Nomadik in the Desert

The Nomadik Harvest Dress was part of the Flatlanders and Surface Dwellers exhibition at 516 Arts in Albuquerque New Mexico. Curator Lea Anderson invited me to come down and give a talk about my work and so I took the opportunity to also have the Ms Cornucopia, this time embodied by Korie Tatum, cook up a dish of Cholla cactus buds. I met with local native plant forager, Amy White, who took me out to gather plants, which was the highlight of my trip. We also went out to the desert to take some photos of the dress in it’s natural habitat. Special thanks to Rhiannon Mercer Simpler and her husband Trent for having us in their home and also to Marge and Wolf for letting us onto their land. I had been to ABQ a few years ago for the Land Art Symposium and since then i had imagined one of my pieces in this sparse but rich landscape. Thank you to all who helped make this vision possible. Go to this Flickr page to see more photos and Special thanks to gallery assistants Teresa Buscemi and Claude Smith, who took photos and brewed up a large pot of Navajo Tea for the event. View video of the Tohono O’odham picking Cholla, one of the desert’s super foods.

Nomadik Harvest Dress camping and foraging for local native plants in the New Mexico desert

Cholla buds taste like a cross between and artichoke and asparagus. They have a slippery texture like okra or aloe verra.

Cholla stir fry with veggies. Local and nutritious.

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Tara Dress

For Earth Day 2013 I made a new dress, which began a whole new investigation into my Weedrobes series, namely working with the movement of the armature created for the garment. As often happens with this work ,I do not have much time to contemplate scenarios because the plants are in bloom and the window of opportunity is short. I did realize that the dress covered with fresh material and the dance with the armature where 2 separate projects, so I concentrated on making the fresh dress and the movement piece will come sometime in the future. The concept for the dress came from a cage-like hoop skirt by one of my favourite all time designers Jean-Paul Gauthier. I made the armature with fresh Willow branches from my yard and covered it with Magnolia leaves. The bodice was covered with Camellia flowers also from my garden. I discovered an abandoned Tudor house and the Tara {from Gone with the Wind} concept was born. A post-apocalictic eco-warrior, Miss Rosa Styles, returns to her home to rebuild. We had planned to also do a street intervention that day but it began to hail so we had to cancel that part but we did the photo shoot when the sun came out and the result was very cinematic. Special thanks to the crew: model: Nita Bowerman, Photo Assistant: Kathleen Loski, Makeup: April Beer, Video: Martin Borden, Transportation: Tanya Hockley and flower wranglers: Marina and Celia.

Miss Rosa Styles returns home

Camellia flowers, Magnolia leaves, Lilac flowers, Willow, Reed and thorns.

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BG Magazine

My ice typography work was recently featured in BG Magazine. I love the layout of the images.

View full article here: Dextras Layout

2013 Environmental Art Calendar

2013 calendar

Start the new year off with the 2013 Environmental Art Calendar  by Amber Lotus Publishing. Photo Solar Resource is featured in February. I am in good company with other artists such as Steven Siegel, Patrick Dougherty, Chris Drury, Karin van der Molen,( whom i met during Land Art 360 Mongolia) Chris Booth (who exhibited during the Earth Art in Vancouver) and Diana Lynn Thompson (who lives on Salt Spring Island here in BC). What an honour!
http://www.amberlotus.com/productdetails.cfm?sku=13EA&isbn=9781602376113&title=2013-environmental-art-wall-calendar

The Little Green Dress Projekt

The Little Green Dress Projekt was an outdoor installation in the Earth Art Exhibition at VanDusen Botanical Garden in the summer and fall of 2012. For a full description of the project and to view photos please visit the LGD blog. I was on site for 2 months creating these pieces and installing them one at a time in the perennial garden. They were left to change and decompose over time to emphasize the process of nature. Each dress was made for an individual woman who supplied the leaves and flowers for her dress. Four women worn their dresses for the exhibition opening  on August 2nd. In attendance were the curator, John Grande and artists Nils Udo, Urs Twellman, Chris Booth and Michael Dennis. Many thanks to my helpers Nita Bowerman, Martin Borden and Ruth Wolf who made the armatures for each dress. Also special thanks go to garden director, Harry Jongerden who was responsible for the exhibition and his tireless assistant Tracee Jung. The exhibition was well received in the press thanks to publicist Nancy Wong.

composite of 21 dresses

 Martin Borden created a short video of the dresses worn on opening night.

Raymond Chan also created a video of the project

made from Magnolia leaves, Hydrangea flowers and Globe Thistle.

Barbara’s dress after 2 months outdoors, turned a golden brown patina from sun wind and rain.

