This weekend at Fancy Pony Land

Very eagerly anticipating the flag-raising.  Today we start scheming on the flag hanging arrangement and methods.  Flag-makers and good friends Seth Damm and Nick Terry have generously agreed to help me with the hanging, for which I am most grateful.  Will it be diagonal runs or rows of garlands?  Staggered height?  Flags have been arriving every day and they are pretty amazing.  There are flags from my dad, aunts, uncles and cousins, my kindergarten teacher, someone I made a wedding dress for, and some people I've never met who, no doubt, will soon become friends.  

Also this weekend I am happy to welcome my favorite New Orleans designer and good friend, Andrea Loest, for a trunk show at Fancy Pony Land. Andrea will be presenting a sample sale of one of a kind garments based on material explorations and new garments based on reinterpretations of existing garments.  She will arrive Friday afternoon and set up, so if you want to get an early peek, come by late afternoon on Friday.  The trunk show runs Saturday the 29th & Sunday the 20th 12-6pm at Fancy Pony Land.  Some of her work will remain at the store after the show.  I can't WAIT to see what new stuff she's been up to!

Andrea and I met in New Orleans in 2005.  We immediately hit it off and started doing trades.  She made me an amazing one of a kind "Fiancee" dress which I wore to my engagement celebration dinner at Jacques-Imo's in New Orleans (she got this flying penises bandage dress with rhinestones).  We collaborated on a line of tops years ago--my tops with her silkscreens and my appliques.  Highly collectible no doubt.  We also did the Austin City LImits Festival together and shared a booth.  She approaches design in a very conceptual and narrative manner and is always working on big questions and big projects.  She's also a total independent and the rare combination of artist and business woman.  

her bio:

Andrea Loest is an artist and fashion designer who currently lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana.  She recently received her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Iowa. Her interdisciplinary art practice explores the intersections of art, retail, and garment, while her ready to wear collection and stage performances have been exhibited in New York, Amsterdam, and London.  More information on the artist is available at

www.andrealoest.com

My Personal Flag

I'm working on a new show called My Personal Flag.  I am very very excited about this project.
So far more than 50 people are making their own personal flags.
The show will open at Fancy Pony Land on March 18th and be up until we leave in May.  
We'll have an opening reception the evening of March 19th.


It's been really interesting talking with the different artists involved about their takes on flags.  Flags as political tools, emblems of nationalism, symbols of identity much like tattoos, communication devices like ship signal flags, advertising.  Others have talked about the technical issues of visibility and boldness.
I have been thinking about flag-waving in terms of enthusiasm.  I see flags as a big "hello!" or "I'm here!".  I'm thinking about planting flags on the tops of mountains, newly explored territories, the moon.  You can look at it as imperialistic or as a big old shout to the universe.  Sort of a shout against death, of course.  

I see flags as an essentially positive and life-affirming symbol.  Also kind of sad and cute; what a tiny thing to wave in the face of nothingness.

The flags I am making are cheerful and a little silly.  I am making two Fancy Pony Land flags that will become signs for my store and a series of word flags.  I can't WAIT to see what everybody else makes.

Here are the people who have pledged flags:

AdrinAdrina

Alexandra Annello

Alyce Santoro

Amanda Barr

Andrea Loest

Anne Senstad

Ann Marie Nafzinger

Anthony DeSimone

Beth Murray

Buck Johnston

Camella Clements

Camp Bosworth

Caroline Rankin

Cat Downs

Dave Leedy

Elizabeth Fisher

Elizabeth Worcester

Elliot Coon

Faith Gay

Gina Coffman

Hilary Dupont

JD DiFabbio

Jonathan Mergele

Karen Longshore

Kathy Schott

Kevin Taylor

Leslie Wilkes

Louise Riley

Maryam Amiryani

Matt Vis

Megan Whitmarsh

Meghan Gerety

Michael Bianco

Molly Maguire

Nancy Downs

Nate Manny

Natalie Nicholls

Nick Mamood

Nick Terry

Nicki Ittner

Ricki Hill

Sarah Fontaine

Seth Damm

Shawn Hall

Siobhan Feehan

Susannah Lipsey

Tom Brierly

Tom Leedy

Tony Campbell

Valerie Arber

Will Hemmings

Animal Ball

Last year one of my New Year's resolutions was that I wanted to work on a non-business creative project with friends.  Something fun and not my own.  So it was very fortuitous when my friend Tiana Hux contacted me last spring about designing the costumes for her new show, Animal Ball.  My good friends Judy Bolton & Sarah Borealis were signed on to perform in the show, which made it even more fun.

