Quarantine Drawings

Graphite Drawings

Flowers are signs of new life, growth. 2020 has also been a dawn of new life and growth.

Displaying Fashion

Installation

Displaying Fashion is an installation challenging the convergence of fashion retail and exhibition spaces. In the 2019 experience economy, both museums and retailers are increasingly similar in their design in attempts of attracting consumers. Is it okay that both of these spaces are becoming indistinguishable? What are the consequences of these similarities in design?

The space was initially inspired by the paradox of displaying fashion without real human bodies in exhibitions and retails. While criticized in museums for lifeless display of clothing; it is accepted within retailers. Yet in both spaces there is an impossibility of displaying on living bodies as fashion is originally intended. The objects included in this space play with these conventions of display whether they are able to be displayed without a body, displayed without an object, or a contrast of museum and retail display.

Is it a fashion exhibition? Is it a fashion retailer? Can it be both?

Displaying Fashion was an installation by Parker O’Connor as part of his Major Research Project for a Master of Arts in the School of Fashion at Ryerson University.

Exhibition User Storyboard

Experience Exhibition Design

As part of a school project, this presentation features a redesign of the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition ITEMS: Is Fashion Modern. It attempts to enhance the experience and learning through interaction with a PEN (based on a model developed by Cooper Hewitt Design Museum) and a user’s cellphone. By focusing on each individual’s own experience with clothing, the goal is that they are able to learn more about what they wear already as well as the world around them.

This presentation was completed as part of a final project for FS8004: Studio Workshop at Ryerson University and supervised by Grahame Lynch.

April 2018

Immersive Colour Experience

Installation Experience

This installation attempted to challenge the gender binary through colour semiotics and the senses. The immersive experience allowed viewers one at a time to enter this small enclosed space that was completely covered in bright pink paper (feminine). Simulataneously they were able to smell, taste, touch, and hear things that highly contrasted the femininity. By using extremely exaggerated examples in this experience, the loud, masculine, “blue” soundscape of sports contrasted the visually intoxicating pink space, for example. Viewers had difficulty distinguishing whether the space was in fact feminine or masculine, with the realization that it does not necessarily have to be either.

This presentation was completed as part of a final project for FS8111: Colour Fashions at Ryerson University and supervised by Dr. Carolyn Kane.

April 2018

Installed at Ryerson University, KHW258B.

A Day at MoMA

Book Design

Inspired by Emily Spivack’s project based on collecting and archiving self-submitted accounts of people’s outfits worn to the Museum of Modern Art’s fashion exhibition, ITEMS: Is Fashion Modern?, this book sought to highlight the difficult interpretation that comes with language (both written and visual). While the nearly 5 000 participant’s messages are going to be archived at MoMA, future scholars may not necessarily have the same understanding of common items such as jeans. At the same time, do we even fully understand what a stranger was wearing when they said they wore jeans? This book features these interpretations in a collection of one day’s worth of participants. The full MoMA archive can be found HERE.

Although it is a print book, a digital copy can be found HERE.

This book was completed as part of a project for FS8004: Studio Workshop at Ryerson University and supervised by Grahame Lynch.

March 2018

Colour Walk

What colour is the environments that we surround ourselves with on a daily basis? This spatial timeline attempts to recreate twenty-four hours of my life through the colour and spaces that I entered into. With many of them being public or semi-public spaces, it questions why so much of our life is spent in monochromatic grey spaces in 2018.

This project was completed for FS8111: Colour Fashions and supervised by Dr. Carolyn Kane.

March 2018.

Stettheimer Salon and Soiree

Event Curation and Management

Stettheimer Salon: A Soirée of Performance

Thursday November 23, 2017, 3 – 4:30 pm

Art Gallery of Ontario, in conjunction with Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry

Supervised by Dr. Irene Gammel, Ryerson University

Produced in conjunction with Florine Stettheimer: Multimodal Modernism symposium held at Ryerson University’s Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre, November 16, 2017.

Absence/Presence

Curation

Absence/Presence: Contemporary Works in Dialogue

Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston ON

April 29 – August 7, 2017

Co-Curated with Emma Doedens, Boris Eng, Katie Haas, Elizabeth Handley-Derry, Siobhan Handley-Derry, Maddy Huber, Eunice Kim, Parker O’Connor, Zoë Richards, Jillian Sanders, Katherine Walker, and Rui Jie Wang with Professor Jen Kennedy

Absence/Presence: Contemporary Works in Dialogue explores the spaces between viewers and works of art, spaces that appear empty, but are filled with ideas, sensations, and emotions. These spaces are points of contact between viewers’ bodies and objects that we cannot touch but may be touched by; things we cannot feel that produce feelings. The idea for this exhibition arose from the curators’ shared interest in experiences of art that cannot be adequately translated into words, and the effect of the asymmetrical and unstable relationship between images, language, and embodied experience on our relationships to ourselves and with others.

The exhibition featured works by Mike Bayne, Rebecca Belmore, Betty Goodwin, April Hickox, Jenny Holzer, Sophie Jodoin, Rachelle Viader Knowles, Barbara Kruger, Micah Lexier, Edward Pien and Michael Snow.

Dido and Aeneas

Costume Design

Dido and Aeneas

by Henry Purcell

Queen’s University Dan School of Drama and Music

Director: Dianne Baird

March 2017

VCFS 2017

Fashion Design

VCFS20

Edge of Glory: Madonna & Lady Gaga scene

Vogue Charity Fashion Show

February 2017

(8 look collection: 8F)

The End of the World Club

Scenic Design

The End of the World Club

by Kat Sandler

Queen’s University Dan School of Drama and Music

Director: Kat Sandler

February 2017

The Glass Walls of Opera Houses

In the twenty-first century, many believe that opera is slowly dying and becoming irrelevant; yet there are more opera houses being built today than ever before especially in regions where opera is not traditionally found (South America, Asia, Northern Europe, smaller cities/regions). The architecture of these twenty-first century opera houses often predominately feature glass walls, which creates a metaphor for the artwork being presented inside the building as being a translucent extension of the culture and city that they preside in.

This creative project was presented alongside a research presentation at Inquiry@Queen’s in March 2017 and was supervised by Dr. Natalie Rewa. It was originally submitted for DRAM419: Opera Design in November 2016.

November 2016

The Servant of Two Masters

Costume Design

The Servant of Two Masters

by Carlo Goldoni

Queen’s University Dan School of Drama and Music

Director: Greg Wanless

November 2016

VCFS 2016

Fashion Design

Literary Legends

The Great Gatsby scene

Vogue Charity Fashion Show

February 2016

(8 look collection: 4M, 4F)

Paper Vogue Dress

Inspired by the hyper-femine shapes of 1950s fashion, this project explored the relationship of the female fashion rules and female fashion publications such Vogue, from which pages this dress was created from. Selecting black and white pages slowly yielding to some subtle colour showcases the notion that Vogue and other magazines might no longer be the authoritative rulebook on fashion in a hyper consumption era of disposable (paper) fashion.

This dress was completed as part of a final project for GNDS351: Gender Fashion and Dress at Queen’s University and supervised by Dr. Nancy Butler.

November 2015

It is on permanent display in the Queen’s Gender Studies Department offices and was included in the Queen’s Creative Expression exhibition Oct-Dec 2016. It was also the focus of a presentation as part of the Ban Righ Centre Speaker Series on 24 November 2016 by Dr. Nancy Butler with Parker O’Connor