Clothes Stories

It's an aesthetic decision that we make everyday, what we're going to wear why we're gonna wear it. It talks about personalities it talks about our history It talks about our culture, so I thought, it's a pretty rich thing to draw from The project's called Clothes Stories and I mean that's about as simple as you can get because the project is about clothes and stories. The idea of the project was to collect clothes, to then gather stories around those clothes, to and then the way the project will work is well we have the event today where we have people coming in, pciking clothes, writing stories So as a young child, we used to travel to the East Coast and I would be involved in a lot of Shakespearean theatre and I would often have to play male roles and so I was initially drawn to this search because it was symbolic of the male role that I had to embrace as a young child in order to be involved in theater. Picasso said it's the viewer that finishes the painting. And I really believe that. you know when I make something, generally I don't believe the art resides in the thing I made, it resides in the experience that people have, and even more so it resides in the moment that after they have had that initial experience when they're at home and they look in their closet and suddenly they pull out a garment and they think about it in a different way. To me, that's an art moment My grandpa on my moms side died before I was born in a car wreck, now I have a fantasy grandpa. I decide what he is like and what he would give as advice. He would wear this jacket. You know East is usually about people getting out to go see work that other people have made and see their studios and that's exciting. I think there's nothing more exciting that seeing an artist, where an artist works basically but I wanted the people who come today to participate to also feel like they're making art and go through the whole process of making art where you make a decision about a material in this case clothes, and then you interact with that material where you write a story and then you take that and then you put that on public display Because I've watched people, they write stories, hang up a garment, stand and watch people read it and see that kind of anxiety that they first have in that kind of thrill when somebody sort of experiences their work This corduroy skirt inspired a haiku about my daughter. Vanessa's haiku pumpkin spiced toddler orange September birthdays our special autumn I'll take all of those clothes each garment will be photographed the stories will be catalogued that will go into a website so every garment will have a number and there will be tags made when people look at that tag in the garment they can refer to the website find their clothes read the story and then add new stores which hopefully will just continue to grow, change I mean with the stories what I'm really hoping to do is to bring people together I think that when we share stories even if they're fictions we share our ideas and our knowledge and our day-to-day activities and practices in a way that it, it opens up a dialogue hopefully