Creative Reset: The Practice of Making with Audacity

Creative Reset: The Practice of Making with Audacity

by Kerri Education Frame | Work News & Updates

What: Seven sewing classes in which you will make a dress and learn to adapt that basic dress pattern to work for different bodies and styles. 

When: Tuesday evenings, 7-8 PM, October 6, 13, 20, 27, November 3, 10, and 17, 2020

Where: Right in front of your very own sewing machine in the comfort of wherever you have room to make a dress. Yes, you need to provide your own sewing machine. We will help you learn to use it. Classes are held online.

How: Register here. Classes are $10 each, and you must sign up for all seven classes in order to finish your dress.

Why: Once, I tried to make a dress. I put a square pocket on the chest, and I sewed all four sides of that pocket to the bodice. It was not great. If only I’d had Ashley Horn Nott to help me.

Ashley would have had a plan for my inexperience, my ignorance, my besotted love for the fabric and my overconfidence in “figuring out” a sewing machine. The first time Ashley took on a costume-making project for a dance company, her sewing experience was straight lines and stuffing. Pillows. She knew she could sew a pillow cover, and the rest she had the audacity to make up.

And it worked! Today, Ashley has made costumes for most of the modern dance companies in Houston, including her own productions. Absolutely hundreds (possibly thousands?) of dresses and other costumes gorgeously crafted. Why did Ashley’s gamble worked and mine didn’t? I’m guessing that Ashley had more tenacity to match her audacity than I did. She also made the compelling decision to promise other people that she would complete her project. No one cared when I folded up my half-dress with its unusable patch of a pocket and never unfolded it again. Ashley had a commitment to people she cared about, people who were counting on those costumes, and that accountability motivated her through the “now I have to seam-rip the whole damn thing” moments.

Let us be that accountability for you. Maybe you’ve been saying that you want to sew your own clothes. Maybe you found the most amazing fabric. Maybe you found that fabric years ago and you’re ready to give it form. Maybe you are a dancer and you want to be able to make costumes for yourself and others. This is a chance to create beside a self-made professional. Grab your audacity and make it into a dress. Your dress.

 

How is making a dress a creative reset? Um, can I answer that tomorrow? It’s kind of a whole thing…

 

 

 

Costumes!

by Lydia Performances/Screenings
Fab Ashley in character for our piece Dinner/Dance19.
Fab Ashley in character for our piece Dinner/Dance19.

I would like to take some time to really acknowledge Ashley Horn for her impactful Frame Dance collaborations over the past five years (and more to come!)  She has been my most consistent collaborator, and has had an indelible stamp on Frame Dance aesthetics.  She is so talented and unwaveringly creative.  She understands my interest in color, shape, and style.  This performance of Framed in Five is requiring her to make 34 (or something) costumes!  Here are a few photos of the costumes in progress…

 



 

Frame Dance Performance!

by Lydia Performances/Screenings

HPB_bdg_logo_neAbout Frame Dance’s next performance: Bayou Greenway Day on April 4

 

We hope you will join us at an exciting new community event from the Houston Parks Board: Bayou Greenway Day 2015 presented by Noble Energy! This free, day-long event will offer families the chance to walk, bike, run, stroll, play and paddle between park sites along Brays Bayou Greenway in the East End.

 

Event “hubs” in Mason Park, Spurlock Park, Gragg Park and Fonde Park – and the Brays Bayou Greenway trail in-between – will host fun activities for all ages. You will be able to start at any of these locations, enjoying activities and exploring the trails that connect the parks.

 

Activities will include 5K fun run/walk; bike rides, rentals and decorating; Zumba classes and dance performances; an interactive campsite; kayaking (for a small fee); giveaways and more!

 

Frame Dance will perform a work that travels along the bayou with elaborate time-lapse costumes by Ashley Horn.

 

Come experience the transformation happening along Houston’s bayous as part of Bayou Greenways 2020! Visit www.bayougreenwayday.org for additional information and an event map. Most activities free; April 4, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.  The Framers perform at noon starting at Mason Park.

 

Bayou Greenway Day 2015 is a project of the Houston Parks Board in collaboration with the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, the Houston Parks and Recreation Department, and the office of Council Member Robert Gallegos.