to love what is mortal honors my dad, Monty, who died in 2023. I designed this piece while sitting with him in his final days, hoping to share his memory, his photography, and the simple, quiet ways he lived his life.

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The dress features a photograph my dad took of the surface of the Virginia river where I was born and raised. Like Monet’s haystacks, he studied the surface of the river season after season and year after year, returning to capture its fluctuations through photography. It was one of his favorite places, leaving notes on the kitchen table letting us know he’d gone down to the river, wet boots on the side porch upon his return. The garment flows and glimmers like the surface of the river, shimmering like wet black rocks in the sun, his photography transformed into wearable art.

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The body of the garment is made entirely out of 3D printed fabric, built by combining tulle with 100% recycled PLA filament printed into a dot grid pattern modeled in Fusion360. Printed in a series of 11x11" squares to accommodate the 3D printer bed size, the individual panels were then embedded with sections of my dad's photograph via sublimation ink activated in a heat press, then assembled using a 3D printing pen and sealed with a high gloss topcoat.

The shoulders of the garment are hand-draped and sewn together using a base of black satin overlaid with 3D printed and sublimated sports mesh, top coated in resin. The collar of the gown is meticulously hand beaded in an encrusted layer of black Preciosa crystal, mimicking wet rocks in a creek glittering under the sun. The hat is built exclusively using traditional millinery materials and techniques. The whispy, ethereal face covering is made of sinamay steamed into shape and hardened using gelatin. Different gauges of millinery wire are hand sewn into the perimeter of the hat so it keeps its form. The hat foundation is hand-bent millinery wire wrapped with a layer of tulle before being encrusted with black crystal beads.

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to love what is mortal takes many additional inspirations: mourning attire, death shrouds, the Bene Gesserit of Dune, the writing of Annie Dillard. The Mary Oliver poem “In Blackwater Woods” features prominently, a verse I regularly return to. The imagery of glowing winter trees and “the black river of loss” inspired the organic shapes of the headpiece, skeletal branches reaching towards the sky. 

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It is a spirit, a specter of loss, drowning in grief. A dementor, a ghost, a haunting. It is what is left when a beloved has vanished, wisps of smoke after a candle is snuffed out. It is the flow of life as the world keeps moving beyond those who leave us, sweeping us forward whether we like it or not. 

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It is also a warm summer day, the bright sunlight dappling the water, laughing with our friends as we float in our tubes down the river towards home.

 

This garment was a finalist in World of WearableArt: RISE 2025.