2 from KSU fashion faculty receive honor

Staff report

kent

The Kent State University School of Fashion Design and Merchandising School’s director and an associate professor were awarded the International Artist of the Year.

School Director J.R. Campbell and Vincent Quevedo, associate professor of fashion design, were collaboratively awarded the honor at the 2010 Fashion Art Biennale in Seoul, South Korea, for their piece “DMZ,” which stands for demilitarized zone.

The winning piece is made up of two knit dresses on dress forms connected by a large section of fabric printed with optical-illusion imagery.

The middle section has vents and tubes sewn into it, incorporating photos taken from a military submarine’s control panel.

“The piece is meant to invoke a somewhat voyeuristic response to investigating the tubes, which mimics the Western hemisphere’s cultural response to the DMZ between North and South Korea,” Campbell said.

Campbell and Quevedo conceived of, designed and created the piece, down to the fabric. Campbell graphically designed the cotton jersey-knit fabric and digitally printed it in the school’s TechStyleLAB.

Campbell attended the Biennale as one of only four American speakers at the weeklong event.

The event drew 104 artists from 17 nations and included a symposium of various speakers, performances and the main exhibition on the theme of “Fashion Art — War/Peace,” which was in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Korean War.

The event took place during the G-20 Summit in Seoul last month.

One outcome of Campbell and Quevedo’s participation was an invitation extended to the university’s fashion school by the Chinese government to send 10 Kent State fashion-design students to show their work during China’s Fashion Week in March in Beijing.

The chosen students will enjoy an all-expenses paid trip and the opportunity to feature their designs before an international audience.

Students will be chosen during a competitive process by Campbell and the faculty of Kent State’s School of Fashion Design and Merchandising.