Like a painter or sculptor, or even an architect, the clothing designers in the “Art To Wear” fashion and home design show at Artstream in Rochester on Saturday, April 15, see something that no one else sees.

In a piece of fabric, they see potential. The human figure may be their only pattern. Add a little knit accent, cut on the bias, add some hand stitching, and three or four or 20 hours later you have an original piece of art, ready to wear. Inspiration comes from everything: design, architecture, historical eras, found objects, the way the light falls through leaves, the way a stranger’s skirt swirls in the wind.

“Art To Wear/Home Décor” will take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a backdrop to the show provided by the current Artstream exhibition, “Composite Memories,” featuring work by Albina Colden, Mitchell Rosenzweig, Edibeth Farington and Erik Boettcher. In addition to apparel, the show will feature a variety of crafts by local artisans, including knits, handbags, scarves, jewelry, pottery and home decor.

“There have been so many people who have come in and asked for locally made jewelry. We dabbled a little bit with some knitwear things we bought, and they just flew out of here. We thought it made a lot of sense to recognize the fine indie designers right outside our back door,” says Susan Schwake Larochelle, co-owner and curator of Artstream.

The event, featuring light hors d’oeuvres and music by the Amigo Blanco trio, will showcase the work of more than 40 local, or locally connected, indie artists, with prices ranging from $10 to $300. The artists will be on hand to answer questions and take custom orders, and there will be a runway show at 2 p.m.

We talked with a few of the local clothing designers to get a peek at their creative process.

Spaulding High School, Art III and Art IV classes

What do you get when you ask high school students to make something out of nothing?

A frilly bubble-wrap plastic prom dress, made both mod and modest with brightly colored tissue paper filler. A poncho made of pogs, or a shirt made of freeze pop wrappers. A sexy halter made of plastic drinking straws. A handbag made of sox, or another made of nails.

“I told them to find something you have a lot of. That’s the first decision. Then they bring it in and try to work with it. If they’re successful, they keep going,” says Spaulding High School Art teacher Karen Good of the assignment for the 40 or so students in her Art III and Art IV classes. “Most students didn’t want to start over, so they found a way to make it work.”

A friendly competition emerged between the two classes, and the result offers the viewer another perspective on design, as seen through the eyes of the emerging artist. “I think it’s been a growing experience for the students to make something out of nothing,” Good says. 

It’s also boosting the students’ resumes. Based on this experience, Emma Power, who won both a Gold Award and an American Visions Award in apparel design in the national Scholastic Art Awards for her rubber band shirt last year, plans to create an apparel concentration for her advanced placement portfolio.

The participating students will take a field trip to Artstream on Friday morning to hang a juried selection of about a dozen of the works for the show on Saturday.

Kate Crowell

www.keight.com

A fine arts painter who keeps both an art and sewing studio on the third floor of the Portsmouth house she shares with three musicians, Kate Crowell’s inspiration comes “from everything, basically,” she says. “Maybe I’m walking the dog and in the way the light hits the tree I see a texture I’d never seen before. It could be anything.”

Her only pattern is the human figure, firstly her own. For the last five years or so, she’s been cutting and stitching, crafting one-of-a-kind clothing for herself and now as commissions for clients. She started by altering shirts to make them smaller to fit her frame. Then, lured by the bright polyester fabrics she remembered her grandmother sewing and pushed by her explorations of line and collage in her painting, she began cutting up clothes and stitching them back together, pairing sleeves from one shirt with a collaged bodice made out of three or six other pieces of fabric. 

In paintings she created in 2001-2002 during and after a post-baccalaureate program at Brandeis, at the time she began sewing, you’ll find charcoal and graphite lines, sometimes cut up and pasted on, string, canvas and photocopies. “Everything is completely folded and pulled together.” She pulls out a tank top made entirely of brown fabric except for a small inset of orange. The halter-style top is built up with appliqué and stitching and deconstructed with cuts and slashes. “You can see how it’s kind of pulled and collaged together. It came right out of the drawing I was doing. My visual aesthetic came right from there.”

When she began creating clothes, it was from the ground up.

