arachnophilia

Being inspired by nature shows up in interesting ways for me as a Black female fashion design scholar and fiber artist. For arachnophilia, my muse was the tiny, delicate dew-covered spiderwebs that I would come across on my morning walks around the pond. Having attended a colloquium on biomimicry and received scholarly design challenge in one of my courses, I knew that I would be incited to recreate, as best I could, the drops of transparent water kissing the thin threads. Coupling my digitizing and machine embroidery fascinations and my love for building things, I created machine embroidered lace in an ombre of gray tones, built a structural skirt of hardwire around a dress form, and molded each motif to the dress form to get the look I desired. I completed a few trials before ultimately deciding on the direction in which I wanted to go. After draping, I stitched all of the lace pieces together to get ready for the final molding and drying. Once completed, I hand beaded the garment and designed a Klein blue bathing suit for my model to wear underneath.

This exhibit won university-level ITAA competition in 2016, a financial endowment, and a Creative Research & Scholarship Showcase award in 2016 at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art virtual exhibit at Auburn University.