SKETCHES

sketches made only after the dresses were created

because what determines the outcome of these dresses

is the natural process itself

how does the painter concieve the painting?

He is a painter only when he does not know the outcome of his painted picture

Fashion, Identity, and hand sewn wearable pieces

Italy 2013-2015. Material randomly chosen as departure point for a wearable dress. Randomly cut to create a piece that knows not its final realized form. The material is treated as a canvas and each stitch is treated as paint . Totally handsewn from beginning to end.

2014-2015. experiments on crochets. Interested on the idea of using just one simple instrument that could twist and turn the thread, making the thread form endless combinations of flexible material. Decided not to learn from instructions but learned from the possibilities provided by the single thread itself

Fashion as Art 2016-Anticipation for current ongoing research:
Painting or PAINting: a new concept for my current focus on the word in puns in Chinese.

( PAINting, when pronounced in Chinese, means a lady).

When a painting is worn, am I wearing the painting of the lady depicted.,or the lady depicted is now assuming a double identity?

the shadow and form are now united on Painting ( the canvas ) and on PAINting,(the lady, now in the Form of a model).

When the painted canvas is not signed, the moment of my wearing it( since I was the painter) becomes a signed piece: three identities, the painter, the painted lady, and the lady that wears the painting.

Note: the idea of three idenities is not an arbituary idea, it was an outcome of a seclusion, not necessarily desired which led to the growth of an inner voice, as loud as that outer voice, which needs to communicate, to say: I am bound but I am Free.

When you have nothing to lose, you have the whole world within your hands: Creativity.

by Kam Fu Bernadette Lee-Pisapia
08/04/2016
A statement for Domus Academy

Is Fashion Art?
The Question is: What is in a dress?
My approach for answering such question lies in the relationship:
Fashion, Identity, and hand sewn wearable pieces
creations 2013-2015 . Material randomly chosen as departure point for a wearable dress. Randomly cut to create a piece that knows not its final realized form. The material is treated as a canvas and each stitch is treated as paint . Totally handsewn from beginning to end.
Not to mention one of the very first dress I created was a piece sewn from an old abstract painting I made, and which I only intervened with careful stitches as closing passages, leaving other openings for wearable functions. The idea is that such interventions could be reversed; the dress would turn back to its original form, acquiring the status of a Painting once more should it be necessary.
The result is, together with a reflection of my Art work, a few short sequences were created where one could see myself wearing those pieces, and why such approach:
The sequence is expressed in the form of movie trailers, titled:
-What is a self portrait ?( self portraits)
-My dress and my sketch
A series of handsewn collections are thus created and are treated as Art pieces, only because the process of making them were not dictated by preconceived rules, nor idea., but was totally related to a full trust of the creativity process: Let it grow by itself by Following its Soul- a necessary process for creating my own Art work since 1979 , which has its base in the oriental belief of natural flow, fundamental for a spiritual grasp of reality, and of life itself.
Further experiments continued after the use of material to create wearable items. The beginning of using a thread to weave anything that the thread would want to go, such as the creations for berets, tops, for myself and for newborn infants.
So is Fashion Art ?
The above was an attempt to answer such interesting question.
As I see life as an Art Piece, and therefore, all manifestations in life could be an invaluable source to piece moments together, in order to make life more beautiful, alive, and truly lived.
One of the moments I attempted to piece is an early stage of my life, when I was about twelve, who did sketches almost everyday of new concepts for dresses, on the floor of my house in Hong Kong. Yet strangely enough, that little mind never wanted to learn how to machine sew dress.
Forty-five years later, I am writing you, perhaps, to see if that piece would be pieced seamlessly with what I am making everyday, as an artist with a studio in Rome.

see also: www.bernadetteleepisapia.it