Artwork Spotlight: Seams, Jean Shin

#MondayArtworkSpotlight: New York-based artist Jean Shin (@jean.shin) frequently uses donated clothing for her sculptural wall hangings. In her Seams series, Shin manipulates the familiar form of various shirts and dresses by cutting away the main body of fabric and leaving behind a continuous linear band around the stitch.

The remaining seam structures create an abstract drawing in space while referencing the body’s skeletal structure, proportion, gravity and gesture. Shin transforms these leftovers of our lives into visually arresting compositions of form, texture, and color that become surrogates for the human body. See her work “Gold Dress” (2003) in “Inside Out: Seeing Through Clothing” through July 12th when the museum reopens, and swipe through to see more of the artist's textile works.

Artwork Spotlight: Dress Tents, Robin Lasser and Adrienne Pao

#MondayArtworkSpotlight: Today we’re highlighting another fantastic group of artworks in Inside Out: Seeing Through Clothing: “Dress Tents,” a series of wearable architecture installations and photographs created by Bay Area artists Robin Lasser (@rjlasser) and Adrienne Pao (@adriennepao).

Since 2005, Lasser + Pao have designed their large-scale Dress Tents in response to different geographical and cultural contexts, from the hula culture of Hawaii to the military history of Russia. Each site-specific work features a female performer occupying the top part of the dress, while visitors and participants can enter the lower tent portion, which often contains music, images, or other forms of storytelling that offer a more intimate and interactive understanding of place.

Dress Tents on display in Inside Out:

• Ms. Yekaterinburg: Camera Obscura Dress Tent, Church on the Blood, Yekaterinburg, Russia, 2011

• Hula Girl Dress Tent, Waikiki, Oahu, 2017

• Sari Dress Tent, City Hall, San Francisco, 2018 (exterior view)

• Sari Dress Tent, City Hall, San Francisco, 2018 (interior view)

Artwork Spotlight: Kate Mitchell, Terrain

#MondayArtworkSpotlight: Today we’re spotlighting TERRAIN (2015-2016) by Bay Area artist and choreographer Kate Mitchell (@katemitchell9259).

This installation features several costumes originally worn in a fashion and dance performance of the same name, which premiered at ODC Theater in San Francisco on November 18, 2016. Inspired by the new terrain of her aging body, Mitchell created intricately textured costumes that recall natural textures and forms, from the ridges of sand on a shore to the rivulets of rushing water.

Paired with photographer Alessandra Mello’s abstracted images of the artist’s body, these costumes connect the patterns and textures of the female form to the natural terrain surrounding all of us. For Mitchell, “These projects have been part of my desire to find a clearer understanding of what is outside of women, to come to a sense of the strength and beauty of what is inside us, and to express those discoveries—as unresolved as they still may be—with fabrics, photographs, words, and dance, all interwoven together.” #MuseumFromHome #SmallMuseumBigLove #sjmqt #textiles #fiberart

Artwork Spotlight: Laura Raboff, Cricula

#MondayArtworkSpotlight: Laura Raboff’s (@lauraredshoes) Cricula installation in "Inside Out: Seeing Through Clothing."

Clothing imagery has long been a part of Berkeley-based artist Laura Raboff’s work, although her use of natural materials in Cricula signals an exciting new direction in her practice. The lacey, golden material of this installation is composed of cricula, a kind of silkworm cocoon harvested from cashew trees in Indonesia.

The difficult and delicate process of creating each dress involved cleaning each individual cocoon, ironing them flat, and then stitching them together with gold thread into lightweight, dress-like forms. Each dress is carefully constructed to allow light to filter through and shadows to intertwine with the light.

According to the artist, these works evoke unspoken memory, and a layering and synthesizing of complicated feelings that are sometimes at odds with each other.

Artwork Spotlight: Claudia Casarino, "Sin Titulo"

#MondayArtworkSpotlight: Claudia Casarino (@casarina) is best-known for her installations that feature delicate, often transparent garments hung in multiples. In Sin Titulo, currently on display in the exhibition "Inside Out: Seeing Through Clothing," Casarino presents a series of suspended tulle dresses, each designed to fit her own body.

When lit from above, each individual dress imprints a spectral double on the wall behind it. For Casarino, tulle acts as an important material for exploring social issues related to the body and women’s experiences. The artist writes, “For me, its transparency is a metaphor of clothing itself. It covers the body but reveals other things. With tulle, the gaze transcends the garment.”