Costume Designer/ Ellen Mirojnick

Costume designers are instrumental in the creation, construction and purchasing of costumes and accessories featured in tv, film and theatre performances. Costume Designers share the same knowledge and skills as conventional fashion designers, but must also meet the particular demands of theatre or film production.  

Costume designers begin their work with a careful reading of the script and a thorough review of the theme, tone, and time of the story told. After detailed consultations with the writers, producer and other members of the creative team, the costume designer will start investigating the style background and developments of the particular time and setting. They can assemble a list of visual guides for particular fabrics, styles or items of clothing that they choose to draw on while creating their own final products. In designing garments, the designer must ensure that each outfit expresses the age, social class and dramatic role of each character successfully, keeping in mind that this will alter over the duration of the story. Every individual costume design is assembled into what is called the costume plot, which chronologically follows each character through the storey and records the changes in their clothing. Plots are usually made up of hand-drawn drawings, photos or digital files. When the director and the production staff have signed up for the costumes, the designer will focus on getting them together.  

Costumes are one of the many resources that the director uses to convey the plot. Costumes express the details of a character’s identity to the viewer and allow actors to turn themselves into new characters on film. There is also confusion between costume design and fashion design; however, these two disciplines and their purposes are somewhat different. Fashion designers have brands and market their clothes, while costume designers have no labels and concentrate on making real characters in a plot. Costume designers make both gorgeous gowns for a glamorous entrance and daily wear, as dictated by the plot.  

Before the shooting begins, the director, the costume designer, and the actor call the character’s attitude, obstacles (e.g., Anxiety, depression, financial issues or alcohol problems) Dramatic cycle (emotional and psychological changes the character goes through the film). They together, determine the most appropriate way to communicate the personality of a character, reflecting his or her personality at that moment in the play/movie.  

Ellen Mirojnick- Costume Designer

Ellen Mirojnick was born and raised in New York City, and her early interest in fine art, photography and modelling led to the renowned High School of Music and Art. After graduation, she continued her education in architecture at the School of Graphic Arts and the Parsons School of Design.  

It did not take long before Mirojnick set his sights on Hollywood, launching a career spanning three decades. As a famous Hollywood costume designer, Ellen’s love for modern fashion has had an influence on the style of film. Mirojnick’s film work has been a sophisticated approach to contemporary fiction which has created iconic characters that have become cultural references. 

She also won an Emmy and was nominated for the BAFTA and CDG awards. In 1998 she won the Saturn Award for her work at Starship Troopers and was awarded with the Cutty Sark Menswear Award for her sartorial performance on Wall Street. Her design has been seen in the exhibition “50 Designers/50 Films” at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the 1998 Florence Biennale, the 2011 and 2012 FIDM Annual Exhibits, and the prestigious “Hollywood Costume” at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.  

She has recently worked in some of the biggest shows and movies such as, ‘The Greatest Showman’, ‘Maleficent’, and Netflix’s 2020 series; ‘Bridgerton’. In BridgertonMirojnick transformed the style of the Regency period into the Wardrobe Wonderland of Empire-line dresses with low, scooping women’s necklines and majestic, stiff-necked men’s suits. It has been revealed that during the show, Ellen created and displayed 7,500 unique costumes.  

 

 

 

Sustainability- Plastic Pollution

I have chosen to focus on the sustainability of our waters and how polluting them will merely cause our human downfall of existence. The powerful image displays the tip of an iceberg, however, beneath shows a plastic bag submerged in the ocean’s waters. The image cleverly illustrates how the level of damage we are doing to our waters, and how this damage is only the ‘tip of the iceberg’.  

The image created by Jorge Gamboa titled ‘Tip of the Iceberg’, is formidable and inspiring to us to try and recover our waters and stop the pollution of our waters. About 80% of the world’s wasted water, being largely untreated; is continuously pumped and released into the atmosphere polluting oceans, lakes and rivers; destroying the habitats for many of our sea creatures. This pervasive issue of water contamination is placing our health at risk. Unsafe water caused more deaths every year than fighting and all other kinds of abuse combined.  

About 8 tonnes of plastic waste reaches the oceans each year, however, if these actions remain as normal, we will face a world of more pollution than fish in the ocean by 2050. Our plastic abuse and waste incompetence sentences countless aquatic animals and birds to death by entanglement or toxicity, and also contributes to chemical pollution of the food we consume. Gamboa’s image implements the terrifying reality of our current pollution situation and reflects on how we as a community can aim to recover out oceans, seas and rivers from this disgusting action of contamination.  

In conclusion to this research, I feel strongly that with Gamboa’s image along with many other artists work focused on sustainability, can speak loudly and clearly so that we all can come to realise the help our earth needs in order to protect out sea animals as well as ourselves in future.  

