culturalboundaries

Bridget Parris holding one of her whimsical paintings.

Imagine sitting at your best friends dinner table more befitting of what you would expect from the  late Fashion Designer Alexander McQueen. The guest in a wildly festival partying mood and laid out before you is an outrageously hyperstylized table that’s arrangement is whimsical and subliminal flowing with oversized candle holders, odd shaped water goblets, and unusual textured linens. These same forces are what drives Bridget Parris imagination to create beautiful and outlandish tabletop and textile designs.

Bridget Parris has parlayed a fine arts degree in painting into an award-winning career in tabletop and textile design. As if that’s not enough, Parris has broaden her repertoire with another degree in fashion design at Parsons the New School of Design in Manhattan. Parris spends much of her artistic energy merging home décor with fashion, seeking out the best of each medium to implore in her work.

Bridget Parris’s studio located in loft-like building in the trendy Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The space is small, but welcoming bright white walls are graced with a series of colorful paintings depicting lively whimsical figures catch and delight the eyes. These paintings represent her love of everything French.

Strong themes weave through Parris’ paintings and home creations; blend, interlock, curl, and stretch your imagination. Her designs are cross sampling of painting and product design; add much needed color to drab place settings or dresses-up austere living rooms.

Bridget Parris was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Today, her beloved former city is considered one of the hottest design places in the country touting company’s like Kohl’s, four major design schools and a slew top design firms. Growing up, Bridget admits this was not the case. Creative problem solving in Parris’ blood; her father a German immigrant worked as a Research & Development Engineer for Johnson Controls producing heating and cooling systems, and holds six patents and. Software copyrights. Her mother a high school mathematics teacher steered her two children towards local cultural activities and to follow their bliss.

Parris says, she was drawn to art at an early age and later supported by her high school teacher. Enrolling in Southern Illinois University, urged by her father to study art education convinced she would always have a study job. Bored in her first year Parris switched to Fine Arts studying painting, graduated in 1991. Eager to learn new things and explore she earned a MFA in painting and drawing in 1994 from Louisiana State University. That same year with only a drawing and painting portfolio, she moved to New York City. But realized that was not enough took textile design classes at School of Visual Art built-up her portfolio and supplemented her income with a temping job in Macy’s hard good department. Read the rest of this entry →

Fiber artist Xenobia Bailey makes crocheted hats that are anything but typical. Her hats are objects with odd shapes and forms, embellished with feathers and beads and luscious color combinations intricately woven into patterns that are outrageously beautiful one-of-kind hats. Her hats are eye grabbing. Each hat is a showstopper, and each wearer a performer turning passerbyers heads. On the streets people stop in awe of Xenobia’s hats curiously questioning. Where did you get that cool hat?

She’s embodies a modernist flair decked in stylish Mies Van der Rohe black round eyeglasses, her clothes crocheted in brilliant colors and patterns, and textures emotes what this prolific fiber artists calls, “funk.” As a fiber artist her hats are a blending of tactile textures, rich patterns and anthropomorphic shapes, seeing her hats I can’t help but think of the ebullient spices in New Orleans flavorful gumbo stew. She likens her aesthetic to the syncopated beats of funk music informed by African patterns found in textiles and architecture, and the rhythms of global music practices of call and response. She has BA in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute. Xenobia’s work links the symbiotic relationship between her design background and being a fiber-artist.

If you missed her exquisitely crocheted hats at the Global Africa Project held at Museum of Art and Design in 2010, then visit MAD.org for more information on her work. She’s represented by STUX gallery in NYC and listing on upcoming shows and more of her work can be found on Xenba.blogspot.com. Thinking of wearing an original Neo-Funky crocheted hat make sure to visit Xenobia Bailey’s Etsy shop. 

Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love was crowned Fiber Month by Mayor Michael Nutter. This March and April Fiber Philadelphia 2012 will hosting a series of lectures, exhibitions planned for 40 locations at such major institutions as Moore College of Art and Design, Crane Arts building and numerous independent art galleries. Elissa Auther, kicked off the opening weekend with a lecture at Moore College of Art and Design on, Fiber in the 21st Century Art World,  on the explosion of fiber and fiber-base practices in contemporary art and everyday life. Elissa is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and Adjunct Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver and her book String, Felt, Thread and the Hierarchy of Art and Craft, published by University of Minnesota Press in 2010. For more information click the calendar of events: Fiber Philly events.

Below: Materiality Exhibition held at Moore College of Art and Design.