Trenton Downtown Association

I have been thinking about my clothes lately: How can I take my old, out-dated, worn garments, and make them look up-to-the-minute, so I can be stylish in this economy without buying new clothes. Or maybe I should take my closet full of old clothes and turn it into sculpture... or shred them all to knit a giant floorcloth from the fibers. Then I feel guilty about such thoughts, because there are so many more important things in this world than clothes. Or are there?

At least 31 area artists and 100 contemporary poets have been pondering clothing in a companion exhibit and anthology: Threads, on view at Trenton’s Gallery 125 through May 2, and Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems (Ragged Sky, $15, edited by Vasiliki Katsarou, Ruth O’Toole and Ellen Foos).

”There are poems about clothing as identity — which can be altered, loosened, unloosed, or unleashed,” writes Ms. Katsarou, a seamstress’s daughter, in the introduction to the anthology, which is divided into four sections: Presentation, Alteration, Selvage and Sheer. “There are poems about clothing as a consumer item, and about clothing styles as objects of desire that can never be attained. Clothing also serves as memento, and as metaphor for the body itself, as a second skin.”

And it’s not just women waxing poetic about clothes. Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins writes “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes,” describing the complexity of removing the 19th-century poet’s Victorian white dress, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Muldoon writes of his grandfather’s “underparts against the ledge of the chimney bluff.” Charles Simic pens “Shoes, secret face of my inner life.”

How much is our identity tied to the choices we make in adorning ourselves with fabric and thread? In “White Blouse,” Marcia Aldrich writes about how a perfectly crisp and unblemished piece of attire did not protect its wearer from attempting suicide. Ms. O’Toole writes how her bra keeps her breasts in equilibrium, concealed, “thus objects to adore.” And Ms. Foos writes how the vestments of priests — in “liturgical purple” — imbue them with power, while the nuns “in clumsy shoes, stiff bibs/ chained by a rosary-bead belt —/nothing to suggest undergarments” are “Dark horsemen” with “chalk powdered hands...”

The subject also seems to bring out the best in visual artists. Love clothes or hate them, fashionista or intentionally unkempt, all the artists at Gallery 125 have strong feelings about clothing and what it represents, conceals or brings out.

Here, too, it’s not just women. Carl Frankel, retired after a career in the fashion industry, shows us a man in blue and white boxers, staring himself down in the mirror over the bathroom sink in “Monday Morning at 6 a.m.” The sink is populated by deodorant, mouthwash, shaving cream and other implements for morning ablutions; in the distance we can see the legs of his female partner, showering.

Glenn Moore, who works in welded metals, has constructed a 3-foot silvery needle threaded with twisted wire, penetrating a large black curved piece of metal, suggestive of cloth. And men’s starched white shirts have been reproduced in sheet metal and shiny white paint by Jennifer Watson. In “Well Fit, Well Lit,” Michael Wiley has studded a pair of men’s trousers with safety pins, hanging in a mirrored box.

Is clothing something we hide behind, or use as an adornment to bring out something more seductive and alluring than the naked body? Concetta Maglione, a retired educator who lives in West Windsor, would seem to think the latter, in a painting of a woman’s mid section up to her jaw, in which a black feather boa is slung over her shoulders and a strand of beads hang from her neck, leaving this lady otherwise exposed and exoticized.

In many of these works, we don’t see the full figure but zoom in on a critical part of the human form. In her “Freize Art Show,” Kali McMillan focuses on women’s legs and feet, much like those fashion photos pinpointing dos and don’ts. Ms. McMillan, a student at Colgate College, made these images during her travels to London, Germany and Scotland.

No discussion of clothing and the human body would be complete without a nod to foot fetishes, and Hannah Fink has created two mixed-media works that fetishize shoes, one a hanging sculpture made of plastic tubing, bubble wrap and copper wire. Her “Big Heel” has a pointy toe, red instep, and is made of mesh and wax.

From footwear to headwear, Martha Runyon has knit “Spearhead” — like some kind of Viking helmet with spears at the crown, over the nose and around the collar. This most striking creation was made of dryer fuzz and yarn remnants.

The dress and dressmaker’s form take center stage with “Gelato Dress” by Jennifer Dillner. With a camisole top and pleated shirt, it is made from Italian gelato cups that have been flattened and stitched together. The bodice and skirt are joined by plastic gelato spoons in colors to match. Not only is this a marvel of engineering and design, but it makes you want to haul out your mother’s old sewing machine and have fun with it. And speak of sewing, in “I Used to Sew,” Cianne Fragione has created a handmade book from the notions of her halcyon sewing days: lace, buttons, beads, pins and more.

The dress, with no one in it, becomes a ghost or a spirit, as in “He Took Me Away in Spirit” by Lisa S. Qualls, a white silk garment hung from a meat hook. In her artist statement Ms. Qualls writes that this piece is about Hadewijch of Brabant, a 13th-century Flemish mystic, the title taken from one of her quotes describing a vision. Maia Reim photographs a white gown hanging in the window of an abandoned room, with peeling paint, stripped wallpaper and empty shelves. Who lived here and wore this dress? Has her spirit fled through the window? Or is she still haunting the room? Ms. Reim writes in her statement: “... throughout my life I have been drawn to empty nests — deserted and abandoned places, forgotten and left to nature’s ruin.” One thinks of Charles Dickens’ Miss Havisham, with the faded remains of her unrequited wedding, and all the clocks stopped.

Joanne Donnelly Seglem says there was a large response from artists wanting to submit to this show. Ms. Foos originally wanted to reserve the gallery for a launch of the anthology, and both women decided to partner on an exhibit along the theme. “We couldn’t make it too narrow in scope, so we came up with the title ‘Threads’ to include anything evocative of woven material,” she says.

Ms. Foos, too, was flooded with submissions when she put out the call for clothing-themed poems. “Clothing seemed rich, and it was a nice way to include poetry friends.” The founder and publisher of Ragged Sky Press and a production editor at Princeton University Press, Ms. Foos has been a McDowell Colony and Vermont Studio fellow and a member of the U.S. 1 Poet’s Cooperative. Her collection, Little Knitted Sisters, was published in 2006, but she didn’t have any clothing poems and so wrote “Vestments” specifically for this collection. It was inspired by 12 years of Catholic School in Rochester, N.Y., and the “impression of ritual and the distance those vestments put between you and religious people.”

And while male poets are represented here, “it’s not a big surprise that women are more obsessed with clothing and image than men, and having to adorn themselves,” Ms. Foos says. She was impressed with “the variety of heritage, honoring elders and how much our identity is tied up in clothing, and the different ideas about clothing.”


Ragged Sky Press will celebrate the publication of Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems April 3, 7:30 p.m., at the Arts Council of Princeton Paul Robeson Center for the Arts, 102 Witherspoon St., Princeton 609-924-8777; www.artscouncilofprinceton.org — a wedding cake dress and other refreshments will be served — and April 10, 7 p.m., at Gallery 125, 125 S. Warren St., Trenton, 609-989-9119; www.gallery125.com. Free admission; books will be available for purchase and signing and are also available in book stores and online: www.raggedsky.com. Threads is on view at Gallery 125 through May 2. Gallery hours: Tues.-Fri. noon-6 p.m., Sat. 11 a.m.-4 p.m.