The notion that beauty is pain rings true — especially if you're wearing an outfit by Frank Strunk III.
Just before a runway show, Strunk joins his models for a final fitting. He arranges elaborately crafted metal garments over and around their bodies, first reminding the girls that they won't be able to sit or pee for hours. Then he literally fastens the models into his outfits with quarter-inch carriage bolts. Over a month-long construction process, Strunk tailors each garment to fit the model as comfortably as possible, but pain — even scratches and small cuts — is part of the process.
Even so, more women volunteer to model Strunk's creations than he has time to design outfits for. As he sees it, the main attraction is the attention people pay to a model scantily clad in a shiny aluminum bikini top. (Luckily for the model, it doesn't rust, so she can't get tetanus from cuts.) Call it human nature: Folks can't seem to take their eyes off a miniskirt made of ping-pong balls painted silver to look like ball bearings, says Strunk, who works as a carpenter when he's not making metal garments or kinetic art in a similar vein. When the ping-pong ball skirt falls apart (on purpose) during a strut down the catwalk, people typically fall over themselves to catch the flying balls, he says.
Come see what all the fuss is about — and just try to catch one of those ping-pong balls — on Saturday night at the Dunedin Fine Art Center. Art meets fashion for a head-on collision in the work of 10 designers at Wearable Art 3, the third installment in what has become an annual tradition of outrageous outfits, sculptural wizardry and enough tantalizing glimpses of form and flesh to make a mid-August night even steamier.
DFAC associate education director Kaya Parwanicka hatched the idea of a fashion show three years ago as a way to attract visitors to the art center during a quilting exhibit. Quickly, though — with artists including Strunk — the show became less about fabric and more about fetish.
Audiences, it would seem, approve. The first Wearable Art drew nearly 600 people, far more than expected, which spelled disaster on a small scale: The stage was a mere 2 feet tall, and the audience couldn't see much. The following year, DFAC remedied the problem with a taller stage, but more people turned out to watch than could fit in the building's atrium. This year's solution: a massive 80-foot-long, 4-foot-tall tall runway that courses through the atrium and into a large gallery where 100 choice seats will be reserved for a premium ticket price. Parwanicka expects the remaining 900 people to stand for the hour-long show. All ticket holders can attend a pre-party with DJ and cash bar. (Sponsors include Red Bull, so you can get even one of those Red Bull-tini thingies.) The party will continue after the show as well.
Adding to the intrigue is that all of this activity is going down in Dunedin, a sleepy little city (to call it a town or village would be more apt). As recently as a decade ago, the 'burg was better known for its blue-haired drivers than the hip, multigenerational population it increasingly boasts. Wearable Art 3 is a sign of the town's current incarnation: a funky, walkable downtown with good restaurants, an active (if small) arts community and quality of life rivaling (if not surpassing) any hot up-and-coming neighborhood — à la Grand Central or Seminole Heights.
In fact, one of the show's designers is Dunedin's current vice mayor, City Commissioner Deborah Kynes, who restores and redesigns vintage clothes when she's not attending events or running meetings as a stand-in for the mayor. A fashion history buff, she'll present a 1940s wedding gown redesigned for a Bride of Frankenstein look.
Kynes is the rare designer using mainly fabric in her creations. Rogerio Martins, a student at Tampa's International Academy of Design and Technology, will present a total of 17 outfits, some with organic and recycled materials including flowers, peppers, eggshells, lampshades, leather, cornhusks, and beans and rice. And all of his models will be women in their 40s and 50s. (Celebrating ages, shapes and sizes that are unconventional in fashion is a theme for several artist-designers in the show.)
Carly Champagne, a recent USF graduate who now lives in Pensacola, will present eight pieces, a combination of hats and garments made from liquid latex casts of models' bodies. "It's like being nude without actually being nude," Champagne says of the garments' second-skin fit. Pieces she exhibited at the first Wearable Art in 2005 — like a garter belt made of condoms to encourage safe sex — garnered attention from the press, including Playboy.
Calling all artists. A rebirth is afoot in West Tampa. Local art lovers have known the former Santaella cigar factory — now owned by the Ellis and Van Pelt families, who run an office furniture business on the ground floor — as Gallery 1906 for years. Fear not: The building, at 1906 N. Armenia Ave., will continue to house artists' studios on its spacious second and third floors. But come this fall, art classes, more exhibits, and a new gallery space for VSA arts (a nonprofit arts agency serving adults with disabilities) will also be part of the re-christened West Tampa Center of the Arts.
Executive director and fine-art photographer Maida Millan has been working to update the space with fireproof walls and handicapped-accessible restrooms, and she recently announced the first exhibit to take place in the renovated space. Like previous exhibits at 1906, Nueva Evolucion will include the open studios of resident artists as well as work by nonresidents arranged in the building's spacious hallways and landing areas. The exhibit — debuting Sept. 28 with DJs, food,and drinks — is open to artists working in all media and will be juried by Tracy Midulla Reller, an HCC-Ybor art professor and member of the collective [5]art.
The deadline for submissions is Sept. 3 — and there is a submission fee. For more information, contact Millan at WTCA.art@gmail.com or 813-453-4381.
This article appears in Aug 15-21, 2007.