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

Hot Art Wet City interview

Met up with Chris Bentzen from the Hot Art Wet City gallery in Vancouver for a chat about my artwork in my studio. Super nice guy who is doing his part in trying to keep the art scene alive in Vancouver with his gallery. Not an easy feat in this high real-estate town!

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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Brooklyn Botanical Gala

BBG Gala dresses, Photography by SIlk Studio

BBG party. Photography by Eilon Paz

I was invited by the Brooklyn Botanical Garden in June to make 3 dresses for their gala event celebration the opening our their new “green” Visitor Centre. I loved my time there, Brooklynites are such warm and genuine people. Bill Cunningham came to the event and wrote about it for his page in the New York Times. Big thank you to all of the staff at BBG who really supported my work and the volunteers who came and helped to sew garden cloth and moss! The models for which the dresses were tailormade were: Sonia Kwiatkowski, Nikeva Stapleton, Justine Watanabe. Merci les belles.

#1-5, Bill Cunningham’s page, New York Times

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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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Laurel Suffragette

On the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery (surrealist show banner in background)

In September 2011, Laurel Suffragette was created  and conceived as a character coming from the late Victorian age, who had been active in the emancipation of women and the garment industry of her day, who had fought for reforms and safety in the manufacture area.  Miss Laurel Green-Fairfashion was curious to see how the future had turned out, so she  took a stroll down Robsonstrasse, Vancouver’s fashion district, to see what shoppers had to say regarding eco-fashion. The interventions varied from long one on one conversations, to people ignoring her because they suspected she was selling something, to having her picture taken with babies, to engaging store clerks. The most interesting was Laurel’s conversation about  jeans with an attentive American Eagle clerk, which was cordial until she asked if the company checks on their factory conditions at which point the store manager quickly ushered Laurel out.

Nita Bowerman‘s acting skills were perfect for this type of spontaneous street intervention and the fact that Nita -an artist in her own right who has an interest in the fashion industry- brings an extra level of commitment to the intervention. Apart from making the garment, I did a photo shoot outside the Vancouver Art Gallery , assisted by Jessica Beisler before we walked down Robson street. This site has been long been used as a gathering place for protests (most recently site of Occupy Vancouver) and it seemed a perfect location for a suffragette from the past to land in Vancouver. The makeup was by Keith Murray and  Michael Sider accompagnied us and videotaped the entire session. This footage will be edited into a Weedrobes video in the near future. It was my intention from the very  beginnings of the Weedrobes  project to take the outfits to the streets and i look forward to doing more next summer.

The dress was made from Laurel leaves pinned onto a framework made from bamboo seat caning. The mutton sleeves are based on the Keystone Jacket which was popular in the late Victorian age as a pattern for women to make their own clothing. The sleeves were covered with Hydrangeas and Baby’s Breath. The bodice was constructed from the bustier made for the Mobile Garden Dress, with a Jabot made from corn husks. The buttons were made from Cherry Tomatoes from my garden. The outfit was installed in my back yard for a few months and allowed to weather.

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