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Memory Clothing by Jon Coffelt

COMMUNION by Jon Coffelt
COMMUNION by Jon Coffelt

The show installed

Communion: Cousin Lisa
Communion: Cousin Lisa

As a wild teenager, cousin Lisa would wear a dress like this. Now she is a soccer Mom.

Communion: an indian shirt
Communion: an indian shirt

Communion: Jon's favorite Pajamas
Communion: Jon's favorite Pajamas
Communion: installation
Communion: installation
Communion:installation 2
Communion:installation 2
Communion: uniform
Communion: uniform

In the show are 2 perfectly miniaturized uniforms belonging to 2 retired women who served in the Navy. Now&nbsp; that they are safely retired, they can be open about their long term relationship

COMMUNION by Jon Coffelt
COMMUNION by Jon Coffelt
COMMUNION by Jon Coffelt
COMMUNION by Jon Coffelt

Memory Clothing by Jon Coffelt | Media List


Statement

And then the story ends?
In these changing times it is the simple things, the intimate things, the things that bring the community together that satisfy. It is the old things that sustain: home cooked meals; Sunday suppers; family albums. Not a facile nostalgia for a mythic time, but actions the embrace and nourish.

These are ideas that Jon Coffelt knows intimately. Raised close to the farm and the church in the rural south, he drank from the deep well of southern storytelling: the stories of his Amish grandparents, the secret meetings among the sacred trees, the overbearing relative whose stories were so ubiquitous that community slang used her name to describe anyone overbearing.

On a personal basis, he has always told these stories, the stories of his childhood. Jon Coffelt also believes that things often contain stories waiting to be set free. Why else would we so tenaciously hold onto our otherwise worthless treasures? Our teddy bears; the dime store gifts we received from our children; the Grand Canyon sweatshirt with holes in it? Because their implicit stories comfort us.

Since 1993, he has been helping other people to share and preserve their stories through the unusual medium of clothing.

Jon, a mid-career artist known primarily as an abstract and geometric painter, began his career in fashion design, working for the renowned designer Willy Smith. He has brought these skills to bear on the over 400 tiny, soft sculptures of clothing he has re-designed, working instinctually and utterly by hand.

At Susan Hensel Gallery, 3441 Cedar Ave S, Mineapolis, MN, through May 15, he is showing 115 tiny articles of memory clothing. Each piece used to be a larger item. For instance, there is an old beaded cashmere sweater in the show that used to belong to Frank Lloyd Wright's grand daughter. To create the miniature, he cut up the left sleeve of the sweater to make the left sleeve of the artwork. Beads from the bodice were re attached to the bodice. The silk lining was downsized to line the new item.

Elsewhere in the room is a piece made for the late photographer Ruth Bernhard. It is made from cloth resembling a brick wall. For Ruth, it was an emblematic reminder of the Stonewall riots that began the ongoing legal rights reform for GLBT citizens of this country. She personally inserted the little piece of hankie in the shirt pocket.

There are other pieces made for famous people and simple pieces made for simple people to help them remember Grandma, the prom dress, the first date, a wild adolescence, the Navy uniforms of a retired lesbian couple who can now be public with their relationship or pajamas representing the most endearing characteristic of the beloved wife.

Each little piece, lovingly stitched by hand, has its own story to tell. Somehow by miniaturizing the clothing, the stories are able to escape and become real for the rest of us. Even if we never knew the people who wore these shirts, pants, pajamas, uniforms, sweaters, flak jackets, we now share their stories as though they are our own.

It is a simple thing, story. It can never be taken away from us and it is something we can always afford to freely share. And then, the story never ends.

COMMUNION: miniatures by Jon Coffelt
Through May 15, 2009
At Susan Hensel Gallery, 3441 Cedar Ave S, Minneapolis
Phone 612 722-2324
Email: susan@susanhenselgallery.com
Web:www.susanhenselgallery.com
Gallery hours: Monday, 10-5 and by generous arrangement on other days. Please call to set a time.

Reviews

House and Garden: Twists on Domesticity
Space One Eleven
September 15th 2000 through December 7th 2000
...Jon Coffelt’s miniature clothes - each garment a portrait of a distinct individual - merges the feminine, domestic chore of sewing with the act of painting.  Instead of relying upon his customary paintbrush and wooden panels, Coffelt is creating surrogate paintings with these patterned garments.  This painterly emphasis, stressing the color, texture, weave and gloss of his chosen fabrics, is what separates Coffelt's undertaking from the painstaking labors of a
miniaturist such as Charles LeDray.  And like Beall, who often makes works in response to personal circumstances, or events, Coffeacquaintances, and friends.
...
David Moos
Curator of Painting and Sculpture
Birmingham Museum of Art

_______________________________________________________________

Nancy Raabe, "Tiny Treasures,"  Birmingham News, Birmingham, AL, September 10,
2000: pg. 1F & 8F
Tiny Treasures
Brush with death inspires creation of miniature clothing
by Nancy Raabe
News Staff writer
For Jon Coffelt, art and life are inextricably intertwined. "My whole life goes into what I'm doing," he once said.

