Jean Cherouny
Jean Cherouny
…..is an artist, mover, maker, shaker, a designer who wants the world to be a better place, who wants more inclusivity and difference to be celebrated! Improv Suits connects us to an international discussion in fashion. Whether Jean is tracing a path with her rollerblades in paint to record her time with color, line, and shape, she pushes the limits of naming low fashion for the high masses. Seeing free art that is inclusive is thought provoking, and that is what Jean aims to spread in contemporary fashion. The Improv Suit parade down Church Street in Burlington, Vermont USA, is a manifestation of this. We have shown Improv Suits at Bubec Studio, Prague 5 in the Czech Republic and in storefronts in Brattleboro, Vermont, USA. Please contact her if you wish to make your own Improv Suit.
Jean set out to connect with artists and create a conversation about “making” as an act of creative survival. These conversations and performances are seen and unseen, some are on zoom. They seek to find truth and connection through creativity.
As the world was shutting down in a world wide pandemic and their social justice upheaval on the streets fluxed, Jean distributed white hazmat suits, material of tyvek house wrap, being used in hospitals world wide against the spread of Coronavirus 19 Sars, to make a creative layer to wear. Improv Suits reaches into the moving display of art for people who want to participate in the equity of expression as an identity making action. Creating this liminal space is a manifestation of breaking barriers in high fashion to low fashion that welcomes, in a caring way, the discourse of inner and outer body without stigmatization.
Some people use markers and others paint and sew, but in all cases use different subjects bespeak diversity. Regardless, all Improv Suiters report that putting their suit on, or draping them for display, is a tool for their vocation and mission to help them thrive creatively.
Finally, the digital print of their suit can be shared with the world for mass feeling for how vulnerable we remain even when we attempt to protect ourselves in perpetuity. If you would like to purchase an Improv Suit print or original suit it will help us continue to create. Prices are set individually by the artist. Custom suits and digital prints are available.
INSTAGRAM: @jean_cherouny
Erin Bundock
Erin Bundock
…..is a Burlington Vermont-based multimedia artist with who Jean has been working since August 2020. She says that for the past two years she has been interested in fiber art and fabric, so I was very excited to be a part of these Improvisation Suits! A lot of my work is about bodies-what it means to care for and be at peace with your own in the face of difficult hurdles. The shapes and marks on the jumpsuit were inspired by cellular structures. For me, this project was about loosening up: relearning how to find beauty and comfort in our own bodies during the time of COVID.
www.erinbundockfreelancearts.com
INSTAGRAM: ebundock_arts and becreative18
Megan Freeman
Megan Marie Freeman
Considering how crazy this past year has gone, the theme of this exhibit is breaking barriers for me. I think we have just put up barriers “hidden invisible walls” without even realizing it. Therefore I have thought,” Why don't I incorporate pieces with this theme”. 1. Thinking beyond just the struggles and barriers that we have put up within this pandemic. 2. Not being able to see friends or loved ones among many things. Why not incorporate the struggles beyond? For instance, what about being persecuted in society in some way or shape, or form for being different? I think among many things we got to show love and embrace who we really are.
Instagram: muxfree and cardc.urator
Lydia Meade
“Solitary Space Suit” 2021
“Solitary Space” represents my reflections as an artist during COVID isolation. The ocean and its immensely desolate, expansive space provide me with a sense of calm and a place to reflect on the greater universe as a whole. During the pandemic, my time spent walking in the soft green foam along the ocean’s edge has allowed me to center my emotions. My hope is that “Solitary Space” evokes a feeling of relief and inner peace during these times of great uncertainty.
Beth Robinson
“Insidious” 2021
Beth Robinson is a multimedia artist, based in Winooski, Vermont, who's been making "Strange Dolls" since 2003. The Improv Suits project provided her the opportunity to work on a larger scale. She used methods of burning, tearing, stitching, writing, and painting to transform the Tyvek protective suit material. The resulting outfit is feminized armor which obfuscates the inner lining that is filled with writings about feelings of isolation and anxiety during this pandemic.
INSTAGRAM: strangedolls
Improv Suit Parade on Church Street, Burlington, Vermont, USA. Photo credit Gioia Kuss. Follow her on Instagram @gioiakk , lensculture.com Improv Suits by Beth Robinson, Erin Bondunk, Julian Barritt, Megan Freeman, Lydia Meade and Susan McDowell.
Improve Suits Gallery contains the work of artists using Hazmat Suits to transform their lives during COVID 19.
Julian Barritt
Suit Name: "Slip into Something More Comfortable: Authenticity"
Description:
Hazmat suits are meant to protect those who work with viruses and are a barrier, just like the social barrier the pandemic has created via social distancing. As my work makes my inner sparkle outwardly apparent, bedazzling this social barrier seems counterintuitive; yet, this illustrates precisely what has been the case for trans people during the pandemic. Outside the social sphere, trans people have been able to blossom – test-drive new styles that conform to their gender identity, have time for their bodies to develop a presentation that’s in line with their true gender, recover from gender-affirming surgery, get their name and gender legally changed at a time when they’re less out-and-about, and allow others to build familiarity with their name and pronouns before socializing in-person. Accordingly, putting on the suit is the exhilarating act of embracing authenticity. Reveling in the sparkles and colors, a wave of confidence washes over the wearer; the abstract canvas animates, transforming into a feeling.
Instagram: @freakflagproductions
Susan McDowell Coaching
Suit Name: Diverge,Converge
There’s a concept based in design thinking used often in working with humans and solving problems. In most basic terms I’ll refer to it as diverge (create choices) | converge (make choices). It looks like this .
Create Choices • Make Choices
But difficult problems absolutely demand spending time and energy in the pulled-apartness rather than rushing to converge. That vertical dotted line in the first graphic must become something else, something more horizontal and spread out. The process begins to look more like this.
And it is uncomfortable for us to linger in the diverged and uncovered.
Facing Covid—and myriad other pressing world issues—I wonder when is it important to move ahead and when is it important to pull back? When to diverge and when to converge? How, in using phrases like “return to normal” and “get back to the way things were,” are we pushing away discomfort at the cost of discovering something new? When does rushing to a solution not serve us? When does it? How might we discover the answers we need in response to all the wicked problems confronting us?
Individually and collectively, we need to ramble around sometimes in that wild and messy, scary, comforting, gorgeous, shining, surprising, wonderful force that lives in each of us. We benefit from exploring the space which can remind us how to keep going and what we have to offer.
In my improv suit, the arms represent what I’m calling the diverge | converge concept; the zipper opens to that space in between. This exposes the human spirit—a space that can offer creative and heartfelt solutions.
I often follow this same path in a workshop, retreat, or a coaching session.
Click on the head shot of Susan’s Suit for her bog posts about Improv Suits.
