Creative Research Statement
Creative Research Statement
My research as a designer, maker, and scholar is reflective of my lived experience – it is intersectional and profoundly personal. It combines the practices of traditional costume design and costume technology and transforms them through an exploration of the ways in which non-textual dramaturgies can communicate story and identity. I construct clothes and narratives by incorporating rigorous technical expertise and a practice of embodied research into three-dimensional representations of identity. My transdisciplinary and collaborative approach challenges an established separation between the fields of costume making and costume design and creates a practice that honors and explores both simultaneously. I practice with a generational and embodied knowledge passed down as a professionally trained dressmaker and tailor, while exploring new ways of creating identity through costume making.
I bring dual identities to my creative research as both a costume maker and a costume designer. Within a traditional theatre practice, these roles have been treated as separate disciplines, with individuals specializing in either the technical aspects of costume making as drapers, tailors, and crafts artisans, or the conceptual and visual development of costumes and character design. My work as a generative artist-maker bridges and lives between these boundaries. Through my creative research, I am developing a unique practice that combines the traditional skills of costume design, like text based dramaturgical research, and the embodied practices and traditions of costume making, like draping and fabric manipulation. I have cultivated and continue to explore an integrated maker-designer-artist approach that incorporates personal narrative, innovative technologies, and an embodied dramaturgy as key elements in the design and making process.
The mixed identity of my work is further viewed through the diverse collection of institutions and communities in which my design and making practices are honed and featured. Venues for my work include high-profile, traditional institutions as well as innovative, collaborative, and community driven spaces. My work as a costume maker has been featured at the Santa Fe Opera, recognized as “Festival of the Year” at the International Opera Awards in 2022, and my costume design work has been on stage at the Alley Theatre, one of the largest regional theater companies in the US. Additionally, my work as a designer-maker has been showcased at Magic Theatre in San Francisco, CA, which has identified and cultivated writers on the cutting edge of American theatre since the 1970s, and The Magik Children’s Theatre in San Antonio, TX, which has provided San Antonio’s children with professional, accessible, literature-based theatre since 1994. Such partnerships allow me to maintain a robust and innovative research agenda supported by the resources of storied institutions while enabling me to continue to experiment with collaborators, spaces, and communities dedicated to decolonial approaches to performance. My work straddles often disparate ways of creating design for live performance and argues for an exploration of the in-between in both practice and production.
A critical aspect of my research involves a practice of embodied dramaturgy—a study of how materials, labor, and space interact with a creator’s body to construct visual narratives that communicate character and intention. My costume making and design work for Tremble Staves (2023) and Riding the Currents of the Wilding Wind (2024), both with frequent collaborator Virginia Grise, were devised via this practice. Tremble Staves is a site-specific sound composition and performance by Pulitzer-Prize-winning musician Raven Chacon that demands a conscious integration of land into the performance. My design process began with an embodied investigation: with Raven’s composition in my ears, Virginia’s words in my mind, and the shore of Lake Austin beneath me, I painted through an intuitive process for several hours on the grounds of Laguna Gloria. This abstract and highly interpretive painting informed the final text spoken by Virginia Grise in her role as the Narrator and fundamentally guided the design and execution of the final costume. I sewed, painted and designed much of the dress outside, listening to the voice of the artists, with my feet on the earth, grounded on land that is referenced in the piece. This unique embodied approach is at the heart of my work and research. The process places reverence in labor and personal history and explores their collision with design for performance. Through a blending of traditional costume design practices, rigorous research, and experiential and sensory exploration, I am inspired to create designs that are striking visual sculptures informed by the narrative, the performer, the audience, and the space.
Beyond my continued exploration of an embodied approach to design, I push the boundaries of costume making techniques by combining new technologies like digital 3D modeling and 3d printing with complex and refined sewing and construction techniques into an innovative approach to costume technology. In my work on Don't Let the Pigeon Sing Up Late! (2023), a world premier opera for children written by Mo Willems for the Kennedy Center, I explored a process that integrated new technologies throughout the research and development phases. The work included digital 3D modeling, using the open-source computer graphic software Blender, and the printing of maquettes via fused deposition modeling, a type of extrusion printing often shortened to F.D.M.. These processes were combined to design and build exaggerated understructures that transformed three opera performers into sleepy, child Pigeons. For my work on Orfeo during the Santa Fe Opera’s 2023 season, I collaborated with costume designer Carlos Soto to build an evening gown that was made from twelve yards of metallic sequined silk and fifty-four 3D-printed tree branches that were digitally sculpted and printed in my studio. While the 3D-printed elements marked the first time the technology was seen on costumes at the Santa Fe Opera, the techniques used to cut, fit, and finish the complex gown have been honed through my years practicing traditional fine dressmaking practices at the prestigious institution. The rigorous standards I maintain for classical sewing and construction techniques, paired with a dedication to innovation in the costume technology industry, are part of my unique identity as an artist-maker. This dual focus contributes to my reputation in the costume technology field as a multi-faceted collaborator who can problem solve and work on experimental projects.
Moving forward, my research will continue to traverse both tradition and innovation as I investigate the bridges between costume design, technology, and an embodied process of dramaturgy. I plan to further explore digital tools like augmented reality and patternmaking via digital draping, seeking ways to integrate these into a traditional costume-making process. I will deepen my investigation of material dramaturgy and embodied research, particularly through upcoming collaborations with Virginia Grise and other artists who value my unique creative approach. I aim to grow my practice of incorporating site-specific research into a broader range of both traditional and non-traditional projects.
An ongoing project of mine focuses on the research, preservation, and sharing of costume making that can be found in under-appreciated, regional, dressmaking traditions. For generations, artist-makers from the San Antonio, Texas community have created complex, and heavily adorned, hand-beaded gowns for the Royal Court of Fiesta and are featured in the annual Battle of Flowers Parade. I am in the early stages of this ambitious, multiyear project and am working through a deliberately slow process that begins with establishing trust and relationships with the owners of the sewing studios. The project is complex and requires careful navigation of multigenerational relationships, inherited class structures, and the sometimes-guarded social spheres found within the San Antonio community. This project aims to document and share some of the traditional beading and couture garment construction techniques practiced within the studios and amplify this work within their own communities and to the professional costume industry. My goal is to combine oral history, material documentation, and collaborative design to culminate in a public exhibition that highlights the personal narratives of the artists and the specialized technical practices. Beyond an exhibit catalog, a long-term goal is to compile and publish this research providing further historical context, selections from oral histories, and full-color images cataloging techniques and practitioners.
At its core, my creative research is reflective of two equal parts of my identity: a career costume technician whose skills have been forged by the high expectations and practices found within esteemed performance venues, and an artist-maker created and shaped by communities where art was sometimes found in the grinding of spices or the spreading of masa. By exploring and weaving these identities together, I have created and continue to engage in a layered artistic research practice that combines both technical skills and an investigation of non-textual dramaturgies. This approach is rigorous, transdisciplinary, innovative in the field, and it broadens the lens through which we view the work of costume designers and makers.