“I didn’t know how to make a shirt. I was just making it up, working on my body, pulling things off, putting things on. There was one piece that I made, I had to cut it off of me, and then I inserted this very colorful piece of fabric where I had to cut it.”

Her work grew increasingly sculptural, elaborate and humorous. “There are a lot of dress codes where we are, how we’re supposed to look at work and things. So for me to be able to get away with this kind of marking of a shirt, it’s just kind of strange, but it’s kind of fun, too.” There are pieces that remind one of armor, and others with flowing sleeves that bring to mind a kimono. Not everything works, but the pieces that do often succeed in unexpected ways, such as when a sleeve ruffles off the side of a shirt or a long stripe of zipper slashes diagonally down the back of a dress.

“In fact, I once was showing some stuff in a gallery and (sculptor and theater artist) Eddie Langlois came in, he saw my work and he was like, ‘Awesome. Just keep doing it really bad. That’s great.’ I was like, OK,” she laughs.

Following her move in 2004 from one giant studio in the Button Factory to the smaller, divided spaces in her home, she finds that both her painting and her sewing are changing.

“I would say that now my painting is much more contemplative. I’m working small so I want to have much more control over the composition. Whereas before I was very intuitive and very physical, really letting myself be free on this giant surface, now I’m making much different decisions, like not listening to music any more when I paint, and putting things together differently in my painting. I guess that’s what’s happening in my clothing, too.”

She’s planning a field trip to New York to buy “really soft, comfortable, something-that-feels-good-to-put-it-on kind of fabric, something that you can move with and something that can move with you throughout the entire day,” she says. “I’m working very minimally now, on things people can wear every day and not think twice about putting them on.”

Crowell also hopes to continue to create commissions, such as the kimono dress made of reconstructed indigo blue hemp T-shirts or the prom dress she’s currently working on. But what she really wants is to collaborate with another artist. “When I left California I kept in touch with my friends there by sharing a collage or drawing I had started, and they would change it and send it back to me. I would love to do that with fabric, I think that would be fun, whether it be cutting stuff up or sewing it back together or silk-screening it or whatever. I think that would be really fun.”

Cordwainer Shoes

www.cordwainercraftgallery.com

Molly Grant talks to me on her cell phone while walking the aisles of the American Craft Council show in St. Paul.

“Those are really nice,” she says to her companion. They’re walking through row after row of craft shoes, jewelry, pottery, leather handbags, blown glass, clothing and more. “Everything is fine-crafted, handmade stuff,” she says. “There are people from all over the country at this show.”

Top-tier venues such as these are where Grant and her husband, Paul Mathews, meet artisans whose work they sell at their Cordwainer Gallery in Bedford and where they meet the individuals and wholesalers who will buy and sell their own Cordwainer shoes, which Mathews’ family has been making since the 1920s. Molly joined the business in 1993, helping to make the shoes and selling them at shows. Each pair is custom-made out of leather and stitching (no glue), made to fit by careful measurements of a customer’s feet, at a rate of two pairs a day out of a shop attached to their home in Deerfield.

Before she met Mathews, Grant had been in the leather business in Portsmouth for 15 years, making custom clothing, jackets and pocketbooks in a shop on State Street. The artistic shift to shoes was “huge,” she says.

“Not only did I go from a different sewing machine—I had a very high-powered machine and I’m working now on a 1930s Singer sewing machine with a tiny, fine needle and very precise stitching—but it used to be I would do 10 stitches per inch. Now I’m doing 50 stitches per inch. It’s very different. If I were doing a handbag and made a goof in a seam, I could just take in a little more. With shoes, it’s very precise because they’re exactly sized.”

Grant has helped to introduce five or six different styles to Cordwainer’s line, but the shoes they make are based mostly on about 20 classic styles the company has been making since the 1930s, with a low heel and rounded toe. “Mostly everything we made (when I started) in 1993 we’re still making. Even taking an old style and giving it a new fun color really amps it up some,” she says.

Before I let Molly hang up the phone, finish her shopping and get ready for a day at the show, I ask her to describe the state of the craft industry overall.

