{"id":58545,"date":"2020-02-19T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/wearable-art-artist-shared-what-went-into-her-award-winning-piece\/"},"modified":"2020-02-19T06:30:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-19T15:30:00","slug":"wearable-art-artist-shared-what-went-into-her-award-winning-piece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/wearable-art-artist-shared-what-went-into-her-award-winning-piece\/","title":{"rendered":"Wearable Art artist shared what went into her award-winning piece"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t

Michelle Morris’ path to the top juried prize in Juneau’s annual fashion extravaganza began in the audience.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Morris was a Wearable Art spectator long before she made anything for the annual fashion show and before she was the jurors’ first-place selection in Wearable Art 2020: Joie de Vivre.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“I used to watch the show,” Morris said. “I just loved the idea of creating things out of everyday materials and creating something much more interesting.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

[Here are the winners from Wearable Art 2020<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

When Morris found herself with extra downtime in the winter months seven years ago, she took the plunge and created a piece for Wearable Art. She’s now made pieces for each of the past eight events. Along the way, she’s twice won Wearable Art’s people’s choice award — now named the Sybil Davis Award — and placed in the jurors’ selections five times. This year was her first-ever first-place finish.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“I was happy,” Morris said. “I got to be in the audience this year when they announced, and so that was kind of exciting.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

In past years, Morris has modeled her work, but this year she said she wanted a highly choreographed dance number.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“And I am not a trained dancer,” Morris said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

So “Sample Delight” was modeled by Melissa Patterson, who had helped Morris choreograph in past years.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

The piece, which made use of sample tubes, caps and tubes that previously held pre-rolled joints, was also selected to be exhibited at the Trend Alaska Show in October in Anchorage.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

\"Melissa<\/a>

Melissa Patterson models “Sample Delight” by Michelle Morris at Wearable Art 2020: Joie de Vivre. (Courtesy Photo | Ron Gile)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

Morris took some time to talk to the Capital City about the making of her award-winning piece and what it takes to participate in Wearable Art year after year.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Tell me a bit about the inspiration for the piece. I saw in its description it said ’20s inspired, so I have to imagine that was a nod to the new year we’re in?<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Yeah, and it was just once I started looking at the various bins of things I have in the garage that I keep, I’d been hanging on to these sample tubes for a couple of years, and I decided this was the year to work on it. I always start in the summertime playing around with the pieces that I have. I like the sound. I always like pieces with sound. I wanted to do something I liked. It was shiny, it clicked and made noises and hopefully it would bring a smile to the audience and other artists.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Where’d you get all of the tubes from?<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

My husband works at the fish pathology lab for the Department of Fish and Game, so all the small vials and tubes and caps I got from him. For the wrap that I did that uses pre-roll tubes from the dispensary, I got those from Green Elephant.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

So you’d started collecting the tubes before you knew what the project would be?<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

They go through like 9,000 samples per year using those tubes. I always need something that has a lot. When people offer me things, I always ask how many do you have? I don’t need 20 of one thing, I need thousands of one thing. I’d been holding onto those for a couple of years.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

How long did it take to make the piece?<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

I would say a single row around the piece takes an hour, so multiply it out all the way up. There were definitely some very long days on the weekends working on it.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Is there anything about your piece people might be surprised to learn?<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

\"“Sample<\/a>

“Sample Delight” by Michelle Morris was made mainly using hand-sewn sample tubes and caps. Morris said many thought the top of the piece was made using sequins material, but a close look shows inverted caps with beads. (Courtesy Photo | Michelle Morris)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

People were surprised to learn the top is all caps. Unless you look at it up close and see it in detail, I actually had a lot of people thinking that I had like a sequins fabric for the top, and that I only sewed the bottom with the tubes. No, the top is all caps. Inverted caps with beads in them. Hand sewn.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Are you planning to participate next year?<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Probably. I always say I’m going to take a break, but then the gears start turning, and I start wanting to create something, but I’ve got to give myself a few months off. I wait until summer until I really start brainstorming.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

• Contact reporter Ben Hohenstatt at (907)523-2243 or bhohenstatt@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BenHohenstatt.<\/em><\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Totally tubular! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":474,"featured_media":58546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[556,73,553],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-58545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-art","tag-ccw","tag-fashion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/474"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58545"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=58545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}