Los Angeles Visionaries Association

I'm a sculptor and creator by trade- a sculptor of the human body through odd costumes and unusual materials. I am probably best known for my odd pieces:  inflatable suits for comedian Marty Putz, dresses covering dancers and room-size aluminum bowls for Diavolo Dance Theatre, rock and roll extravaganzas of crystal mesh and leather for Michael Schmidt, the costumes for the black and white silent film version of The Call of Cthulhu and recently the vengeful nuns in Nude Guns with Big Guns.

I'm also creating all re-purposed, re-used and recycled hardware and leather pieces through my company Dreams By
Machine: leather masks, cuffs, chokers and other fetishistic/steampunkish geekery. http://www.dreamsbymachine.etsy.com

My true love, though, is collaboration in creation. Alternate Beauty was a collaborative photo project brought up by a stranger, and between the 60 year old body builder/model, the photographer Nichelle Lawrence and me and my vintage inspired clothing we created something much more than the mature version of Victor Skrebneski's "nude male with Iman" which was the original intent. http://dreamsbymachine.com/?page_id=153

Alternate Endings was Nova Jiang's project for the Public Design Festival in Milan- she wanted a live creation of people's clothing on site, in different colors each day. We found each other through friends, I suggested live draping as a way to activate the audience and get them more involved and the project became something more than just a different color top per day. We were able to speak to complete strangers, without any benefit of a shared language. http://www.novajiang.com/alternate-endings/gallery/

I'm now making collaborative art pieces of my own and am most excited about my all re-purposed and re-used Steampunk wheelchair "Driven". I created it for my friend Peter Soby (the Driver, who's paraplegic and needs a chair to get around). It’s been exhibited by itself, but won’t truly be ready until we’ve done more test runs with Peter to get the ride fully functional. I’d love to collaborate with other artists and drivers of chairs and scooters, users of prosthetics and walkers and crutches in making to make these utilities worthy of inspiration and desire. http://dreamsbymachine.com/?page_id=296

My current collaborative project and event, Presque Prêt a Porter (Almost Ready To Wear) is a live draping event at the inaugural Hollywood Fringe Festival, where I'll be dressing models and audience members with re-purposed and used fabrics and clothing pieces on site (and very quickly) to live re-purposed percussion accompaniment. The audience is asked to bring in materials to sacrifice and be reborn as new works of art worn by them, and the music and musicians will encourage participation. It will be both chaos and community, which is ideal!

LA has so much waste, and there is so much spectacular creative material available. I'd love to create ways to encourage people to find the beauty in the overlooked and to create together wherever we can. Thank you for the opportunity, and yes- let’s work together.