Image: ‘Tip of the Iceberg’ Jorge Gamboa

http://www.charitymika.com/art-activist-blog

www.oceanunite.org/issues/marine-plastic-pollution

 

TADF Mood board and Research

Research/prep project  

Textiles Art and Design Fashion  

 

Chosen word: Naked  

Why is the naked human body a long-lasting staple in art? Of course, the picture of the human body fascinates our imagination, which can articulate all facets of human nature, but it will typically do just as well in clothing. Art students study naked models in order to see the form and expression of the body uninterrupted, freely and with the ability to show full exhibition in its movement.  

In my reflection of the word, ‘Naked’ can be meditated in a vulnerable aspect, being a word that is inclusive to body positivity, Ance positivity, skin colour positivity; a word that is used when being free and expressive about being yourself. I chose to continue with this word because I feel as if the word can be exhibited as a verb for being yourself; being proud of your body, your skin, your curves; being naked from negativity. I want to continue with this word into my subject, hoping that I can portray an inspirational and encouraging subject, creating a positive and expressive frame of mind.  

Rebecca Horn-Sculpture Artist

Reb.Horn_14

Between 1968 and 1972, the German artist Rebecca Horn developed a series of performances titled “Personal Art.” Horn ascribes the origins of this work to a single near-death encounter, not unlike Joseph Beuys, an artist with whom she readily claims affinity. In the 1960s, as a young sculptor, Horn experimented with fibreglass and polyester, like many artists of her time. The artist, unaware of the toxicity of these products, experienced serious lung harm accompanied by a lengthy convalescence period.
Horn sketched images of the human body and designs for wearable sculptures, or “body extensions,” limited to drawing in her hospital bed. She then sewed and built these, tailoring them to fit her measurements and those of her friends and collaborators precisely. Horn masks and extensions include, constrain, and/or elongate the bodies of their wearers made of fabric, wood, bandages, belts, feathers, and found objects. To this day, it can be said that Horn is continually building upon this work.
By referencing or even reworking them, she is known to return to earlier artefacts and performances. “In a transformative process, my works are stations,” she said. A “development that has never really been completed.”1
In sketches, notes, and several photographic stills, the earliest, brief performances of Horn’s “Personal Art” were recorded.

 

Anish Kapoor- sculpture artist

Cloud Gate
Building for a Void

Anish Kapoor is one of his generation’s most influential sculptors. Kapoor manoeuvres between vastly distinct sizes, through various series of works, perhaps most famous for public sculptures that are both adventures in form and feats of engineering.
Massive, stretched or deflated PVC skins; concave or convex mirrors whose reflections attract and swallow the viewer; recesses cut in stone and pigmented to disappear: deep-felt philosophical polarities of presence and absence, concealment and discovery are summoned by these voids and protrusions. Forms transform inside out, womb-like, and materials are not painted but impregnated with pigment, as if to negate the notion of an exterior surface, welcoming the audience to the inner reaches of the imagination.
For example, the geometric forms of Kapoor from the early 1980s rise from the floor and seem to be made of pure pigment, while the viscous, blood-red wax sculptures from the last ten years ravage their own surfaces and explode the silence of the gallery environment. There are resonances with ancient world mythologies, Indian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman, and modern times.

 

Viola Grasten- Textile Designer

Viola Gråsten was a textile artist who contributed to the creation of Swedish textile art through her creative style and bold colour variations, and eventually introduced Swedish textile art to international fame. Viola Gråsten was born in Keuruu, Finland, in 1910. Her mother, Hilda Kainlauri, died of childbirth. Her father, Sigismund Forsberg, who was a telegrapher, was remarried to Anna Gråsten.

Viola Gråsten was not only a master of rya rug style. She is well known for her creations in textiles. Her first concept for NK’s Textilkammare was the 1950 geometrical Woodoo and the more dynamic Tulipou (Brinnande träd) of the same year. Raff’s vivid colourful content was introduced in 1951 and the same year, Viola Gråsten won gold medals for both Tulipu and Raff at the Triennale in Milan. Raff was awarded the Strong Architecture Prize in the USA in 1953.

In 1952, Iola Gråsten launched Oomph, which became her most popular cloth. It blends the colours of blue, yellow, green and cherry – colours previously thought difficult to blend. Young women will fly to NK to buy a piece of cloth to sew a skirt or a shirt. The fabric became an emblem of youth’s liberation from old-fashioned clothes and traditions.

During the period 1956-1957, Viola Gråsten left NK’s Textilkammare to take up the post of Creative Director of Fashion Textiles at Mölnlycke Väfveri AB. The designs she created there were not as graphic as her previous work, and her themes have now come to include flowers, berries, butterflies and birds of a greater variety than before, and still in bright colours. She maintained her love for vivid colours and bold paint variations. Viola Gråsten worked for Mölnlycke Väfveri AB until 1973.

She created more than 100 designs for home-and fashion-use during her time there. She also produced blankets for Tidstrand woollen factory, including Snark from 1957, which became very popular and can be seen in many Swedish homes. It also provided a curtain for the new auditorium of the Röhsska Konstslöjdmuseum, which opened in January 1964.

In 1994, Viola Gråsten died in Stockholm.