Program: Fashion
The Design Division at CCA welcomes The Verasphere, Michael Johnstone and David Faulk, as our third round of speakers in the 2023 Spring Design Lecture Series. These live lectures bring us together across time zones and disciplines as we meet leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak about contemporary practice, discourse, and making.
Michael Johnstone and David Faulk join us as guests of the Fashion Program and are introduced by Fashion Chair Greg Climer as San Francisco legends who have worked together for more than 25 years. Johnstone starts the talk with drawings he made in high school- ‘70’s style swirls and curls, figures with long hair and tall boots, carefully penned on small rocks, left at river beds for people to find. The seeds of playfulness and generosity that blossom over decades are there in those anonymous gifts.
From there Johnstone and Faulk take us on a tour of their character Mrs. Vera, born early in their partnership from a need to do something light and fun. It was the 80’s, and Johnstone describes it as a heavy time with the AIDS epidemic ravaging the community. Johnstone was working with friends staging public puppet shows, painting sets, making costumes, telling stories. Facing his own health challenges, he and Faulk started making and wearing costumes and snapping pictures. “We were surrounded by so much darkness, we needed joy,” says Johnstone. You need to watch the talk to really get the feeling, but think: more is more, wigs made of combs and beads, vests of plastic straws, hula hoops swirling under skirts, googly eyes, plastic easter egg scale sleeves. The color, surprise, joy, freedom, and masterful crafting is impossible to not fall in love with.
Vera begins alone in dark rooms, expressive eyes popping through a thickly painted face. But over time, she becomes a figure in the city, people are drawn to her and to the spirit of the project. Johnstone and Faulk are committed to using what others throw away, and to sharing the pleasure of costume outside of commercial structures. They pop up on streets with costumes to share and a camera to document. They host workshops. “We don’t have anything for sale, we’re not in galleries. Since we’re outside of traditional systems, we aren’t beholden to anyone,” say Faulk. They give people permission to “do something crazy,” says Faulk, and Johnstone adds that it’s not exactly about identity or gender politics, “it’s about fun. You’re part of it, if you’re up for it.” By the end Vera “has a tribe,” she is a portal, a beacon, a leader.
The talk ends with a mural by Faulk in an LGBTQ Senior Center. It’s about survivors and their many paths. The wall along a staircase shows a pluriverse of characters, faces made from triangles, circles, stick legs, footprints leading in multiple directions. It’s called “The Scenic Route,” because “Everyone comes from their own starting point, each person’s experience of surviving is unique.”
Authored by Sarahleah Fordyce
22 апр 2024
