Relentlessly mining the familiar for the novel and the novel for the familiar.

With this series of metal, ceramic and fabric work, I found freedom by setting compositional parameters, creating frames for myself. Simple components coalesced into more complex arrangements, with adjacencies highlighting similarities and differences. No matter which means I employed, the end came back to the pleasure of seeking new ways to fit and manipulate material into my own established (but expanding) lexicon.

Allison Wade is a visual artist and educator working primarily in sculpture. Her practice is material-based, intuitive, and formally focused. She combines ceramics, textiles, wood, and metal into unexpected, often tenuous arrangements that explore the intersection of flatness and form. Wade’s process, which she likens to syntax, is closely aligned with writing. Deploying an idiosyncratic visual language, she explores the structural and formal contingencies of her materials and sculptures, grouping them into words, sentences, and paragraphs that function both as distinct elements and parts of a whole.

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Save the dates: Allison Wade will be present at the gallery Saturday, September 14 and on the final day, October 5 (both from 2-5pm).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 25, 2024

ARTIST ELIZABETH BURKE-DAIN ATTEMPTS TO MATCH THE CURTAIN AND THE DRAPES IN AN ART AND FASHION MASHUP 

MATCHING THE DRAPES:  Elizabeth Burke-Dain at Compound Yellow

CHICAGO — Please join Compound Yellow on Friday, July 12 at 6 pm for the solo exhibition and fashion show “Matching the Drapes” to present the works of artist Elizabeth Burke-Dain. In a cultural mashup between ceramics and fashion, Burke- Dain investigates how these two practices can come together in a seamless conceptual experience. The show runs through August 17.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Taken from the irreverent adage “does the carpet match the drapes?,” this exhibition playfully explores bespoke garments made from repurposed curtains, bed linens, and other household fabrics imbued with memories of comfort and family life, but it is also about how clothes fit. Clothes found in shops are versions of the ideal and as consumers we are constantly disappointed and sometimes ashamed that the ideal is not in our purview. The ceramic collar models in the gallery are meant to represent the perfect, but you can’t wear them. The fantasy that fashion elicits will always allude you. 

The show at Compound Yellow, an alternative art and performance space in Oak Park, combines Burke- Dain’s new ceramic work with self-taught clothing construction. Together with clothing design,the presentation features a series of ceramic collar forms reminiscent of display mannequin busts found in department stores .

After a long hiatus from sewing quilts and other basic structures, Elizabeth Burke-Dain started to sew again during the Covid lockdown along with thousands of others who took to making masks for under-equipped front line healthcare workers. Because most shops were closed, she made masks out of any fabric in her “sewing larder”-- cast-offs from forgotten sewing projects, old duvet covers, discarded curtains, and remnants collected from garage and estate sales. Working with fabrics again and making patterns reconnected her with sewing.

In the first months of the pandemic, webinars and online workshops became a place of distance gathering, working, and learning in the new normal of lockdown  When Laura Shaeffer, Director of Compound Yellow, invited the artist to a twelve- week webinar held by a group of designers and fashion historians to make a workers uniform, she was all in. The group modeled themselves after the Victorian dress reform organization the Rational Dress Society. 

The Rational Dress Society’s ethos, written in 1881 in London, was to create the “perfect dress” as a reaction to the restrictive corsets, crinolines, and heavily weighted skirts that impede the movement of the body. Even Oscar Wilde, whose wife Charlotte was an RDS follower and activist, wrote enthusiastically in his publication “The Philosophy of Dress” in which he stressed the important relationship between clothing and one’s soul.

“It requires all to be dressed healthily, comfortably, and beautifully,” — wrote Florence Wallace Pomeroy, one of RDS’s founders and member of the Lady Cyclists Association, “to seek what conduces to birth, comfort, and beauty in our dress as a duty to ourselves and each other.”

A uniform was the chosen garment to teach in this webinar due to its being a ubiquitous garment that is mostly created from the labor of low wage workers for low wage workers. Generally, it comes in three restrictive sizes based on the bodies of males in the military.  S, M, L. This group of radical designers crowd-sourced the measurements of hundreds of bodies and came up with over 170 sizes, each of which was cataloged under a variety of titles: Alpha, Spring, Cairo, etc..

During the learning process, Burke-Dain began to understand how difficult it is to “fit” a piece of clothing to the body. Despite its utility, a one-piece uniform is not an easy garment to make or measure, and it is especially difficult for a woman’s body.  It has all the basics: darts, gussets, a notched collar, zipper, arm holes, cuffs, pockets, raglan sleeves, and myriad other tiny details that must painstakingly be learned and perfectly measured before moving from one step to the other. 

Six months and ten uniforms later, she still struggled with hips being too tight or the crotch being weirdly shaped. The finished items, despite the efforts to have patterns in a broad diversity of sizes, didn’t fit right. Something was off in the arm holes, the waist, or the shoulders despite the careful measuring of all the critical areas. She concluded that sewing for other people’s bodies is not for the light-hearted. Making things fit is a sublime skill that she wanted to learn more about. The Rational Dress Society was right, she concluded, comfort is beauty and we should be dutifully comfortable for ourselves and others. 

After working on the complexities of the jumpsuit design, she was ready to make a wrap skirt — one of the easiest garments to make and fit onto the body. She then moved on to more difficult designs and learned many of the basic mysteries of clothing construction.

“Never in my life did I think I would be able to do this,” says Burke-Dain. “This exhibition is my journey into and a celebration of personal style. I wanted to approach this project and exhibition as if I was a working designer creating a signature collection that culminates in a runway show.”

 The Compound Yellow gallery is Burke-Dain’s tricked-out dream boutique. The ceramic collars are the shop’s decor. “Matching the Drapes” is a bit of personal theater and fantasy for the artist. The show closes on August 17, and interested fashionistas can contact her for a fitting of one (or many) of the garments displayed in this summer exhibition. They can bring in fabric pieces from their own “sewing larders” or, if they wish, a purchased fabric from a shop. 

SHOW DETAILS:

DATE: FRIDAY, JULY 12, 6 pm - 9 pm

COMPOUND YELLOW, 244 Lake Street, Oak Park (one block from Green line Ridgeland stop)

FASHION SHOW: 7 pm

Models: Lindsey Rauba, Ola Gorczynski, Laura Shaeffer, and Tracy Burke-Beckers

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE BY COWBOY JANE: 8 pm

CLOSING: August 17

MEDIA INQUIRIES: Elizabeth Burke-Dain, eburkedain@gmail.com, 773.368.4928