Conceptual Coverings, an exhibit at the Comstock Art Facility, isn’t your normal costume collection. Curated by students majoring in fiber and textile arts and featuring students from a wide range of other art majors, it provides commentary on the effect the body has on clothes and image.

This is the second year the show is running, and it is viewable daily until Dec. 10. To see more than clothes on a few mannequins, come at 7 p.m., when the clothes turn into a performance with designs worn by models.

‘There’s no set performance, there’s not a narrative, but you’re seeing the piece activated by people,’ said co-curator Timothy Westbrook, a junior fibers major. ‘The point of all of them is to look at work that looks at the body that isn’t necessarily something that would be ready for a runway.’

Westbrook’s own addition to the exhibit is titled ‘The Paleontology of Women,’ which re-imagines dinosaurs as women. Throughout the show, an actual human model wears a fake triceratops head while donning late-17th century dress, the period when the dinosaurs’ existence was first discovered. The model was far from conventional, as the triceratops danced around and made noise while pretending to eat leaves.

‘It’s just a little bit of humor. I like the goofiness about it. It’s very childlike,’ Westbrook said. ‘What if a dinosaur was a woman? What dress would she wear?’

Another exhibit had more serious undertones in its humor. One dress was modeled after the stereotypical 1950s housewife, with fabric softeners and thread spools for buttons. During the live performance, the model continually vacuumed and smiled while hiding a drinking problem, taking swigs from the hidden bottle of booze in her vacuum bag.

However, some of the other exhibits focus less on clothes and more on the body wearing them. One contraption made of lace has models weaving and pushing against it, showing how the lace and bodies react to and contradict each other. Another piece connects on two stories. When one model moves upstairs the model downstairs feels the string.

Some models are stunning, like one completely bronzed woman in a metal frame dress, or another in a strikingly couture-looking knitted dress. Other outfits are more playful, like a dress made from Air Head wrappers and a crocheted peacock outfit.

The show certainly brings something new to those accustomed to more conventional clothing designs, but it also has helped the students in their respective art majors gain extra experience and publicity from the event.

The curators of the show get the general experience of putting on an art show. According to Conceptual Coverings advisor Olivia Robinson, ‘They get to see A-Z of an exhibition. (Curators) organize where all of the different artworks are going, facilitate the art students that are participating in the show, work on the publicity of the show and help organize the opening.’

It is also a place where art students can begin showing their work to the public.

‘For some of the students, this is the first exhibition that they’ve ever been apart of, so that is a very big deal,’ Robinson said.

Most importantly, the show gives a place of recognition for art students whose majors don’t get a lot of attention.

‘As an art student, you’re doing all this work and creating all of this stuff, and you don’t always get a chance to show it off,’ Westbrook said. ‘I think this is a great chance for our program to show what we can do.’

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Published on December 7, 2009 at 12:00 pm