Evening Gowns for the Midwestern Woman at WSG

Evening Gowns for the Midwestern Woman, an exhibit of work by Valerie Mann opened to the public Tuesday, Oct. 18. A reception to celebrate is Friday, Oct. 21, 7-10 pm. Wear an evening gown or fancy suit to the opening to be elligible to win 1 of 2 $25 gift certificates to the gallery!

The installation pictured here is the namesake of the show.

Evening Gowns for the Midwestern Woman is an installation sculpture of evening 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.

The artist says, "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 a dome tent. 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 a dome tent."

The idea for this piece came about gradually, becoming clearer in the artist's head with time and with work in her sketchbook. "Even so," she says, "I was still on the fence with my commitment to the idea as the focal piece for an entire show. Then, an 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."

Gallery Artist Valerie Mann Makes Purse Sculptures

The current show, 16 + 16, is an exhibit of the 16 gallery owners plus 16 of their friends who work in roughly the same media, i.e. sculpture, photography, etc. Valerie Mann invited sculptor Ken Thompson from Blissfield, MI, so in honor of sculpture, she's created a couple of new purse sculptures. Above, is Evening Bags for the Midwestern Woman: Potluck. The Evening Bags for the Midwestern Woman series started out about 10 years ago with a humorous look at fashion, an appreciation for design and a curiosity of materials. This particular piece is created, in part, with actual aluminum pans from school potlucks. Read the artist's statement about this series:

I've been working on the "Evening Bags for the Midwestern Woman" series for a good 10 years. It started out as an exploration, a response, really, to my vintage purse collection. I started collecting vintage purses after helping my parents clean out my grandmother's house and finding a spectacular 1940s boa constrictor purse, still in the tissue and box it came in. Never used. "What farm woman in her right mind would carry such a (beautiful) thing? And where?", I'm sure she thought at the time. (I always remembered her carrying these behemoth, vinyl shoulder bags that weighed more than she did.) Imagine my surprise to find this little secret, forgotten and hidden in the attic.

So the series came about as a response to my fledgling collection, a study of materials, structure and form. I decided to use my palette of re-purposed materials and delve into this study and to question practicality of purses and this expression of fashion sense and, ultimately to celebrate it with a sense of humor.

16 + 16 is on exhibit through the 11th of September.