"CON Skirt, Blouse & Tee Shirt,"mixed media
Sponsored by Brewery Ommegang & Hand-in-Hand Farm
Exhibit runs through August 27
Artist's Statement
At a certain point, after trying to understand what it was that I ‘do’, I realized,
no matter what, I keep asking the question: what do clothes mean?
I don’t know that I ever answer it, but I keep pursuing the question. Sometimes
clothes are products and sometimes they are social signals (consumer items and
costumes). They have particular shapes. They are ordinary things we each
wear everyday. Sometimes we become attached to them. Sometimes we cast
them off because they wear out or no longer seem (in our eyes) to reflect who
we think we are. About six years ago, I began making something like ‘ghosts’
of clothes, reproducing them, but in a fragile archival glassine paper that was
translucent. There is something right in the nothingness of the material,
and since then, I have made more. The Closet of Nothing is an installation
of these creations. Please enter.
Kate Hamilton makes garments using many different materials and thinks
about clothes as object and as costume. Her paper clothing sculpture
has been exhibited at the Dorsky Museum and Unison Gallery (New Paltz),
George Segal Gallery (Montclair NJ), BAG Gallery (Brooklyn NY) and
at Concordia College, Minnesota. Her storefront installations have been
set up in Beacon and New Paltz, NY. This summer, her work will be
exhibited at KMOCA (Kingston). She has costumed many shows, including
Nancy Fales Garrett’s opera Dora (at La Mama). She designed art costumes
for the Barnett/Spannon Inside/Out interactive store window performances
in and around 42nd St, NY and in Berlin. In the last few years, her fantastical
costumes have been used in shows at LaMama, NYC, and at Stok Theater, Zurich.
Currently, she is designing a garment set for the opera La Voix Humaine, to be
performed in Zurich and New York through Bluebird Productions (Zurich).
In September, Kate will be an artist-in-residence at the Women’s Studio Workshop,
building costumes out of handmade paper for an art/performance collaboration
with Mau Schoettle. Hamilton teaches costume at Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn
and works out of her studio in New Paltz.
Websites: www.katehamiltonstudio.com www.bluebirdproductions.ch
West Kortright Centre - Website
