Body Adornment: Provoking Desire

From July 11 through to July 22nd 2016, I will be teaching a Design Intensive at RISD. The course emerges where concept, adornment, ornamentation, product and narrative meet. We consider the desire impulse and how almost everything that we are drawn to, whether on a purely functional or aesthetic level, is driven by desire. How do we bring focus to the body and what motivates pleasure? How might this be generated through adornment, restriction, ornamentation, concealment or distortion? Students in this course analyze and explore how to promote or provoke expression through the physical relationship between the body and "wearable" objects. Students focus on an aspect of the body, which becomes the foundation of their research from both a conceptual and sensorial perspective. Students then begin to identify a potential audience for their concepts and prototypes. They will be encouraged to explore how they might create narratives for particular objects and question how the aspect of "storytelling" can enhance the desire associated with a specific item/object/concept. Can an object that is imbued with a story transcend the initial functionality and purpose? Students answer this and other design inquiries with their final projects. 

Further information can be found here. 

The Weekend of Dangerous Minds 15th - 17th April 2016

The Weekend of Dangerous Minds was a sublime experience and I had the great pleasure to work with The (Remarkable) Laboratory Arts Collective and the gracious Marie-Louise Sciò.

On the evening of 15th after a beautiful meal was served on a table carved from one huge piece of pink marble and having sipped on a Desire Cocktail mixed to the perfect pink of The Laboratory's magazine DESIRE, pantone 905c, I told a story about the story that I was to read; In the Garden of Earthly Delights by Dr Jane Wildgoose. I also read a little from Design Behind Desire and spoke about how we 'might' consider desire. 

There was so very much more and it is depicted and described most fulsomely here.........

What Lies Beneath

"Rosette Cheeks (exploded and capped)" has garnered a fair amount of attention since her appearance at Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Tracking down the source of this image..........