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Dressed Up Heart: flower girl

letter to Maria from Lisa,

The 'flower girl' is beautiful. Those chiffony pinks are long gone with my 9 year old but she used to demand for me to put on the "pretty music" Vivaldi and she would twirl and twirl in the living room. She knew the button to the volume and blew out our speakers at age 3. Vivaldi and chiffon can do that to you. sigh

Here is a lovely artist that personifies womanliness through her pieces of painted, silk screened and photographed fabrics. You can visit her site here at mariaurora for a broader scope of her work. The heart image above is a photo collage of a childs chiffon pink dress named "flower girl" the last photo is beautiful Maria.

excerpt from Maria;

As my plane was getting ready to deboard in Philadelphia, I called Kiara to see about nosing around in her girls' closets for subjects. When finally I arrived at my parents' late in the day after riding through evening-before-Thanksgiving traffic (for an hour more than the usual journey)... my sister showed up with her daughters - and two arms full of their best dresses: she had brought them to me! Lovely clothing confections commanding a certain reverence, my nieces' dresses are indicators of their primary status as sweethearts. The sum of the dresses was so big in diameter, owing to plentiful petticoats, that they had to be stowed away in the spare room upstairs while the bustle of Thanksgiving festivities got underway.

The assortment of fancy dresses was narrowed down to four, and I decided to carry the dresses on to my plane homeward in an oversized shopping bag so they wouldn't be crushed in a suitcase - Kalea and Savannah were at my parents' again on the afternoon when I was getting ready to go.

With fond delight for the best of their little girl clothes, they cried "oh, the baby dress" when I showed one of my choices - the chiffon one of the palest pink with satin ribbon bows and edging that Savannah once wore as a flower girl at my brother's wedding in Houston. Then 2 1/2, she preceded the bride down the aisle alongside a little ring bearer with carrot-red hair.

Of one of the cotton print Easter dresses Kalea lovingly exclaimed, "my lil' blue dress!" This one's delicate pattern recalls cobalt blue on porcelain. Bow in the back, mini-double ruffles at the waist and hem... its bell effect is achieved thanks to a lace edged, tulle-fortified underskirt. Seeing the flamingo colored dress with layered flared and ruffled skirts, Savannah called out, "the lil' salsa dress!" This dress performs nicely when dances involve twirling, I learned.

Last we regarded a creamy satin sleeveless dress with pearls sewn around the neckline. A scallop-edged and rose embroidered organza outer layer plus a double-ruffled crinoline underneath help to produce a doll effect the dress' label reads "muneca" (Spanish for doll). Savannah wore it on December 31st 2006 - for the occasion of her baptism. One recent Sunday, Kalea was dressed in it. After church there was a fair; despite this finest attire, mother's permission was granted for jumping around in the inflated Moonwalk.

High resolution digital photos of the girls' dresses were made in Kansas City. Using a pen tablet with Photoshop CS4, I selected the dresses from the photo images. Different cut-out images of the dresses were then arranged behind heart-shaped masks I designed in Illustrator with the help of the Pen Tool-a sort of pulleys and levers system used for achieving taut lines and edges.

The resulting works, "Dressed-up Hears," reveal common themes in my work: design riding over undulating form, translucency in layers of color and pattern, a fascination over detail and function in clothes and textiles, and emphasis on shape with format. Here, there is also an idea of items of clothing as tangible repositories for memories. Savannah and Kalea are gymnasts, soccer players, and smart about their studies. Their world doesn't focus on dresses, yet their dresses do hold memories of special occasions for them and others who were present.