Thus it should come as no surprise to those who know him that a serious illness Coffelt suffered through not long ago should be cut from the same cloth, so to speak, as his most recent artistic endeavor.

The latter, a series of immaculately hand sewn miniature garments, will be on view starting Friday at Space One Eleven, 2409 Second Avenue North, along with work by Karen Rich Beall and Carolyn Wade. Titled House and Garden: Twists on Domesticity, the show extends through December 7.

The soft-spoken Coffelt, founder and owner of Agnes, a gallery at 1919 15th Avenue South specializing in photography and book art, is reluctant to talk much about his bout with meningitis this past spring.

"Through stress and overwork my system overloaded," he said, explaining how he came down with the illness, "At one point I was in critical condition. They called my family in. Then I started sewing."

Bedridden for two months after his brush with death, Coffelt turned his attention entirely toward the making of miniature clothing. He's completed more than a hundred, a good number of which will be inventively hung at Space One Eleven.

"Anne (Arrasmith, SOE co-director) has asked me a hundred times why I did this," Coffelt reflected. "I have a hundred interpretations. One is because I got really sick, and couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't paint." He acknowledges the activity helped pull him back toward health.

"We do a lot to put a smile on someone's face.
And when you don't know if you're going
to live or not, what counts is the simple things."

Perfectly finished inside and out -- except for buttonholes, which proved impossible on the tiny scale that became his world -- each article took him about eight to 10 hours to complete. They're entirely sewn by and, although Coffelt does admit taking advantage of preexisting features, such as hems, when appropriate. "Doing these by hand is a commentary on our
society," Coffelt noted. "Just about everything can be made by a machine, I chose the hard way to do this."

At first glance the casual observer may pass the garments off as skillfully sewn doll clothing. Coffelt is quick to correct this judgment.

The travesty is, most people think they're doll clothes," he said, carefully unfolding item after item at his East Lake home. "They're not. They're relics. I guess you could call them soft sculpture.' " Each article, he explained, originated as a vision Coffelt had of a particular person, "I pictured something I'd like to see somebody in," he said. Some are exact replicas of treasured items people brought in for Coffelt to replicate, like the crisp outfit Anne Arrasmith's daughter Tyndall sported at Crestline Elementary School nearly two
decades ago.

Others are clothing Coffelt remembers cherished friends or relatives once wearing, Take one look at the mauve, checkered house dress with it's simple belt and gentle darts in the shoulder blades, and you can sense he presence of the artist's slightly hunchbacked grandmother, A miniature dress like that once worn by a favorite niece who died in a tragic accident embodied the exuberance and zest for life with which Coffelt remembers her. And when his longtime partner Shawn Boley was about to discard a favorite shirt, worn beyond
use, Coffelt pleaded with him to keep it. The original is now missing a piece, but the couple has an immaculate version of the shirt in miniature as a keepsake.

Through all this what I kept realizing was how much people meant, and mean, to me, Coffelt said. "We do a lot to put a smile on someone's face. And when you don't know if you're going to live or not, what counts is the simple things."

Also in Coffelt's collection is an exact copy of the pajamas his grandfather died in. He made these using material discreetly cut from the original set, as is his custom whenever possible.

Heart-felt  dedications
A shimmering gold gown whose angled neckline plunges across mid chest honors the breast cancer activist Matuschka. An integral part of the shirt made for photographer and friend Ruth Bernhardt is a tiny tissue protruding from the pocket "for all her friends who have died of AIDS," Coffelt explained. And a shirt whose fabric exhibits bright splotches of color on a background of swirling reds and oranges is dedicated to the artist Van Gogh. "This one's for Vincent," Coffelt said with a sly smile. "Vincent would like the long sleeves."

An expert in fabrics, the artist waxes eloquent on the subject in item after item. One bright design is "an early Lily Pulitzer." Other articles are made from Ikat, a Honduran fabric, South African madras, and antique corduroy, When ever possible his creations retain the integrity of fabric and the original pattern.

"People have strong memories associated with certain clothes," Coffelt reflected. "They keep them for a reason. I'm taking a memory and making it precious to them. I'm standing back and letting people tell me their stories. Theirs are just as important as mine are."