“To be, or not to be, that is the question.” – Willie the Shake (1564-1616)
To be, or not to be…[a costume designer or a fashion designer] …that was the question I faced as a teenager, which the drawings at left and below give an idea of. When I started my first December email series in 2012, after a particularly full year of creative endeavors, the results of which i wanted to share with select friends and family, I had no idea that it would lead eventually to this – a diary of sorts, a journal somewhat randomly sampling my past, an autobiography based on artworks created since I was a child, a Slow-Motion Memoir. In the process, I’ve learned one heck of a lot about myself and my past, which I’ve explored through differing avenues of expression and self-revelation – artwork, photography, writing.
When I started the autobiography last February based chronologically on artwork produced, I glossed pretty rapidly over my teenage fashion and costume drawings. Instead I jumped ahead to my years at RISD followed by my unsuccessful struggle to make a career on 7th Avenue as a designer. That was followed by my switch to fashion illustration, which I pursued for half a decade. In the mid-seventies, I made another career move into graphic design, which I’ve only touched upon briefly so far. I’ll start to explore those years of the late ’70s in just a few days. Before diving into that period however, I’ve decided to take a better look at some of the drawings I made in high school, which convinced everyone, including myself, that I wanted to be a fashion designer.
As an assist to the remembering process, I scanned some photos from my high school yearbooks to remind me of who was doing the drawing at that time.
At left, three class photos from Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior years showing a quarter of our class, students with last names starting with A to D. Quite the fashion statements there…
The last two photos show the staffs for two school publications I was involved with: from junior year, the staff of the Marooner, the school newspaper, gathered in the library; from senior year, the staff for the Tripod, the annual yearbook, sitting for an informal portrait somewhere on campus. Involvement in both enterprises indicates an interest that would eventually lead me into jobs in publishing and advertising. More later…
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