What are people saying?

'…King utilizes all kinds of materials: silk, wool, leather, linen, cotton, as well as some synthetic fibers. Her collections, based on a philosophy of making clothing for women that is graceful and feminine, evinces a personal confidence born through the unique quality of her designs. Drawing from the past as well as imagining the future, her sources include history, costume, illustration, and literature. “Structural Organic is a term I often think of,” King says, “as I strive to capture the spirit and forms in nature: leaf veins, branches and especially trees.” She integrates hand embellishment, intricate seaming, vintage techniques, and quirky hardware in her separates, coats, dresses, and tunics. Soft to the touch layers of hand-dyed silk chiffon, a long-romantic legacy of fashion, might be shocked into a startling modernistic lift with a visibly exposed zipper. Part of a welcome new generation of wearable artists, King’s explorations are refreshing re-interpretations of how it is possible to decorate ourselves.

During times like ours artists and their works help point the way to a more ennobling worldview of creation. It is helpful to remember the legacy passed on by artists of other times and places, and how contemporary makers challenge the status quo and memes of the day by their innovations and inspirations, just as their forbearers put forth. The handmade object is inextricably linked through the critical interrelationship of its form (through the way in which something is made) to its meaning (the purpose for which it is made), and from which an aesthetic arises. Craft transmits itself directly and immediately with timeless, inherent simplicity—the handmade object is beautiful not despite its usefulness but because of it.'

˜Carolyn L. E. Benesh is Coeditor of Ornament and the magazine’s resident expert on contemporary wearable art. ... Benesh also writes about the Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show, one of her favorite craft events, where each year Ornament sponsors and selects the Award for Excellence in Art-to-Wear. http://www.ornamentmagazine.org/blog/pma-craft-show-volume-383