Home

Photo credit Charlotte Ostergaard

The Power of Sewing and Making

Learning hands-on skills empowers. Knowing how to make things, especially when using cheap recycled materials, allows all people to develop and test out ideas through which they can create positive impact.

Future Projects Vision

*Explore collective art making without rigid project end goals

*A “garden,” outdoor or perhaps underwater, made from recycled material, that people can continue to help build/grow when they enter. This project can be an extension of the traditional defintion of a garden. The project will be more about considering ecosystems and our connection to single use plastic, both bottles and polyester fabrics, then about what an actual ecosystem looks like.

Future Projects

1) A giant wired fish from plastic bottles 2) Human figures made with trash, in a variety of clear to murky ways of seeing into and through the body

About Me

Originally from Philadelphia and now living in Nashville, TN, I have had a career as a costume designer and professor of costume design. I currently run a soft goods lab at Vanderbilt University’s Wond’ry Center for Innovation, and teach in the Fine Art Department. I love collaborating with and learning from students. I have and continue to teach classes in the Theatre, Fine Art, and Engineering programs at Vanderbilt in 1)costume design 2)sustainable fashion 3)adaptive fashion 4)fashion history 5) sustainable fashion as sculptural art 6)designing and making wearable soft goods. My focus is and always has been on collaborating with and supporting students by teaching them hands-on sewing and design skills through which they can express themselves and be successful problem solvers.

Connection to Fabricademy

I am excited that young people today want to learn textile arts. I hope to capture their imagination and inspire through offering opportunites to mix technology with old-fashioned handcraft learned via the amazingly supportive teachers at Fabricademy.

Recent Projects

Photos by Alex Sargent Capps