The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is pleased to announce its second SHAPE OF NOW Fashion Residency, a collaboration with Anne Guitteau and Katrin Schnabl, who will occupy the upstairs Atrium Gallery at the Art Center from January 14 – 28, 2018.
Anne Guitteau is a knitwear designer and artist. Her work explores the complex relationship between fashion, form and function, blurring the line between garment and sculpture. Combining traditional techniques and alternative materials, she lets her shapes form organically and playfully.
Her work has been featured in prominent fashion publications including Harper’s Bazaar, WWD, Elle Magazine, and the cover of the Chicago Tribune style section as well as on the runway during New York Fashion Week and at The Walk, SAIC’s annual fashion show. In addition, her pieces have been displayed in the Sullivan Galleries’ 2014 Graduates Show, and the 2015 BFA Show.

Katrin Schnabl is a designer, artist and educator. A trained dancer and skilled pattern-maker, Schnabl fuses her two passions to create sophisticated and modern clothes that move sensuously on the body. She has designed for acclaimed dance companies and art performances, which remains an important part of her creative practice. The process of embedding meaning into pattern-making techniques also informs much of her recent installation work. By placing her hand-cut, sewn assemblages into unexpected locations, she heightens our perception of clothing as a membrane that filters information between individuals, effectively shifting contexts and interactions. Through distinct capsule collections, the German-born designer also continues to refine her esthetic since launching her first collection in New York in the late ‘90s. Through her clothing and accessories, Schnabl strives to empower women by creating items reflecting their dynamic lives. In 2004, Schnabl was invited to teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she currently serves as the Associate Professor and Sage-Endowed Chair of Fashion in the Department of Fashion Design.
Joining forces, Guitteau and Schnabl are collaborating on building a multi-dimensional knitted environment. Using discarded plastic that has been carefully cut and repurposed into yarn, the traditional craft of knitting becomes the vehicle for a conceptual exploration of space, environment and body.
Having both independently knitted with plastic before, this residency provides a unique opportunity for a larger-scaled investigation. For the SHAPE OF NOW opening exhibition, both co-created the circular ‘Bubble I’, and ‘Bubble II’. The studio residency allows for an expansion of this idea spatially and to build what one can’t see: the gyroid structure that makes up plastic on a molecular level. This knitted environment provides a way of exploring this unique dimensional space with our body.
Collaborators are also interested in the conversations that this creative process sparks. Many take notice of the materials themselves and how the art serves to repurpose plastic that most often is intended to be immediately thrown away, about the invisibility of the environmental crisis of this disposable culture and these relationships to fashion as a reflection of deeper cultural shifts.
Katrin Schnabl curated the 2017-18 Fashion Residency at the Evanston Art Center with SHAPE OF NOW, a multi-disciplinary project focused on illuminating the creative process behind the work of multi-disciplinary fashion designers/artists: Abigail Glaum Lathbury, Alex Ulichny, Ayrun Dismuke, Kristin Mariani, a collective composed of Sky Cubacub, Compton Quashie and Jake Vogds, and a collaboration with Anne Guitteau and Katrin Schnabl.
A weeklong opening exhibition in October 2017 introduced the designers, who are subsequently invited to individually take over and work in the 2nd floor studio space for up to four weeks throughout the 2017-18 Season. This will take the form of research, sampling, styling, working with collaborators and/or documenting a phase of their unique design processes. During this time, the designers may elect to host classes, workshops, lectures, topical panel conversations, happenings or presentations. A month-long exhibition in the summer of 2018 will feature the work resulting from their residency. The public will have the opportunity to shop a curated selection of fashion, accessories and objects created by the participating designers at THE FAIR, a unique art-meets-fashion pop-up at the Evanston Art Center in March of 2018.