fashion design | Karen Tashkovski

Just got a new pair of BCBG sandals. If you have never worn four inch heels, I suggest you buy this brand. They are the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn. No pinching and the interior is fully padded so they are of the work-all-day-dance-all-night variety.

Not sure if they come in a men’s size, one required for the posers of Karen Bakke’s fashion illustrations. The show, entitled Queens of New York, at the Sue and Leon Genet Gallery at The Nancy Cantor Warehouse School of Design (the Syracuse University Building located in Armory Square) will be up until May 30, 2015, if you were not at last night’s reception.

Karen Bakke was one of my professors at SU circa the ’80s when I was a fashion design major. She taught me how to use a knitting machine among other things. She’s retiring this year and going out with a fashion bang.

Her artwork is really exquisite. She uses charcoal to begin the drawings on Rives BFK paper. Her lines are gestural yet confident. Deliberate, which I love. Then she adds mixed media – acrylic, some paper collage and even actual makeup to add that whimsical touch of glitter.

My favorite is the one above. It is a gorgeous face combined with the unexpected man hand. They are all illustrations of men dressed as women, so it’s kind of a casualty of the experience. Karen told me that she’s had people criticize the proportions because the faces are so beautiful, but it’s clear that she is a master technician and the sizes are accurate.

You really have to see this show. There is a fun interactive feature where you too can become a queen by sliding on a wig or two and maybe a boa and look at yourself in a faux-gilded mirror. The pieces are really perfect when witnessed as a group and it is a testimony to a fashion artist who transcends the boundaries of time. They are timeless gorgeous-sos, which is the highest gorgeous I can give. It goes gorge then gorgy then gorgeous-so.

The gallery is located at 350 West Fayette Street, Syracuse, NY, 13202.

Oh, and P.S. – Mary Schalk of Mary Schalk Design did the flowers and I got to take one home. OMG they are perfection in a shoe too!

This was a crazy busy weekend what with everything that I usually do and the whirlwind of art events I mentioned last time. I found the irony in meeting some Facebook friends for the first time at the Edgewood Gallery opening on Friday night so hilarious. It was like a Saturday Night Live skit or something. “I know all about you,” is what one woman said to me, along with insisting that I was stalking her on social media. “You paint cats,” she said. It was just so funny. Later she spoke about her dream of meeting Faith Ringgold, to which I responded that I had met the artist. Here’s the picture to prove it in case she thought I was totally lying.

Faith Ringgold shared her art journey at Light Works at Syracuse University in 2007. Her visit coincided with an exhibition of her work at the Community Folk Art Gallery here. Faith is an incredible person – so inspirational and positive, and lovely. She autographed her book for me and we chatted for a significant amount of time considering that she’d been signing books for a couple hours and there was a long line of people behind me.

https://www.facebook.com/drfaithringgold

https://www.facebook.com/faithringgold

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Faith-Ringgold-Books/429143970457474

Faith is on Facebook – her daughter posts updates regularly. She’s currently working on an app that is based on quilting, which is geared to the elderly and can help improve memory function. I feel like if I can have just half her energy and attitude I will someday make a difference in this world. But I am always vacillating – that confident vs. insecure yo-yo mindset that grips just about every artist from time to time. Did I make the right choices with my life? Am I even good at what I do – artist, teacher, etc.?

When I was in college, Frank Goodnow, my painting professor, was surprised to find out I was a fashion design major. “You are a painter,” he said. I think about that a lot when I wonder if I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing if one believes in fate.

I was reminiscing about this with Laurel Morton, a former classmate and current assistant professor in the fashion program at Syracuse University. I visited her studio at the Delavan Center on Saturday and we chatted about the past. I haven’t thought about those dreams in years and so it resurrected that whole road not traveled thing. Had I moved to NYC and taken that job at Ralph Lauren, would I have eventually become Marc Jacobs famous?

I don’t know. Maybe. At SU, you took foundations courses in art as a freshman at that time (not sure how it is now) then you re-applied to your major. I had originally planned on going into advertising, but only because I thought I needed to have a reasonable art career to satisfy my worried parents who were spending all of this money to send me there. I was the eleventh person chosen for the competitive advertising program based on my freshman portfolio but at the last minute I chose fashion design, which had no such competition. I thought I could see myself doing that.

I eventually found my way back to painting and art, and teaching. I mean, I can still design clothes. But these days I only do it to create Halloween costumes. My specialty is coming up with something that relates to an artist, art movement or culture for a costume that goes with an art lesson at school.

Frank Goodnow was right- I am a painter. I really cannot imagine my life without mark-making. Designing clothes is just another thing I can do.

http://archives.syr.edu/collections/fac_staff/sua_goodnow_f.htm

The Edgewood Gallery show of work by Amy Bartell, Linda Bigness and Todd Conover will continue until January 2nd, 2015, btw, if you want to see it or buy something.

http://edgewoodartandframe.com/