The Real Cinderella Dress

I've been making work from re-purposed/recycled materials since... ...I can't remember - long before it was hip or cool. Long before a big deal was made about it, anyway. But I've been thinking lately that I should put words on why it's important to me.

The re-purposed materials I use are significant to me on many levels.

Ethically, they are important to me because they are simply raw materials, being put back into use and not discarded. I look at the materials more for what they can be, not what they are.

Personally, it's a way of material use that is an extension of my frugal, farm-raised heritage and it's a mode of working I've always employed.

Metaphorically it's symbolic of my personal feminist theory. Oftentimes, women are the ones left to stitch together a meal, a life, a family, a home, a culture....from scraps....scraps of food, of time, of fabric, of psyches...

The Real Cinderella Dress, installation view

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“Evening Gowns for the Midwestern Woman
statement for premiere installation at WSG Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI, 2011

Evening Gowns for the Midwestern Woman is an installation sculpture of formal gowns sewn from a variety of patterns and fabrics, with some modifications along the way. Each gown is clearly a distinct design from the next, but has a solid connection with the gown adjacent, through its hemline. As a result, these individual pieces are all interconnected eventually. The dresses are complex in design and engineering, yet simple in form. They simultaneously hang from the ceiling on hand-made cedar (a la old split rail fencing) hangers, and are tied to the floor and walls, giving an effect of floating together.

This piece allows me to combine several things I love to do – problem solve an idea, sew and camp. “Camp?”, you might ask. The original idea I had in my head was to have the skirts pop out like dome tents. This required some further study of our family tent. Measurements were taken, prototypes made and the skirts were all altered with panels engineered to pop out like dome tents.

The idea for this piece came about gradually, becoming clearer in my head with time and with work in my sketchbook. Even so, I was still on the fence with my commitment to the idea as the focal piece for an entire show. Then, a wonderful gallery patron challenged me as we looked at my work early last summer, saying, “I think you’re being too neat...to careful. Don’t hold back! What are you waiting for?” It was exactly what I needed to hear.

Several truths revealed themselves as I worked on this piece:

1.the genius of my mom’s quote, “Sewing teaches you how to swear.”
2.the amazing level of engineering that goes into designing a piece of clothing
3.Simplicity is a stupid name for sewing patterns
4.size 4-6 today was size 14 in the late 1960-70s, think about it
5.sometimes sewing is like printmaking with the backward/forward, wrong side/right side thought processes involved
6.sewing is empowering
7.one shouldn’t sew something important when one is mentally tired
”

— Valerie Mann

Fortunes, detail, 'You will trust your instincts.'

Fortunes

-statement for installation shown in WSG Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI; Muskegon Community College, MI; Water Street Glassworks, Benton Harbor, MI; Kulturhalle, Tubingen, Germany; Fitton Center for the Arts, Hamilton, OH

Fortunes is a piece that I've been working on since 2004. Each vintage baby garment is embroidered with a "fortune", a destiny that a child has come into the world with - seemingly random, arbitrary. The idea is, each of us comes into this world in a set of circumstances beyond our control and at some point in our lives we can make the opportunity to transcend those circumstances. In creating this piece, I was thinking about how we as parents, mentors, community members can pass important coping skills on to the next generation. Often, I've heard people experiencing "Fortunes" ask, "Why would someone dress their child in this?" (while looking at the garment with the fortune of, say, "you will struggle with addiction". My response is, "Exactly. Why would you?" As a parent, I sometimes see fellow parents worry more about how they'll dress their child - appearances - than what skills they help them develop to navigate life.

Each of the garments is embroidered with a fortune about someone I know, or myself. Several are about one single person.

How is it that someone can "Be orphaned at a young age", "Struggle with addiction", "Cherished by many" and "Always share your wisdom at the right time"? I'm interested in the resiliency of people, how complex people are.

Reviews, 3rd party Blog posts regarding Fortunes

http://lesliesobel.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html

http://www.thesidedoorgallery.com/2008/06/valerie-mann-fortunes.html

http://wsgartgallery.blogspot.com/2009/05/valerie-manns-fortunes.html