fashion he belonged to and helped shape may seem to be a universe away from a simple southern college town and the state university that braces it. However, without the inspirations that were borne from his time at the University of Georgia, many of Pucci's pieces and his signature style may not have come to fruition.

The Georgia Museum of Art, in honor of this relationship between Pucci's design work and UGA, as well as the designer's 100th birthday, is hosting an exhibition curated by independent curator Mary Koon entitled "Emilio Pucci in America" from Oct. 18, 2014 until Feb. 1, 2015. It features collaborative pieces from Pucci's work with various American companies and institutions, from flight attendant uniforms commissioned by Texas-based Braniff Airlines to dresses sold at stores like Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue to the patch he designed for NASA's Apollo XV lunar mission.

Pucci came to the United States in 1935 from Florence, Italy, at the behest of his father. He attended UGA for a year as an agriculture and horticulture student, which his father hoped would help with their agribusiness back home. He then transferred to Reed College in Portland, where he began his career in design by creating the uniforms for the school's skiing team. From there, he continued to develop his pieces, and many cite his affinity for American culture, industry, and atmosphere as one of the most influential forces shaping his ready-to-wear clothing.

The Georgia Museum of Art will be offering a number of events in connection to this exhibition. Koon will lead tours of the exhibition on Nov. 7 and Dec. 3 at 2 p.m. The museum's Family Day on Dec. 13 from 10 a.m. until noon will offer the opportunity for children to create Pucci-style ornaments. The Pucci-themed after-party for "Elegant Salute," called "Get Your Pucci On," will take place on Jan. 31, 2015 and will have a fashion show put on by Agora Vintage and music provided by DJs Alfredo and Z-Dog.

NY Fashion Week nods to Pucci's bold designs

With New York Fashion week upon us, there are plenty of notable looks on and off the runway. The Spring 2015 collections flaunt bold floral prints, dreamy pastels and strong lines for days. The colorful, fun garments combine the conceptual with the conventional as we ooo and ahh at the creative, theatrical runway shows.

Here are some of our favorite looks from 2014 NY Fashion Week:

 

Zero + Maria Cornejo Spring 2015

Cushnie et Ochs Spring 2015

 

Jason Wu Spring 2015

Victoria Beckham Spring 2015

Carolina Herrera Spring 2015

These inspiring looks from Fashion Week resemble the sleek designs and bold patterns of Emilio Pucci, whose designs will be featured in an upcoming exhibition at the Georgia Museum of Art.

"Emilio Pucci in America" will be on view Oct. 18, 2014 - Feb. 1, 2015, in the museum's Charles B. Presley Family and Lamar Dodd galleries. The exhibition celebrates of Pucci's short tenure at the University of Georgia as well as his 100th birthday.

The Italian designer's easy-to-wear, comfortable fashion may be a few decades old, but his designs still retain relevancy in the fashion world.

Fashion Independent Events

The Georgia Museum of Art is showing a fashion film series that goes arm in arm with the exhibition “Fashion Independent: The Original Style of Ann Bonfoey Taylor.” up until September 15. Taylor wore many hats—sportswoman, socialite, pilot, designer—but it is her renowned fashion style that is on display. The exhibition consists of Taylor’s personal, custom-made wardrobe, which is highlighted by the three documentary fashion films that are being featured in the museum’s M. Smith Griffith Auditorium. The first film, “Versailles ’73: American Runway Revolution,” was presented on August 29, but there are still two amazing fashion documentaries to be seen! The movies are free and open to the public, and will be screened at 7 p.m. on Sept. 5 and Sept. 12.

Both films offer a glimpse into the world of fashion—an industry filled with creativity, beauty, competition and intrigue—but focus on different parts of the multifaceted realm of style and beauty. One film peers into the modeling industry, and the other portrays the life and mind of a prominent fashion icon.

