DesignLab 2010: Sheila Frank + Anne Schaefer
December 11, 2010 – January 29, 2011
PHILADELPIA, Dec 11, 2010 / — The Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design present DesignLab 2010 from July 17, 2010 through March 12, 2011. The series of collaborative exhibitions pairs emerging fashion designers with emerging artists from Philadelphia to create engaging displays, visible to the public 24/7.
Selected artists will have the opportunity to respond to the work of selected fashion designers by creating an “environment” for displaying the designs in the highly visible InSights Gallery, in the window on Race Street.
In addition to highlighting Philadelphia’s flourishing fashion community, DesignLab 2010 builds on the long tradition of artists and designers who have done visual merchandising for major department store windows.
From Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein to the numerous contemporary artists and designers of today who are commissioned to create imaginative and elaborate spaces that capture the eye and the imagination of passers-by along Madison Avenue, Rodeo Drive and other highly visible and prestigious retail venues around the globe. Department stores in the early 1900s, including Philadelphia’s own Wannamaker’s, were known to use their plate glass window boxes as galleries for displaying art.
Today the art of window dressing reflects broader trends in contemporary art and design from the minimal and resourceful to re-imagined and repurposed everyday objects and exuberant displays of technology.
This is the fourth of five pairings whose durations are five weeks each, featuring the fashions of Sheila Frank and the creative response of artist Anne Schaefer.
A graduate of Moore, Sheila Frank ’07 is the independent designer behind the 3 year old self-titled label, Sheila Frank. Upon graduation, she secured an internship with Charlotte Ronson in New York and quickly thereafter began to organize and design the launch of her own designer label.
In 2007, Frank began her swimwear label influenced by calendar girls of the 40s and 50s and a resort swim collection. In 2008, she showed cocktail dresses at an event called The Tokyo Project; the spring 2009 collection was her first New York solo show; and in October 2009 she showed a ready-to-wear collection that is the first line to really break into highly-marketable garments for the label.
Most recently, Sheila Frank had a solo presentation of her fall 2010 collection during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in February at Fashion Group International, across from Bryant Park in New York City.
She focuses her continuous creativity on the growth of her label and innovation in her work where she fuses designs from past eras with modern aesthetics, and believes that all women deserve to look and feel stylish, no matter what shape or size.
This new collection, titled “Industrial Revolution,” is inspired by the many changes the industrial revolution caused to cities and to the economy, where influences of iron, steel and machinery are evident. Architectural structure and strong lines form a confident silhouette and the color palette, composed primarily of midnight navy and gray, references billowing plumes of smoke and dark sky reminiscent of an 18th century factory. While handmade construction was overtaken by machine production during the industrial revolution, Frank’s collection is defined by intricate details that can only be crafted by careful, hand?sewn attention to each garment.
Local Philadelphia artist Anne Schaefer received an MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art, pursued her undergraduate degree at Washington University where she received her BFA, and also served as a print-apprentice at the Fabric Workshop & Museum.
She co-founded Anne and Kate LLC where she serves as designer / master printer to produce custom paper and textiles on a client-need basis. Schaefer has been teaching textile courses at the university level in Philadelphia since 2003 and is currently an adjunct faculty member in the textile department here at Moore.
She actively shows her work throughout the United States, with her most recent solo and group exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Ann Arbor and Detroit. Schaefer’s work consists of a combination of large-scale installations, works on paper, and three-dimensional geometric objects. In each site-specific piece, repeat pattern is employed to explore the opportunity for endless variables within limited modular systems. Complex relationships are achieved through a combination of simple shapes, basic building structures, and color to recreate visual volumes in space. Here she is given an opportunity to add another level of manipulation, talking both to the visual permeability and to the reflective elements of the store-front window.
The DesignLab 2010 series of exhibitions have been made possible through the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of an initiative for providing resources and opportunities to the city’s many art and design graduates.
The Galleries’ Hours: Monday through Friday 11am – 7pm; Saturday 11am – 5pm, Closed on Sunday and all academic and legal holidays
Gallery programs and events are FREE and open to the public
Moore College of Art & Design
20th Street and The Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19103
215-965-4027 / www.thegalleriesatmoore.org / www.moore.edu
