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Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

Staff Pick

Dress for Excess

by Nell Porter Brown

March-April 2017

American Dream, by Sarah Thomas

Courtesy of World of WearableArt Limited


American Dream, by Sarah Thomas

Courtesy of World of WearableArt Limited

Lady of the Wood, by David Walker

Courtesy of World of WearableArt Limited


Lady of the Wood, by David Walker

Courtesy of World of WearableArt Limited

Lady of the Wood, by Alaskan carpenter David Walker, is just that: a mannequin sporting an eighteenth-century ball gown crafted entirely of mahogany, maple, cedar, and lacewood. Walker steamed, bent, and polished timber to form a hooped skirt and “puffy” sleeves cuffed by fine-grained lacewood that matches a dainty bodice. Some 32 such ingenious ensembles—selected from winning entries in New Zealand’s annual design competition WOW® World of WearableArtTM—appear at the Peabody Essex Museum through June 11. For 25 years, the popular competition has drawn a diverse set of artists who vie to merge fashion and high art. New Zealand jeweler Sarah Thomas, inspired by the shiny, sleek lines of vintage cars, created her own spunky, don-able version, American Dream, from papier-mâché, builder’s foam, and vinyl. It lacks an engine, but who wouldn’t want to cruise through a party dressed in the ’57 Chevy Bel Air classic?

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Nell Painter, a professor emerita of American history at Princeton, now works as an artist in Newark, New Jersey.

Photograph by John Emerson

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Seen at the Arnold Arboretum: a paperbark maple in winter

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Photographs of Arnold Arboretum trees and shrubs through four seasons

Photograph courtesy of Jack Lueders-Booth/Gallery Kayafas

For seven years, Jack Lueders-Booth (above, left) visited the Massachusetts Correctional Institution-Framingham to teach a photography workshop several days each month. Roaming the grounds, he took women prisoners’ portraits with Polaroid, Leica, and medium-format film cameras, documenting scenes from daily life.

 

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Nell Painter, a professor emerita of American history at Princeton, now works as an artist in Newark, New Jersey.

Photograph by John Emerson

From academia to art: profile of Nell Painter

Seen at the Arnold Arboretum: a paperbark maple in winter

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Photographs of Arnold Arboretum trees and shrubs through four seasons

Photograph courtesy of Jack Lueders-Booth/Gallery Kayafas

For seven years, Jack Lueders-Booth (above, left) visited the Massachusetts Correctional Institution-Framingham to teach a photography workshop several days each month. Roaming the grounds, he took women prisoners’ portraits with Polaroid, Leica, and medium-format film cameras, documenting scenes from daily life.

 

Revisiting Jack Lueders-Booth’s portrait series “Women Prisoners”