Artwear: Fashion and Anti-Fashion

Artwear, also called wearable art and artisan fashion, sprang from counterculture street styles of the 1960s as filtered through practitioners’ formal training in fine arts. Its development in its twin centers of the Bay area and New York was influenced by the era’s feminism, interest in non-western cultures, movements like Pop Art, and the development of studio craft practice. The term encompasses one-of-a-kind works, limited editions, and costumes made for performance. Artwear is first and foremost an art of materials and processes, and its creators, most of whom are women, are passionate about making art with textiles.

Melissa Leventon is a museum consultant, appraiser and teacher specializing in European and American fashion and textiles. She has organized exhibitions on topics ranging from French couture to Wearable Art to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Her publications include several books and catalogue essays and she has appeared as an on-screen expert for the Craft in America series and in “Riveted” for American Experience. Formerly Curator-in-Charge of Textiles at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, she now serves a Senior Adjunct Professor in the Fashion, Design, History of Art and Visual Culture at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and chairs the Board of Trustees of the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. She holds degrees from Brandies University and University of London.

Program sponsors are East Bay Times, Friends of the Walnut Creek Library, and Minuteman Press Lafayette.

NOTE: Masks are strongly encouraged for program attendees ages 2 and older.