Planetarium displays faculty art and fashion pieces

By Francisco Omar Fernandez Rodriguez Arts & Features Editor Arts & Ideas hosted a Linda Vaden-Goad Authors & Artists event in the FSU Planetarium, located in the Christa McAuliffe Center on March 4. Laura Kane, a professor in the Fashion Design & Retailing Department, shared three projects with the audience. As an apparel designer, she seeks to communicate meaning through clothing, and how the process of doing so is similar to other forms of research, she said. She’s especially interested in how that process can help fashion design scholarship be considered a more legitimate field. The first garment shown was inspired by a piece of music titled “Raining by Sunset,” by mandolinist Chris Thile, she said. The design’s approach was inspired by her colleague Jessica Ridgeway, a professor at Florida State University, she said. Ridgeway takes musical notation, codes them into colors, and creates pieces based on the music. “Each note of the music notation was associated with a particular color, and each length of the note was then given a particular sized rectangle, so the song is played across the fabric,” Kane said. She got to see these garments in person and talk to Ridgeway about the process, she said. Then she wanted to turn a song she loved when she was 15 into a garment. She presented this garment at a conference, citing Ridgeway, she said. Ridgeway saw it and asked if they could work together on a song Ridgeway was interested in, and Kane quickly agreed. Ridgeway wanted help in translating “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from “The Wizard of Oz” into a garment, Kane said. It would embody Dorothy’s journey from Kansas to the Land of Oz while also paying homage to the piece’s history. “She also wanted something that would kind of transform into something exciting and beautiful. So I want to take you over the rainbow!” she said. The traditional-looking garment suddenly turned into a much more colorful one, and was followed by applause. “So this garment is transformable. We designed it specifically to transform while spinning, because that was the tornado that took Dorothy to the Land of Oz,” Kane said. In the garment are layers of circles, each one representing the whole song on one instrument, resulting in the song playing over and over again, she said. Ridgeway’s grandmother used to sing the song to her eight brothers and sisters, Kane said. With her grandmother’s passing, Ridgeway wanted to dedicate the garment to her. Each of Ridgeway’s nieces and nephews, aged 2 to 12, listened to the song and drew what they heard, she said. Then Ridgeway took the artwork and worked pieces of it into the garment. The last garment is from a different story, she said. Kelly Cobb, a professor from the University of Delaware’s Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies, approached Kane a few years ago, Kane said. Cobb studies the idea of creating products while being conscious of how it’s going to impact future generations, Kane added. “So when you’re creating or thinking about using materials, can you use stuff that already exists and reuse it so that you can keep it going, and you’re not just throwing it away?” Kane asked. She also worked alongside Casey Stannard, a professor at Louisiana State University, she added. Kane and Stannard were told to create one future-inspired garment, and one history-inspired, Kane said. Kane was given the future while Stannard had the past. Creating this garment was a different experience for Kane because she had a shorter time frame, she added. Both of the garments were on display back in 2023, she said. Next was Laura Osterweis, a professor of art. She thanked many people, including Arts & Ideas, for putting the event together. Knowing that she would be presenting there was a motivating force for her sabbatical, she said. She’s thankful for the time to focus on her work. She also thanked her mother. She’s her biggest supporter and traveling companion, she said. During their trip to Hawaii in 2023, she saw how each of the islands she visited had very different cultures and landscapes, she said. Osterweis discussed with Ross Barros-Smith, the planetarium and media technology manager, having the students in her classes make artwork for the planetarium’s dome, she added. After seeing students make artwork for the dome, she decided that she wanted to, she said. Digital art and animation were incorporated, she said. “The idea here is that you can go to a planetarium, and you’re supposed to look up at the sky, and I want you to also look at your feet, and all around you,” Osterweis said. She asked everyone to explore the idea of “natural beauty, photographic beauty, artistic beauty, cosmetic beauty, and cosmic beauty.”