“Hopping. Huge,” she says. “There’s a huge market for quality, handmade items. We’re lucky that we’ve found our niche.”

Cynthia Designs

www.cynthiadesignsonline.net

Your eyes—and hands—hardly know where to turn first in Cynthia Ouellette’s home studio on Central Avenue in Dover.

On a recent Friday afternoon, she was getting ready for a prom fashion show at Café on the Corner, and among the racks of clothing and items displayed on the walls were a dress incorporating yards of raw silk, a nubby cotton candy pink synthetic knit top, a silky aquamarine cocktail dress, and sturdy, bold-printed home décor fabrics turned into skirts with hand-stitched accents. Items included a tuxedo prom dress for the ladies with a flared black skirt, pink satin cummerbund and meringue-like white bustier top. For the gentlemen, there’s a low-slung pinstriped kilt, an Elvis Presley tie, a baseball shirt made of microsuede and a belt of bungee cord.

“For me, it’s using your brain to interpret an idea. Using colors in new ways and shapes, getting inspired by architecture,” Ouellette says. “(It often comes back to) the mid-century modern, the very organic lines and the starkness, the colors, just the way that when you look at those things they really affect you.

Her lines are clean and simple, but the concepts mix eras, fabrics and even functions (she has a vintage car-themed dress line, which includes pieces inspired by a 1957 Buick and a Hornet). Each piece is one-of-a-kind, but cut to fit a range of two or three sizes by sitting slightly differently on each person’s frame.

“There’s nothing more exciting than mystery. If you’ve got a little bad and a little good. A little prissy and a little punk. Love that. That shows you were thinking about it.”

The Winnicunnet High School graduate has a background in art and design, as well as a degree in political science with a minor in microbiology, with experience working at Cato Institute and with the Libertarian Party in Washington, D.C. When her daughter, now 7, was born, Ouellette began making clothes for her. She liked it so much she began selling them, as well as handmade Barbie clothes, on eBay. “That’s when it was in its infancy and people were scooping stuff up for a fortune.”

She continued to challenge herself, offering home décor, window treatments and alterations as the mainstay of her business. Her custom clothing items sell for $50-$600, and her fashion shows are becoming regular events, whether they’re showcasing prom fashions or bathing suits inspired the ages, such as at the more adult-oriented bathing suit show she held last summer in the mill courtyard.

There’s a large market in Dover, she believes, if she can tap into new residents and teenagers who want to wear something more stylish than jeans. Beyond that, she says, “I would just like to have a larger store in a very hip area. … My goal is I’d kind of like just to get noticed. And move to London. Or France.”

She considers herself an artist and entrepreneur. “I will work on something until I am happy with it and it’s unique. For me, it’s art to wear.”

Art To Wear/Home Décor
Saturday, April 15,
11 a.m.-4 p.m., free
Artstream, 56 North Main St., Rochester, 603-330-0333

jewelry by omondieu; daa glass; tre Redmond; Mary Webber; Tara Twine; Zooziis; Sleepy Snail Designs; String Bean Girls; Katie Samson; Oblio Studios // handbags by  oona coco; String Bean Girls; Kimberly Lyford; Molly Grant // scarves by Sleepy Snail Designs; Glen Szegedy Silks // pottery by Davis Studios Porcelain; FirePond Pottery; Muddy Bird Pottery; Sweet Fern Pottery; John Zentner; Jane Kaufmann // hats by String Bean Girls // apparel by Kate Crowell; Kimberly Lyford; Cynthia Designs; Cordwainer Shoes // wool rugs by Fish Belly Rugs // pillows and décor by Susann Foster Brown; oona coco; Megan Samson Vessels; Cynthia Designs; Egg-a-go-go // leather by Molly Grant; Cordwainer Shop // glass by Salamandra Glass // paper: Queen Oscar Designs; Jeff Palmer; Sleepy Snail Designs; Young and Hip Industries; Egg-a-go-go // wood by Adam Pearson // fiber by Kathy Desroches; Alice Migliori

Can’t make the show? Some of the work may be purchased online after Saturday at www.artstreamstudios.com.