Artists often create wearable masterpieces

Handmade garments are designed simply to decorate the human form.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
HACKENSACK, N.J. -- The wedding gown Susie Hooper hand-knitted for her daughter Sarah hangs in the softly lit dining room of her Franklin Lakes, N.J., home.
Sarah wasn't engaged when her mother made the dress two years ago, and she may not choose to wear it when she does get married. Those details did not dampen Hooper's delight in the project.
"I thought it would be delicious to make her an heirloom wedding dress just to have," she says.
Using her favorite disciplines, math and art, Hooper "cajoled" the yarn into a fitted backless sheath that is an ode to her daughter's body.
It is a fine example of wearable art, a handmade garment designed simply to decorate the human form.
Perhaps nobody expresses this idea better than weaver Daryl Lancaster.
"I use clothing as a canvas," she says. "It is the covering for our body, which is the covering for our soul. Instead of using clothing to hide figure flaws and perceived defects, we should be using it to celebrate the soul within, to sing, to decorate, to embellish. And what better vehicle than something that has come from our own hands?"
Shown in exhibitions
At 50, Lancaster no longer sells what she makes. The fruits of her loom are used as teaching tools for other hand-weavers or as objects in exhibitions.
"I do wear key pieces I adore, such as Evolution," a long, flowing vest she wove of rayon and acrylic with a silk-screened lining salvaged from a 1979 graduate art project.
Like all masterpieces, wearable objets d'art are titled.
Hooper, whose labels read "Susie Hooper (Very) Limited," names her creations at conception: White Breath, True Blue, Sweet Tweed, Golden Nugget.
The wedding dress styles that Hooper knits for clients go by Victorian Daydream (knitted lace edged in pink silk) and Beat the Band (strapless silk ribbon with a tulle skirt).
"I think people are tired of mass-produced clothing," Hooper says. She is known for using unusual buttons and pins on her one-of-a-kind vests, sweaters, dresses and coats made of soft washable fibers.
"I get a lot of pleasure when there's an art opening and people show up wearing Susie Hoopers," she says.
Lucky number
Yet Hooper doesn't consider every one of her knitted productions a work of art.
"If I'm very lucky, every seventh piece is beautiful enough to call it wearable art, something you couldn't even buy handmade at a boutique," she says.
There is, however, a certain patina of drama that colors her works. A dancer with the San Francisco Ballet from the age of 5 to 21, Hooper holds a degree in theater.
"I'm most interested in a garment's movement and texture, the way a body moves beneath it," she says.
Lancaster's priority is that the garment conveys a story. Many of hers tell a very personal one. A mohair vest she calls Embedded Files is lined with a fabric incorporating digital photos from her childhood. "Who we are is embedded inside us, and this illustrates that idea," she says.
A bout with breast cancer three years ago brought about a flurry of creativity on her four home-studio looms. "Out of the ashes I started creating more things from fabric I had around," Lancaster says.
Exclusive line
It's also been three years -- since the passing of his 11-year-old son from leukemia -- that novelty sportswear maker Ira Lances has turned his attention exclusively to unique jackets, scarves and sweaters that he and his wife sell at juried craft shows.
In his New Jersey workspace, Lances and a crew of four women stack several layers of rayon on top of each other, sew them together like a quilt, and then make cuts between the layers.
"When we wash it," he says, "it frays and blossoms into a beautiful chenille-like fabric. It's washable and reversible and very cuddly. We tell customers you have to get used to people touching it."
Lances uses the old Singer sewing machines that his grandfather bought to manufacture underwear. His father used them in his own garment business, and now the trusty machines help turn out the items people shell out $175 to $400 to own. Many customers collect them.
"Handmade chenille is an old American craft," Lances says. "When we revived it, I started selling to stores. But then a friend told me, 'You should go to juried craft shows, because what you make is art.'"
Lancaster often serves as a judge at juried shows, and she understands the appeal of handmade merchandise.