                                          

Sarah Borealis as the vixen & Judy Bolton as the bunny

Tiana is a rapper and performance artist, a wildly talented individual and an old friend from New Orleans days.  She asked me to look at Hummel figurines and the illustrations of Maurice Sendak--one of my all-time favorite illustrators.   

This is right up my alley.  People dressed as animals or turning into animals, dark fairy tales, creepiness, cuteness.  

I spent the summer working on the costumes.  I designed head to toe looks and worked with Elizabeth Fisher to make them from scratch.  

Tiana as the dog/wolf & Judy the bunny

Elizabeth made the bunny costume and Tiana's sporty lederhosen.  Marcus Bronson, who makes masks and costumes and music, made the amazing headpieces based on my drawings.  He also created the music for Tiana's show.

 owl headpiece by Marcus Bronson

This was such a fun project.  Each character has gloves or mittens with hand-stitched vinyl claws and fur.  

Tiana's dog/wolf and the owl character have hand-painted fur and feather leotards.  This was a great chance to use the "marks" idea I was making over the summer, which will be a major part of the new collection I'm working on right now.

There were also "puppets" that the characters used to tell parts of the story as they danced.  These are the felt shapes you see on some of the costumes.  They are based on the idea of a felt board.

The owl has a feather cape with gorgeous coque feathers generously donated by Abby Arauz and the Feather Place

Tiana is hoping to take this show on the road in the next year so hopefully it will be coming to a city near you.  There will also be a video out sometime soon.

These pictures were taken by the fabulous Shannon Brinkman at the premiere of Animal Ball at Preservation Hall in New Orleans

bandages

                                                                     dark rainbow dress

                                                                             rainbow skirt

                                                                     red hot top & skirt


Elizabeth and I have been busy in the shop lately with bandage skirts and dresses.  I am pretty excited about some of these new color combinations.  
It's been in the 70s the past few days and I am ready for spring.
The bandage rosettes have changed over the years.  They've tightened up, become more symmetrical and regular.  Also denser.  And the skirt shape has gotten narrower.  We've really got it down at this point.
I've been making bandage skirts since the fall of 2002.  I started making them when I first lived down in Redford, TX on the Rio Grande.  The landscape was just so wild all around you is geology really telling a story.  Also I was reading about Georgia O'Keeffe and her landscapes and thinking about the sort of dissected layer look of her flowers.  I started tearing up some Indian cotton voile into strips, then cutting into pieces.  I sewed them into a variety of shapes and patterns in the beginning--stripes! Then I settled on the "rosette" shape I use now, which had a nice deconstructed quilt look and also an O'Keeffe flower feel.  My friends Matt Vis and Kirsha Kaechele came down and visited during that time and Matt said, "let me get this straight.  You're tearing up fabric, then sewing it back into fabric?  That's a little crazy."  
Still crazy after all these years.

Krista's wedding outfit

      Krista & Adam Bork got married December 18th 2010.  It was a really good wedding. 

                         I made Krista's wedding outfit, the one she wore for the ceremony

It is made from Indian silk that I got at Sarpal Cotton Plus, my favorite Indian fabric store in Vancouver, BC.  It's a special custom pencil skirt (sari silk) with a back slit and a sheer silk chiffon (sari scarf fabric) tunic top with a scarf neck that loops in the back and dangles down sort of like a train.  


This was the first time I'd worked with silk in YEARS and it was an intense process.  


At one stage, I made a sample out of some of Suzanne Tick's amazing interiors fabric.  She was kind enough to give me a bag of duplicate sample swatches to think about and this was the first use.


It was also the first time I'd made a wedding dress that was not one of my bandage dresses.  
I wanted to make something for Krista that was really her, really something she'd be comfortable in and that expressed her.  I loved this process of collaboration and thinking through someone else's style.  

marks+stains=FLAGS

January

I started Fancy Pony Land in January 9 years ago.  3 years ago in January I opened the studio store.
Happy January!