Mixed-media style: 'The Future is Fashion' at Envision Arts Gallery

From pink feathers on a mixed media piece featuring magazine cutouts of Lady Gaga to scraps of fabric on a denim jacket and splashes of red, blue, and yellow acrylic paint on a plain black polyester dress, “The Future is Fashion” includes a kaleidoscopic array of works by artists enrolled in youth or adult programs through Envision, an organization that serves people who are blind and visually impaired.

Beads, lace, paper, and even vinyl stickers, as in “Runway” by Patrick — one of 11 individually named artists represented in the show — make appearances in the mixed-media works. Beads add dimension, texture, and sparkle to not only the nine-piece “Accessorize, Accessorize, Accessorize” series of canvas bags by youth in the Envision Child Development Center, but also the “Who runs the world? Girls!” bag by Annette. Beads of various kinds and colors also star in the six mixed media on cardboard works by Lindsay: “Embellished,” “Beaded,” “Fashion,” “Shine On,” “Glitter and Gold,” and “Visions,” the latter of which also sports pink feathers.

Layers of various printed paper and other material cutouts shimmer and shine but don’t at all obscure the image of the beautiful, brown eyes that are the focus of Cindi’s mixed media on magazine piece titled “Peek-A-Boo.” Paper is also a prominent player in Mark’s “Map to Adventure,” a mixed media on card stock work that incorporates crumpled and torn fashion and home-décor magazine pages printed with such tantalizing phrases as “of glamorous tidbits” and “airy as lace.”

Both glamorous and airy is “Dress No. 2,” an acrylic paint on polyester dress by Savannah, whose “Dress No. 1,” also acrylic on polyester, offers a hand-embellished take on a more work-a-day wearable suitable for the office. Savannah’s two dresses are complemented by Brittany’s stylish ensemble “Jacket,” made of fabric scraps on denim jacket, and “Skirt,” created from carpet samples, fabric scraps, and paper on a polyester skirt.

Stephanie’s contributions to the show are two four-piece sets of collage on ceramic tiles that she titles “Fashion Tiles” and “Bling Tiles” for visually obvious reasons. One set showcases a fashionable sweater, backpack, women’s top, and high-heeled shoe, with the four individual tiles being brought together with strong black-and-white backgrounds. The other set is ring-themed, featuring a brilliant diamond-studded bauble in one of the tiles with gemstone rings and butterflies and shadow shapes of butterflies in the other three.

Completing “The Future is Fashion” are works by David, whose “Let the Drama Unfold” and “Leon Max Pop Art” illustrate his use of acrylic paint to enhance selected pages from magazines; by Jenny, whose addition of plus marks in acrylic paint to magazine pages result in “Chandelier,” “Dalmatians No.1” and “Dalmatians No. 2”; and by Andy, who employs a Sharpie marker to add repetitive patterns to magazine pages in his “Interior,” “Overthink,” “Balenciaga,” and “Windy Day.” Taken together, the works offer a different visual perspective, which at once heightens and obscures the original image.

The artworks of a number of the artists represented in the show, including Andy, Jenny, David, Savannah, and Patrick, could be considered to fall within the category of outsider art— pieces made by those who are shaped by experience and not by formal art training. Outsider artists often employ techniques such as repetition, like Patrick’s use of vinyl stickers on magazine pages not only in “Runway” but also “Anonymous,” which has red vinyl blocks and yellow vinyl strips of color placed strategically over the eyes, noses, and mouths of high-fashion models; “Stripes No. 1” and “Stripes No. 2,” which both feature blue and red vinyl strips to help make a visual pun on the magazine headline “a layered approach”; and “Chanel,” with its multicolored squares, oblique rectangles, and triangles.

Patrick, whose last name is McCowan, is known for his spatial explorations. His stacked, multi-layered works push two-dimensional boundaries into three-dimensional space. “Layered,” in fact, was the title of McCowan’s first solo exhibition, held in September 2021 at the Salina Community Theater in Salina, Kansas. Since then, his works have been displayed in downtown Wichita vacant window storefronts managed by the Wichita Creatives Cohort’s A Window into Wichita Art (AWIWA) program. Eight of his works, all vinyl stickers on magazine pages, are showcased in “The Future is Fashion.”

The striking visual aspects of the show can hide one of its realities: all of the works are the creations of individuals who are blind, visually impaired, and/or physically disabled. Sarah Kephart, who manages the gallery space, is an enthusiast of outsider art and has worked with many of the artists represented in the exhibition. A certified expressive arts education consultant who specializes in using art as a way for youth and adults with disabilities to communicate and explore their creative abilities, she has been with Envision since December 2012.

An artist herself, Kephart holds a bachelor’s degree in sculpture from Wichita State and a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture and expanded media from the University of Kansas. In 2021, she was named the first manager of Envision Arts, which is one of the Wichita-based nonprofit’s many services and programs that further its mission: “To improve the quality of life and provide inspiration and opportunity for people who are blind or visually impaired through employment, outreach, rehabilitation, education and research.”

The Envision Arts Gallery and Community Engagement Center opened on Jan. 15, 2022. Since then, the center has become a hub for Envision Arts, which offers year-round arts programming with daytime and after-school classes, evening and weekend workshops, special events — including artist talks — and local, regional, and national exhibitions, including, of course, “The Future is Fashion” — complete with Braille signage for every single artwork on display.

The Details

"The Future is Fashion"
March 7-May 30, Envision Arts Gallery and Community Engagement Center, 801 E. Douglas Ave., Suite 106, in Wichita

Take a runway walk through an exhibition of fashion-inspired artworks and wearable pieces created by youth from the Cathy G. Hudson Envision Child Development Center (ECDC) and adults from Envision’s PRIDE program.

Envision Arts Gallery is open to the public from 10 a.m.-noon and 1-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday. Admission is free.

Learn more about Envision Arts and view the gallery schedule.

Connie Kachel White is a writer and editor who has written about the arts in Wichita for going on three decades now. White, whose communications gigs range from book-editing to investigative reporting, is the founding and current editor of Wichita State University’s The Shocker magazine. More of her writing can be found online at theshockermagazine.com and shockerconnect.com.

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