Students Unleash Creativity in Annual Wearable Art Show
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Josie Axling works on her piece, “Dying Ember.” Photo by Camille Hildebrandt. [/caption]
News by Angela Downs
The value teachers offer to our children and community cannot be understated, nor can the value of art.
The Performing Arts Club is designed for students in 4th through 12th grade to develop their voice and skills. Camille Hilderbrandt, the art teacher for the Quilcene School District, has been overseeing the student wearable art show for almost nine years. “I chose wearable art because it allows students to flex and exercise creativity, develop critical thinking skills through visionary problem solving, and gives them a chance to integrate their personal experience through transforming their story,” Hildrebrandt said.
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Margie McDonald (right) helps Eponine Bertucci construct her piece. Photo by Camille Hildebrandt. [/caption]
The Wearable Art Show once had 600 audience members, said Margie McDonald, who picked up the student version of the show after COVID shutdowns. Hildebrandt, McDonald and a supportive and creative team are working together to help eight individual students create a wearable art piece and a performance to showcase their work. Ms. Camille, as the kids call her, is also overseeing nineteen 7th graders building a group piece in their Interdisciplinary Arts class.
The kids were offered a menu of choices to help start this year's creative journey. Their pieces could be material-driven with free and available materials around their homes– the first year a student’s family had a wood mill and made a suit out of bark, like a Greenman. They could also center around a personal story or media inspiration that they then develop, or the theme Hilderbrandt’s 7th-grade class worked with, Giant Faces.
The process is an interdisciplinary hybrid between visual, fabric, and performing arts.
Students Turn Adversity Into Wearable Art
Zak, who prefers to go by their first name only, is fifteen and in their second year with the show, after winning 3rd place their first year. This year, they are inspired by family addiction and the global history of pharmaceutical misuse.
Using wire as a malleable and structurally sound material, they have created a physical metaphor for mental health struggles and the imaginative mind. The solution to chronic illness, they believe, is self-acceptance and integration of self-love. “You’re not broken, you’re just bent,” Zak said of all people navigating trauma.
After a student unrelated to the Performing Art Club sabotaged Zak’s piece by cutting it up and leaving notes in it, Zak decided to keep some of the changes and added meaning to their work. Zak believes that it is each of our responsibilities to heal our lineages. “I’m challenging the masks we all wear.”
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Kai Campbell models “Winter Solstice Deity. Photo by Camille Hildrebrandt. [/caption]
Laurelie Peters is twelve, and this is her first year making wearable art. Her piece comes from pure imagination and hyperactivity,. “It’s a space theme with a Mad Hatter mashup,” she said.
It is comfortable, but complicated to get on and off with the many layers she’s drawn out and hand-sewn. Peters says she is nervous to be seen in it, but that she’s confident in her art. As a homeschooled student, she sees potential in creating connections and friendships through the club.
Josie Axling is fourteen from Blue Heron Middle School, in her third year making wearable art, and last year's winner. She wanted to focus on quality over quantity this year, but with fourteen pounds of fabric sourced from home and the club, her style might just be mass.
After learning to use the sewing machine this year, she is confident that it will not fall apart like years past. “I’m developing my performance skills and have some ideas about secret special additions to my performance.” Not going to school with many of the other participants, Axling is now familiar with people around town and is learning to expand her community.
The show will take place on April 26 at Port Townsend High School at 1:30 and 3:00. You can purchase tickets at the door or in advance here. To learn more, visit https://ptartscape.com/.
Correction: An earlier version stated the show is at Key City, instead of at the Port Townsend High School
