Wearable Art Runway Competition Features Tyvek Creations

Tyvek dress by Patti DeWitt and
Mary Metzger-Gallivan

Impact Artists Gallery's "Evolution – Wear Art Meets Fashion" Wearable Art Runway Competition was a major Buffalo NY fashion event in April 2014. For this show, many fashion designers chose Tyvek as the main material for their dresses and accessories, including intricate necklaces. Tyvek shared the catwalk with beautiful models.

Over 50 unique, wearable art fashions created by local and national artists were displayed at the event, many of which featured Tyvek. Maria Kowalski, President of Impart Artists Gallery, told us that "all of the submissions for this show were made from re-purposed or hand-crafted materials. The event brought in over 100 artists and volunteers, along with approximately 300 attendees." The piece created by Patti and Mary, along with a dress and some jewelry created by Susan Marie Borden are now being displayed at the DuPont™™ corporate offices in Wilmington, DE.

Beaded necklace with
Tyvek focal center by 
Susan Marie Borden

Impact Artists Gallery is a non-profit art gallery located in the Tri-Main Building in Buffalo, New York and is the only Western New York gallery that is exclusively managed and operated by women.  Kowalski told us that "the Impact Artists Gallery has been supporting artists in the Western New York community and beyond for over 21 years. With 8 exhibits and several fundraisers annually, Impact displays works from multi-media artists from Buffalo to Hawaii. For more information on participating in Impact Artists Gallery exhibits or the 2015 Evolution Wearable Art Show (April 2015), please visit our website."

Tyvek dress by  
Julia Finucane

Special thanks to Impact Artists Gallery for providing the photos and information about this fashion event and their gallery.

If you need Tyvek material for your own fashion projects, Material Concepts can supply many Tyvek styles for fashion design. Just contact us for more information or call 215-338-6515 or 1-800-372-3366.

Tyvek Jewelry by Carol-lynn Swol

Carol-lynn Swol is a Tyvek jewelry artist and the first guest poster on the Tyvek Innovative Uses blog. Visit her website at www.carollynnswol.com to see more of her work. Ms. Swol provides this statement on her work with Tyvek:

In creating jewelry, material and the passion for material manipulation help drive my creative process. This passion led me to begin making pieces with Tyvek, which feels as delicate as paper, but is far more durable. It is in the duality of this material that I yearn to find a sophisticated balance between durability and ephemeral-seeming and between intentionality and spontaneity in design and form. Restricting these pieces to texture and form, I have thermal-kiss cut, tufted, and stacked the Tyvek to strive toward producing a visually arresting and sensual effect.

My work with Tyvek was originally inspired by my love of books and the feel of paper. I have used dyed Tyvek, and more recently, plain white Tyvek. More so than the dyed Tyvek, the white seems like the paper we encounter every day, bringing my recent work closer to the original inspiration that led me to this material. In their stark whiteness, these pieces seem to be made of stacks of the cleanest paper possible.

In earlier work, I stacked dyed pieces of Tyvek to produce layered patterns that looked like colorful, organic forms. The muted colors had great variety due to different shades of dye and because of shadows created by the undulations along the surface of the pieces. The newer pieces, using bright white Tyvek, restrict the work to texture and form. This creates a challenge, but it also produces an arresting effect, both more minimalist and somehow more sensual.

Many thanks to Carol-lynn for providing this guest blog post and for being a Material Concepts customer. Images used here with permission, copyright Carol-lynn Swol.