Tanya
Wood
Night
Of Artists
Orchesis
Dance Group
Ph. 780.492.0770
PAV 320-Q Van Vliet Centre
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Orchesis
is a student run club working through Campus Recreation at the University
of Alberta. Orchesis exists to provide choreography and performance
opportunities, plus training in modern and jazz techniques for university
students and the community.
Swizz
Salon and Spa
Ph. 780.433.7078
11104 Whyte (82) Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Photographs
by Wil Richardson, Darren Mostoway, and Sarah Pelletier.
Site Design by Wil Richardson of Blink design group
Inc, Edmonton Alberta, Canada. (780) 695-0992
Thursday, 17 March, 2005
Arts & Entertainment
The Gateway
Volume XCIV number 40
Pg.20
Designer
a found-materials girl
Tanya Wood’s Dysfunctional Clothing collection – as presented
by the Orchesis modern dance group– offers an unorthodox look
at fashion
Tanya
Wood
with Orchesis
Dysfunctional Clothing
From the Ground Up Charity Gala
Dinwoodie Lounge
Saturday, 19 March at 5pm
Mark
Woytiuk
Arts & Entertainment Writer
Take
a tractor axle, three feet of steel tubing and the rusted right fender
of a Ford Pinto and you get a great pile of prairie junk.
Rusting
farmyard relics and oil-industry refuse are common local phenomena.
But for sculptors like Tanya Wood, they are materials begging to be
cut, melted, drilled and welded into something beautiful.
It
was with these caches of steel that Wood developed her creative talent.
But her penchant for jagged metal has given way, at least temporarily,
to the frills of clothing design.
Her
switch to a softer medium, she says, was inspired by a recent rip to
Europe.
“When
I came back I was feeling kind of broke but had access to a sewing machine
and just kind of fell into it,” she says while sipping coffee
at the Powerplant.
This
project has turned into a collection of what she calls “dress
sculptures.”
“The
dresses reflect the older style of clothing coming from a decadent European
history, but there is no overriding theme,” she says of her creations.
Like
her sculpture, the only consistent theme in Wood’s fashions is
the source of her material.
“[The
dresses] are randomly constructed from scraps of fabric and bolts of
cloth without any predetermined design in mind,” wood says. She
goes on to say that it is precisely the unusual construction of her
pieces that sets her Dysfunctional Clothing collection apart from regular,
functional garb.
“The
dresses are not 'designed' but created intuitively by interacting with
found material,” she says.
Wood
has chosen a similarly unorthodox venue for exhibiting her attire. The
fabric sculptures will be worn by dancers from the U of A dance group
Orchesis during a 30-minute choreographed presentation. Wood hopes the
presentation will flatter the pieces.
“Wearing
and movement are fundamental in showing the aesthetic qualities of the
dresses. Fabric moves and changes so it wouldn’t be right to show
the dresses on a mannequin or hung on the wall.”
Wood
hopes that the show’s unorthodox nature will present an opportunity
for the audience to reflect on clothing design.
“Some
people will come and say ‘nice dresses,’ and that’s
all, and others will recognize the social issues hinted at by the historical
context of women in long dresses,” she says.
“I
wanted to avoid the typical fashion industry presentation where models
walk down a catwalk and do a turn. I am trying to preserve space for
a little more diversity in clothing design.”
