How many times have you considered that your shirt sleeve is not only a layer that keeps you warm and fashionable but is also a form of shelter for your arm?
Perhaps we don't each think about our shirt sleeve on this functional level, but for Rebecca Jones-- architect, apparel designer and renaissance woman extraordinaire-- such contemplations -- occupy her thoughts and dreams.
Rebecca observes, touches and ponders in patterns, textures and layers, envisioning architectural scapes for individual human bodies and for groups of people. Whether on her computer, sculpting a highly stylized design for a housing development in China, or on her sewing machine fashioning a futuristic jump suit, Rebecca's gaze is inward and out: she imagines and develops designs that are a product of her education, experience, virtuosity, and skill. She calls upon her innate sensual prowess just as often as she does the technical skill needed to make a house stand or a garment fit. The textile project you see on the left is one such an example. Rebecca describes the Haptic Knit project as follows:
"The challenge of this project was to fabricate a textile and subsequent garment that exploits the relationship between the body and clothing using machine knitting techniques. The result is expressed as one continuous fabric with a shifting pattern, wherein layering draping and wrapping become creative expressions in warming and cooling the body”
Rebecca recently moved back to Colorado after a six- year hiatus in which she studied and received a masters degree at RISD and worked on special projects with Robert Wilson and ECOSA. Today she is found in the small, award-winning offices of Michael Tavel’s Architects by day and hovering over her sewing machine or sketch pad by night. When she told me a few months ago that she intended to create an installation piece for Denver's foremost conceptual gallery, Object + Thought, I was initially surprised: after all, Rebecca had just re-entered my realm as a recent RISD grad who, albeit brilliant and unmistakably creative and tactile, in my mind worked primarily in 2D computer design programs, not in 3D exhibition spaces.
Clearly I was mistaken. One day she sat me down, (I clad in most fashionable yoga gear and she mindfully dressed in black blended cottons) and began to grace me with her heady yet easily understandable ideas, which she assured me were inspired by men and women before her- fashion designers and architects named Hussein Chalayan, Shigeru Ban and Howeler + Yoon, among others.
Soon enough we were moving around the room, observing the ways that the clothes we sported influenced our postures and movements. She pointed out to me that the patterns used to create clothing, even the yoga clothes I seem to live in these days, are patterned to fit sedentary postures, most often that of simply standing erect with no movement, let alone expression. Our clothes, especially when they are made of thick and stiff materials, not only keep us warm and protected but they also alter our movements and interactions with other people, our environment and even ourselves in this way, our clothes are comparable to the built environments we inhabit every day: our homes, offices, cafes, subway cars, sidewalks and studios all instruct on some level, our movement, interaction and expression. It is only when we are outside, perhaps on a deserted island or mountain top, that we are truly free to move and express ourselves without the physical barriers- entry-ways, doors, walls, ceilings, floors, hallways- that our built environments construct for us.
Inside /Out, Rebecca's installation that premiere's at Denver's Object + Thought this May is testament to Rebecca's vigorous and playful mind, as well as her soft, subtle and organically inspired touch. It is this synthesis of intellect, physical awareness and experimentation that has conceived of her inside/out installation.
The inherent overlaps between clothing and architecture have spurred two major exhibitions over the past several years, one at MOCA in Los Angeles and one at the Center for Architecture in New York. Both examine the relationship and shared language between architecture and fashion.
As Judith Thurman states in her article, "Frocks and Blocks: Fashion Meets Architecture in Los Angeles”, from the December 6, 2006 New Yorker magazine, ”it is probable that birds' nests and spiders' webs inspired the first weavers and thatchers, and most of the garments ever made have been fabricated from some sort of loomed or knitted textile. Their archaic function was to provide a substitute for the scales that mammals left on the shore. The clothing of early humans (and of many contemporary nomads)—skins draped over a bony frame—was a trimmer version of their tents, though almost anything we wear could be construed, as it is in this show, as a “portable shelter.” Bikinis and burkas, in that respect, both mediate between the public and private zones of a body the way that a wall or a screen does—inviting or denying access to strangers."
