Workshops

Higbee Gallery | Anne Bissonnette & Dr. Debbie Henderson, Curators

Elegance rarely comes without effort. Throughout the centuries, a great deal of time, energy and resources has been devoted to this quest. Mastered by those with financial means, fashion was once the privilege of the few. For some it was also an obligation: noblemen were required to appear at court and in battle in elaborate finery. To fight was their birthright; to shine, their prerogative.

Palmer and Mull Galleries | Noël Palomo-Lovinski, Guest Curator

The artistry of Adrian is displayed in the clean lines, dexterity with fabric and his consummate expression of imagination and humor that exists in every piece of clothing, costume, or creation. Adrian effortlessly combined garment construction skills, an understanding of the feminine image, and a graphic conception of the body to provide allure in wearable clothing. He shaped young Hollywood actresses into movie stars, transforming perceived figure faults into alluring assets. He galvanized the image of American women on the world stage by combining national feminine vitality with grace and sophistication.

Born in 1903 in Naugatuck Connecticut, Adrian's talents at drawing and his vivid imagination were revealed early on. Against his parents' reservations, Adrian enrolled in The New York School of Fine and Applied Arts (currently Parsons School of Design). After a rather lackluster year due to low grades, the school sent Adrian to the Paris affiliate in the hopes that the artistically rich surroundings would be enough to hold the young student's interests. While in Paris, Irving Berlin invited Adrian to create the costumes for his Music Box Review of 1921 after seeing a piece that Adrian had designed and made for a school friend. At the age of 18, less then one year after he started school in Paris, Adrian left school and sailed back to New York to start his costuming career. Natacha Rambova, the actress and wife of Rudolph Valentino, invited Adrian to Hollywood to design costumes for two of her husband's films. Once in Hollywood, Adrian soon began working for the famed movie director, Cecil B. DeMille. In 1928, DeMille merged his production company with MGM and brought Adrian along as costume designer. Adrian stayed with MGM, and quickly became their top costume designer working with the best of MGM actresses in over 200 films.

Adrian was responsible for creating and refining the images of actresses such as Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Jean Harlow and his favorite, Greta Garbo. Highlighting each woman's most appealing traits, he created the illusion of effortless perfection. Known for his extensive research and his understanding of character development, Adrian helped these actresses to explore and understand their character all while looking their most captivating.

By the late 1930s the Hollywood machine was reacting to WWII and the nation's slow recovery from the Great Depression. Gone were the big budgets for over the top dazzling costumes that Adrian was accustomed to and instead a call for more realistic and " down to earth" films and costumes reflecting the sober attitude of a country at war. Knowing that he needed all or nothing, Adrian decided to leave Hollywood and open a private retail business. For years stores had been copying Adrian gowns, such as the dress to the right from Letty Lynton, which is reported to have sold 50,000 units at the Macy's New York store alone. In 1942, Adrian opened his shop on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills and quickly arranged to sell to one store in every major city.

From 1942 to 1952 Adrian created gowns and smart suits that many women treasured years after they bought them. Adrian infused all his pieces with the charm that he learned in Hollywood with the practicality and design innovation that he perceived women needed and wanted. Adrian formed an impressive collection of garments that continue to influence and be seen in the work of today's designers.

Broadbent Gallery | Anne Bissonnette, Curator

Are there surviving garments which can indicate that fashionable clothes were worn in the Ohio territory from 1790 to 1840, and what can these artifacts convey about late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Ohio history? This research is object-based and focuses on fashionable garments because they make up the majority of the clothing items that survived and were collected. As a result, this exhibition does not claim to illustrate clothing adopted by all Ohioans since not everyone could afford such goods. Artifacts that have survived the passage of time are tangible means of relating to, questioning and interpreting history. Most garments studied and selected for exhibition were drawn from historical societies in the state of Ohio and are displayed on mannequins. Costume collections outside the state of Ohio also lent artifacts that were used to compare and contrast the garments borrowed with other North American pieces. Those are displayed on dress forms and help to acknowledge that the types of fashionable clothes worn within the state were not limited by geopolitical boundaries. The goal of the exhibition was to seek, find and present artifacts unknown to most Ohio historians and to draw from them a meaning that could shed light on the diversity of settling experiences that occurred within the state. The existence and survival of these artifacts, particularly in the first half of the period from 1790 to 1840, is remarkable for different reasons: it serves to indicate the presence of a type of refined social behavior among individuals who immigrated to the territory, and helps shatter the myth of the settler that is firmly anchored in popular culture and consists of the ruffian-farmer dressed in homespun clothing or the trapper in buckskin. It also brings a certain balance to Ohio's early settlement history by incorporating women's history into the equation, through artifacts made for and used by some of them.As the state of Ohio celebrates its Bicentennial in 2003, it remembers the people who shaped the land and helped define its character. In an effort to embrace a wider variety of experiences, it is important to make use of all the tools available to the historian to help understand and interpret the past. Bringing to the forefront artifacts that may help scholars and the public in this undertaking is a worthy endeavor that can help us understand the intricacies of the past, their roots in the present, and their ability to shape the future.