The Nomadik Harvest Dress

Nomadik Harvest Dress with Lorraine Matheson Heidi

The Nomadik Harvest Dress was completed during a 2 week art residency at the McMichael Art Gallery in June 2012 in collaboration with the Fashionality Exhibition. This wearable architecture is the second piece in the Urban Foragers {house of eco drifters} series, which began with the Mobile Garden Dress. The design is based on the yurts I experienced while in Mongolia. The skirt is created from a folding bamboo fence and Willow struts sewn into a wool waistband.  The traditional felt outer covering is replaced with crazy quilt of woollen sweaters, which have been shrunken and dyed. The covering contains over 40 pockets that are meant to hold the plant materials gathered by the dress wearer. The skirt also acts as a shelter for camping in cooler weather and it also carries a portable Butane stove, pot and utensils for cooking the veggies. The piece was presented during the Canada Day festivities at the McMichael and animated by Lorraine Matheson Heidi, who interacted with visitors about the local edible plants in her dress.The NHD, animated by Nita Bowerman  was presented at the Sustenance Festival in Vancouver, where we made a soup with local vegetables and shared it with the public. Special thanks to Fred at the McMichael for teaching me about the local plants.

Nomadik Harvest Soup

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Lady Calla

Lady Calla HighLine

It was always my intention to do a street intervention with one of the dresses from the BBG gig and so i met with actor and playwright Miranda Huba and we developed a strategy for bringing Lady Calla to Manhattan. BBG supported this project by providing a small crew to document and deal with logistics. The aim was for Lady Calla to ask New Yorkers where she could find sustainable fashion. After interacting with garden visitors, she took the subway from Brooklyn to the Meat Packing District and then took a stroll down the new High Line Park. New Yorkers are bombarded with promotional gimmicks all the time and so they are quite jaded but we did manage to chat with people, who were not fazed by this woman dressed in live plants asking them where the best stores for sustainable products were. We went by some big designer stores like Alexander McQueen but the heavy security at the door kept us and our cameras out. Instead Madame Calla had fun interacting with the window displays. Many thanks to videographer Catherine Tyc for her support and Kate Blum for her boundless energy. As Miranda, Cat and i took the subway back to Brooklyn, i felt so fortunate to have teamed up with these talented women: Cat is working on a documentary called Swap about fashion and identity and Miranda wrote a play called House of Kosa which examines the intimate relationships within a fashion house.

Lady Calla in front of Alexander McQueem

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La Robe Jardin Mobile

La Robe Jardin Mobile (The Mobile Garden Dress) was in Montreal this spring for the Rendez-vous Horticole garden show at the Montreal Botanical Garden. Dji Haché animated the dress for 3 days and her enthusiasm was infectious with the thousands of people who came through and watered her plants and tasted her herbs. These were selected and donated by Josée Archambault  of Les Aromes du Petit Coteau.

The month of May was also the time of nightly demonstrations on the streets of Montreal, which became known as Les Casseroles. We heard about lawyers actually protesting so we took La Robe Jardin Mobile to the streets and handed them flowers as a gesture of support. It was fantastic to see all these daisies in hair and lapels amongst the black robes of the law.

The Jardin Mobile as a tent

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Cranberry Beaded Mini

This mini dress was made entirely  from natural materials- Wear it and Compost it! The intention of this outfit made with super antioxidant cranberries was that it would be trashed as the dancer wore it. We did a formal studio photo shoot of the dress intact and then let model/dancer Nita Bowerman go wild and dance her little heart out. The result is that cranberries were squished and Chinese Lanterns went flying! This is my first foray into video so it will be a while until i have an edit of this fantastical performance but i am really looking forward to this project. The cranberries that were left intact have now dried and are waiting to be repurposed into future projects. The dress was made from fresh Cranberries,  Hemp thread, branches, Cattails and Chinese Lanterns. Headpiece is made from Birch bark, wasp nest, honeycombs, Blueberry branches, Amate paper. Boots were made from Birch bark over a wooden clog and lined with linen fabric. The style of the dress is based on the iconic shift dress of the 1960′s, which had no waistline and was therefore easy to dance in.

Concept, design and photography: Nicole Dextras. Model: Nita Bowerman,  Lighting: Jordi Sancho, Makeup: April Beer, Video: Michael Sider.

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Pharos

Pharos consisted of six blocks of ice with fabric embedded in them created during the Winterlude Festival in Ottawa Canada in February 2012. The 5 foot high blocks of  ice were created outdoors in situ and the garments were meant to represent the early days of winter Carnivals. The piece was installed in Confederation Park, along with 10 other artists who were part of the BlizzArt exhibition. It took a week for the ice to freeze due to the unseasonal warm weather in Ottawa- they even had to close down the Rideau Canal to skaters for a few days. Big thanks goes out to my cousin Michel and his friend Jen who helped with with the installation and photography. The clothing became more exposed as the ice melted in the sun. As 695,000 individuals attended this year’s Winterlude, many photos were taken of my work and it’s a pleasure for me to see how others interpret it.

Night photos of Pharos illuminated.

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