For the inside/ out installation, Rebecca carries this examination further by including the viewer as a central component of the piece. The viewer is encouraged to play, interact and consider the spaces her sculptures provide. Indeed, the installation is rooted in notions found in architectural discourse- dualities of public and private, space and body, seeing and being seen. But Rebecca is less interested in force feeding the viewer with these concepts than she is in simply creating a space in which the viewer unknowingly becomes part of them.
Although she makes her living as an architect, I don't think Rebecca would define herself strictly as an architect or as an apparel designer. Unlike other architects who have neglected the connection between architecture and fashion, Rebecca is driven by these associations, drawing intellectual and sensual inspiration from both disciplines in her daily activities. Her thesis work in “the haptic boundary” illustrates her cerebral yet corporeal approach to envisioning architectural design that attends to the needs of the human body and soul in its natural state. Importantly of course, Rebecca achieves these ends in a breathtakingly stylish and cutting edge manner.
Inside/ out is comprised of 5 x 12’ white muslin panels that Rebecca has hand sewn into a cubic form large enough for two people to simultaneously inhabit. Comparable in form to an arctic igloo gone modern, the simple cube is made more sculptural with the addition of hand-sewn ambiguous sleeve-like protrusions that compose topographical landscape designs on each of the four sides of the cube. But whereas no one would suggest that someone try to wear an igloo, Rebecca invites her viewer to wear her sculpture, by entering the interior space and trying on one or all of the sleeves, thus blurring the line between sculpture, architecture, and apparel. At what point does a sewn, voluminous conical form become a sleeve? And at what point does a composition of sleeves become a sculpture? Isn’t a sleeve in fact a fabric, human scaled- landscape that the body occupies?
Each surface of the cube bears likeness to a distinct topographical map, each panel’s guise determined by its sleeve-landscape design. While one panel playfully invites the viewer into its labyrinth of peaks and valleys in which to play, the one next to it quietly seduces and perhaps halts the viewer with its voluminous breast-like iconography. On another panel, a single elongated sleeve gracefully cascades towards the ground, the fabric collects and drapes on the floor like a pooled waterfall.
Similar to a shopper’s experience in an apparel boutique, where styles are intentionally arranged so that they can be viewed, touched, considered and then tried on, Inside/ Out similarly lends itself to choice, its sleeve-landscape design variations presenting several options for interaction and gesture. Importantly, these sleeve-forms follow the movement of the human arm- turning inside and out depending on the pulling in or out, of one’s arm.
Of this playful interaction Rebecca says, "In the vast boundary between the body and architecture there exists a poetic relationship in which we experience space both physically and emotionally. Inhabiting the sleeve brings the viewer in direct contact with an experience of divided space- while they are literally wearing the panel, perhaps even with another viewer, they also figuratively occupy this boundary between body and architecture." With arm dangling in sleeve, the viewer can't help but notice his/ her role in animating the work through this simple activity.
The architectural forms she creates in inside / out are unique in their design and concept because unlike the works of the fashion designers and architects mentioned earlier, this installation intends neither to be strictly a work of architecture nor a garment to be worn. Instead, the piece clandestinely demonstrates the inherent relationship between architecture and fashion design while also exploring the less understood relationship between our built environments and the moving and shaking of our bodies. The piece quietly describes, asks and suggests rather than instructs and defines.
Inside /out seems timely as increasingly we see architectural design that abandons proportions that invite or even permit human activity. As this trend continues, we move farther and farther away from the earth and what is natural- from the spider web and the cabin in the woods. Inside/ out asks: is there a happy medium? Can our contemporary built environments accommodate us physically and psychologically so that we work, play and live in architectural landscapes that envelop us like soft sleeves, allowing us to navigate our daily lives creatively, expressively and mindfully?
Inside/ out opens May 2, 6:30 PM at Object + Thought Gallery, 3559 Larimer Street, Denver
The show runs till June 25
For more about Rebecca Jones, please visit:
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