Visions Art Museum, San Diego

I've looped back to the beginning of my San Diego trip. When I first arrived, I took a taxi directly from the airport to the Visions Art Museum (VAM). My hotel was in the opposite direction and I wanted to make the most of my time.

The VAM often shows quilts but May through July they had two exhibits about fashion: Fabric-Free Fashion and Evolution Transformed. More about that later.

The San Diego Watercolor Society is in the same building, so I got to visit them, too! If you go, do not miss the Con Pane Rustic Breads & Cafe across the street; they have some of the best bread ever -- and very affordable!

Small Art Quilts
They had a collection of small (12"x12") art quilts for sale in the lobby. The theme was fashion accessories. I think the name of this one was something like fishnet stockings. I'm sorry, but I don't have the name of the artist. If you know who made it, please drop me a note. The second quilt has small seashells sewn onto it.

Fabric-Free Fashion
The VAM often shows quilts but the current exhibits were all about fashion. What fun -- garments made from maps, plastic forks, window screen mesh, shoe-string licorice, and more!

Photographing was not allowed in the other two exhibits. It's hard to find photos online from the show but I found some photos and stories about the show at the Wearable Art blog, which includes photos of four of the fashions including the licorice dress, the plastic-fork angel, the bottle-cap dress, and a wild fashion made of a huge assortment of materials and objects. I wish someone would post pictures of the dress made with bubble wrap and other materials; its skirt is super short and made of gray bubble wrap -- picture large bubbles.

The Invisible Stylist covered the photo shoot for this exhibit; she has photos of the plastic-fork angel, an evening gown crocheted from video tape, and her map dress.  You can learn more about the creation of her map dress at that blog as well. Have a look! It was hard to pick a favorite but I really liked the map dress and the licorice cocktail dress.

Susan Lazear also covered the photo shoot. Catch her shots of the black licorice dress, the bubble-gum-wrapper dress, a jacket made from makeup pads, a lottery-ticket gown, and a video-tape jacket.

Catch a video of the duct-tape dress.

Airport Fashion
In the airport, I saw part of another exhibit about wearable art: Where Art Meets Fashion. Don't miss the video of the fashion show!