Higbee Gallery | Anne Bissonnette, Curator

Eighteenth-Century Styles (1700-1799)

Fashion and decorative arts have long been subject to similar design influences. Although these aesthetic links are not always apparent, they are often part of a greater artistic scheme that applies to other visual arts such as textile design, painting and architecture.

The eighteenth century was marked by at least three distinctive styles: the Baroque, the Rococo and Neoclassicism. The Baroque style was strongest during the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715) and the forms echoed the strength of this absolute monarch: the style aimed to look grand, impressive and massive. The Rococo style, also called the Louis XV style, was very different and was representative of the reign of this French king (1715-74), although it was most popular before 1750. It was characterized by the presence of scrolling curves and counter-curves which created a strong sense of movement, a love of light colors and a feeling of delicacy. The discovery of Herculaneum (1738) and Pompeii (1748) fueled a love for the styles of ancient Greece and Rome that were to form the basis of Neoclassicism, a style popular through the early part of the nineteenth century.

In addition to these distinctive European styles, many foreign elements entered the design vocabulary of artists. Discoveries of new cultures, aesthetics and costumes ignited a love of exotic styles that was to have major repercussions in the nineteenth century.

Nineteenth-Century Styles (1800-1899)

Neoclassicism competed with a multitude of design influences early in the nineteenth century. Looking back to previous styles became a strong force throughout this period and, at times, many styles coexisted and created an era marked with eclecticism.

Historicism was one of the most important characteristic of nineteenth century design. The earliest historical style to appear followed a movement called Romanticism, which was once again philosophically opposed to its predecessor, Neoclassicism. Romanticism glorified the exotic and drew from earlier styles, particularly the Middle Ages. As is often the case, literary and philosophical movements ignited new trends in various artistic spheres. The nineteenth century witnessed the renaissance of numerous historical styles from Neo-Gothic to Baroque to Rococo revivals. These styles were to impact fashion and decorative arts equally.

Another important event that impacted design in Europe and America was Japan's international trade re-establishment of 1854. Japanese aesthetics began to seep in and the term Japonisme was used to describe this phenomenon. By the end of the 1870s this word was commonly used in France and was widely known in the Western world. Displays of Japanese objects in several international exhibitions, beginning with one held in London in 1862, enabled people of the middle and upper classes to gain familiarity with Japanese aesthetics. This influence was to have considerable impact on late nineteenth and twentieth century design.

Broadbent Gallery | Jean L. Druesedow, Director

Linda Allard for Ellen Tracy: Fashioning A Career features designs Linda Allard created during her 40 year career with the Ellen Tracy firm in New York City. Knowing from childhood that she wanted to be a fashion designer, the Doylestown, Ohio, native graduated from Kent State's School of Art and headed for New York with a bus ticket, $200 and a portfolio from her senior show -- the first fashion show held at Kent State. After pounding the pavement for two weeks looking for a job, she received a call from a manager at Ellen Tracy. On the rainy New York afternoon of September 27, 1962, she interviewed with the company's owner, Herbert Gallen, who hired her for "a new position . . . giving me a chance to prove myself . My salary is not definite . . . probably $50 or $60 a week . . . ," as she wrote in a letter home. She started working the moment she was hired spending the rest of that afternoon cutting out two dresses and folding sample fabrics. It was her first and only job. The company, the job and the designer grew in sophistication as the American sportswear industry grew to meet the needs of women entering the workforce. Linda Allard, encouraged by Herbert Gallen, took innovative risks to bring the firm from a "blouse house" to "Junior Sportswear" to "Contemporary" to what has become known as "Bridge," the high quality ready-to-wear priced just under luxury designer labels for which the firm is known today. Along the way, with the combination of Gallen's shrewd business and fashion sense coupled to Allard's creative talent and sensitivity to the customer's needs, the firm made money every year and Linda Allard became one of the highest paid designers in the industry. Linda Allard designed clothes known for the quality of the fabrics, attention to detail, harmonious use of color and classic line. Women could mix and match Allard's separates across the years making each piece in a wardrobe a worthwhile investment. When Herbert Gallen sold the firm to Liz Claibourne in 2003, Linda Allard arranged for the new ownership to donate the Ellen Tracy archives to the Kent State University Museum, and she personally selected the garments that she wished to represent her career. The exhibition has been selected from this generous gift.

Alumni Gallery | Anne Bissonnette, Curator

Through the action of heat, moisture, chemicals and pressure, wool is made into felt. With great zeal and imagination, Horst manipulates both the wool fiber and the felted cloth in ways that defy conventions. His medium - wool - has been widely used since prehistoric times and yet few artists today choose to face its challenges. Armed with a strong love of color, sculptural shapes and the natural world, this artist reassesses primitive techniques to create a new and exciting body of work.

Horst, a native of Akron, Ohio, was introduced to felt making while enrolled in the master's degree program of the School of Art at Kent State University. Intrigued by the mathematics involved in the production of felted pieces which require careful analysis of shrinking and layering dynamics, he began a journey into a mode of self-expression that demands precision and hard physical labor. Employed as an art educator in the Cleveland municipal school system, he juggled work, family, his obligations to the US Army National Guard and his studies to graduate from the master's program in 2003. With thoroughness and determination, this dyed-in-the-wool innovator has sought to investigate the potential of wool fibers and the various ways to felt, dye and manipulate them.

Each garment is unique yet most follow a similar production process. A flat pattern is first cut out of plastic and slightly twisted strands of wool fibers (rovings) are then laid on its surface and a few inches beyond it. Additional layers of threads are placed perpendicular to one another and thoroughly wetted and drizzled with soap. Then electric palm sanders are used to mesh the threads and layers covering the pattern. Once the pattern's surface is felted, it is flipped over with the plastic pattern facing up. The threads of unfelted fibers extending beyond the original pattern are then folded over it so as to be fused with new layers of threads forming addition pattern parts. Using this process, seamless gowns can be created. As felt is capable of great plasticity and recovery, molding can transform the cloth further and new elements can be grafted. Though many pieces, such as Net and Coils, are created with this patterned process, others are produced as flat pieces that can be draped or wrapped around the body, as is the case for China Water and Symbiosis.

In a relatively short time, Horst has been able to create an energetic body of work with great artistry, originality and humor. From gowns with hundreds of chicken bones in a neo-CroMagnon style to skirts of sprouting organic buds reminiscent of sea anemones, his garments are moving sculptures that surprise and fascinate. This fiber artist's work is unique and the Kent State University Museum is proud to showcase this emerging textile artist and alumnus.

Mull and Palmer Galleries | Anne Bissonnette, Curator

Janice Lessman-Moss is a weaver who teaches. During the past twenty-three years, she has produced an astonishing body of work while transmitting her passion for the textile arts to students at Kent State University. Her commitment to her work as an artist and educator has required steadfast dedication. Currently Head of Textile Arts and Graduate Coordinator for the School of Art, Professor Lessman-Moss is a native of Pittsburgh. She earned a B.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan. Since her arrival at Kent State in 1981, her work has been supported and recognized locally, nationally and internationally. Her weavings have been seen in countless arts publications and shown throughout the world in galleries and museums from London to Nagoya and from Poland to China. The National Endowment for the Arts (Arts Midwest), the Ohio Arts Council, the University Research Council and the College of Fine and Professional Arts at KSU have awarded her numerous fellowships. In 2000 she received the University's Distinguished Scholar Award and became the first artist and the second women in our academic community to be recognized.

Promoting research and scholarship in all its many forms has made Janice Lessman-Moss a leader in her field. With the rise of new computer technologies, especially those applied to Jacquard looms, she seeks to understand how "new options will not just facilitate and expedite the execution of laborious processes, but enhance parameters of thinking." In the exhibition of her work at the Kent State University Museum, the Palmer Gallery features her digital power loom weavings while the Mull Gallery presents pieces she has created through complex manipulation of the threads on her computerized dobby looms. While computers can provide broader visual options and greater flexibility, Lessman-Moss remains committed both to the tactility of her medium through the inclusion of yarns of varied weight and to the intuitive approach available through hand and partly computerized processes. In many instances, the strengths and limitations of her tools inspire and guide her work. Although many of her weavings are conceptualized with the aid of graphic image manipulation software, they remain grounded in the ancient craft of weaving and require a solid knowledge of traditional practices. Though weavers and looms are forever linked in public perception, the absence of Lessman-Moss' physical engagement in the weaving of power loom pieces allows us to address the artist's work beyond the traditional boundaries of fabrication.

The skills and creative imagination involved in the work of Janice Lessman-Moss combine visual and tactile possibilities rooted in both historic processes and current technologies. Her work is unique and has been displayed alongside that of leading textile artists in many juried competitions. These include competitions organized by the Kyoto Museum and in institutions such as the American Craft Museum in New York, where her work is part of the collection and was presented in the 1986 inaugural exhibition and catalogue, Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical, and again in 1995. After a dozen solo exhibitions locally, nationally and internationally, and inclusion in many public and corporate collections, visitors to the Kent State University Museum can at long last see for themselves the work of an artist at the forefront of her field who has helped revitalized American textile arts and has made Kent State's department one of the strongest in the country.

Broadbent Gallery | Jean L. Druesedow, Director

For forty years, from 1962-2002, the Yves Saint Laurent label was one of the most coveted labels in haute couture, available to those 25-women in the world with the means to possess garments of the quality it represented. Superb design and hand workmanship characterize French haute couture, the finest or highest form of sewing, and no atelier excelled that of Yves Saint Laurent at 5 Avenue Marceau, 75116 Paris, France.

The majority of the garments in this exhibition are gifts to the Kent State University Museum from three fashionable women: Aileen Mehle, better known as "Suzy," the New York society columnist; Mrs. William McCormick blair, Jr., a notable hostess of Washington, D.C.; and the late Joanne Toor Cummings, a New York City art patron, collector and philanthropist, the wife of Nathan Cummings, founder of Consolidated Foods Corporation, the maker of Sara Lee products. The Museum is grateful for the generosity of these women.

Higbee Gallery | Anne Bissonnette, Curator

Wearing color is part of the human experience. From time immemorial, colors were an integral part of the fiber of society and their presence, or absence, served a social function. They contribute to making us who we are as individuals and can speak of culture, beliefs and life stages. In the days of slavery, clothing of undyed and unbleached osnaburg fabric served to strip a person of their individuality. The somber yet saturated palette of blues and purples of Amish clothing is part of their culture and beliefs just as the tricolor scheme of revolutionary France.

For centuries, colors and fashion have been linked. While observing the uses and symbolism of different colors and the dye sources of various shades, surviving garments presented in the exhibition help us understand the far reaching applications of color discoveries. Colors have played a central role in the intellectual explosion of science that took place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from the discovery of Prussian blue and the publication of Newton's Opticks in 1704 to the landmark synthesis of Perkin's mauveine dye in 1856. As for most garments worn through time, a Prussian blue eighteenth-century stomacher and the many purple gowns on display in the exhibition can be better understood in light of the period's technological breakthroughs. The story told in the exhibition begins at a time when few dyers were chemists and almost all colors were extracted from living organisms, and ends at a time when dyes were synthesized in laboratories.

Unbeknownst to most, science and fashion have long been intertwined.

Alumni Gallery | Jean L. Druesedow, Director

The furisode, or "swinging sleeve" kimono, is traditionally worn only by women before marriage. The last time a Japanese bride wears these long, swinging sleeves is at her wedding reception. On this occasion, elaborately embroidered furisode, called uchikake, are worn over a matching kimono and serve to display the family's status as well as to keep the bride the visual focus of the reception party. In The Story of the Kimono, Jan Liddel (1989) writes that during the wedding reception "the bride changes at least two or three times. This astonishing fashion show is designed to entertain the guests and parade family status, and it usually presents a mixture of traditional and Western-style clothing, such as evening dress. At least one furisode will be worn, which may be rented, as the bride will never wear this long-sleeved robe again." The Japanese bride's traditional apparel usually consists of a white kimono called shiromaku (shiro meaning white and maku meaning pure) worn for the wedding ceremony, or for a wedding photograph if she has decided on Western dress for the ceremony itself, and then at least one colorful and elaborate uchikake during the reception. The seven richly ornamented garments in this exhibition, all from the Silverman/Rodgers gift to the Kent State University Museum, are examples of uchikake worn as part of such wedding festivities. They are examples of the extravagance made possible by the late 20th century Japanese economy, and were acquired by Shannon Rodgers after 1975.

Along the major shopping streets of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, shops selling and renting Western-style wedding gowns abound. Shop windows feature the latest fashions in wedding dresses, each one seemingly more elaborate than the last. The bride and groom often rent, at great expense, both Western-style and traditional apparel for the ceremony and reception which are usually held in luxury hotels or wedding halls. Sometimes the hotel's services include the rental of traditional garments for the wedding couple and their families. The costs incurred for weddings and receptions have created a billion-dollar industry in Japan - no small part of the expense is rented wedding apparel.