On Sept. 5, the museum will show “Girl Model,” a documentary that follows two people involved in the fashion industry: Ashley, a deeply ambivalent model scout who scours the Siberian countryside looking for fresh faces to send to the Japanese market, and one of her discoveries, Nadya, a 13-year-old plucked from her Siberian home and dropped into the center of Tokyo with promises of a profitable career. The two rarely meet again, but their stories are inextricable. As Nadya’s optimism about rescuing her family from their financial difficulties grows, her dreams contrast with Ashley’s jaded view of the industry’s corrosive influence.

The final movie being featured in the fashion film series is “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel,” which will be presented Sept. 12. This documentary is an intimate portrait and a vibrant celebration of one of the most influential women of the 20th century, an enduring icon who has had a strong influence on the course of fashion, beauty, publishing and culture.

Exhibition: Fashion Independent: The Original Style of Ann Bonfoey Taylor

From June 1^st through Sept. 15^th, the Georgia Museum of Art will showcase the personal wardrobe of sportswoman, socialite and fashion icon Ann Bonfoey Taylor.  The nearly complete collection comprises custom-made day and evening wear from renowned couturiers such as Charles James, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Hubert de Givenchy and James Galanos.  Myriad pieces literally tailored to fit the life of this 20^th-century Renaissance woman are juxtaposed with large-scale photographs by Toni Frissell. 

The museum’s director, William Underwood Eiland, initially saw the exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum (PAM), and was captured not only by the impressive display of textiles and design, but also by the clearly educational focus of the show.  Dennita Sewell, curator of fashion design at PAM, organized the exhibition. 

“I think what really drew Bill and the museum to this show in particular was its educational quality.  It is really a comprehensive survey of 20^th-century design.  While the general public will be enthusiastic, true scholars of fashion history will be incredibly excited to see these designs; it is so much more than just a fashion show,” says the in-house curator, Mary Koon. 

Textiles dating from the mid-1940s to the 1970s required special hands for transport and display. Four couriers, trained for the special handling necessary, helped install the exhibition.  Italian mannequins appear in everything from cocktail dresses to riding boots—each piece custom made. Aside from the close to 200 items of clothing and accessories included in the exhibition, visitors will have the opportunity to study Taylor’s sketches of her own skiwear designs, a display of erudition and natural talent.  The integrity of the collection lies in its multifaceted testament to the quality of design in 20^th-century art and fashion.

Yet Another Crazy Thursday

Polly Knipp Hill in her college years

This April has been full of jam-packed Thursdays at GMOA, and this one is no exception. We have three things going on this p.m.

From 5 to 8 p.m., we encourage you to come over for Drawing in the Galleries. Bring your sketchbooks and colored pencils and really get to know the art in depth.

At 5:30 p.m., in the George-Ann and Boone Knox II Gallery, guest curator and artist Enee Abelman will speak on her exhibition "Polly Knipp Hill: Marking a Life Through Etching." Hill began working as an artist in the 1920s and garnered increased recognition in the decades that followed. Although she initially focused on European architecture, in her mature period her broad body of work grew to encompass poignant, amusing and slightly satirical genre scenes that reflected American culture. This retrospective exhibition of Hill’s life and career is organized iconographically according to the categories into which the artist herself divided her print oeuvre: Paris; America with "street and countryside scenes"; Florida; Arcadia (or reminiscences of her childhood); children’s games; and mountain culture. The groupings also reflect the chronology of her etching career. Abelman has many tales to tell of her dumpster diving and struggles to reconstruct Hill's autobiography and chronology.

Finally, at 7 p.m., we're screening "The September Issue" as our closing film in the series "Dress the Part: Fashion in Movies and Magazines," which goes along with the exhibition "Pattern and Palette in Print: Gentry Magazine and a New Generation of Trendsetters." With unprecedented access, the documentary tells the story of legendary Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and her larger-than-life team of editors creating the issue and ruling the world of fashion. Watch the trailer below: