The Next Generation OF YOUNG DESIGNERS

We introduce you to four up-and-coming Portland designers and recent graduates of the Textile & Fashion Design Program at Maine College of Art.

PROFILE LOQUAT

Jordan Carey ’19 & Madison Poitras Upton ’19

LOQUAT is an independent fashion and accessories business with a social justice focus, founded by Madison Poitrast-Upton ’20 and Jordan Carey ’19, both of whom majored in Textile & Fashion Design at MECA. During her time at MECA, Poitrast-Upton’s area of study focused on the style of female performers, inspired by her love of music, performance, and fashion. Now, as a graduate, she is dedicated to the advancement of women and people of color through clothing and design. Carey’s work is predominantly focused on the cultural aesthetics and influences ever present and changing in the African diaspora and island life of his native Bermuda. Since graduating, he has worked as an assistant designer for Jill McGowan, Inc., a nationally known Maine-based female apparel manufacturer founded by Jill McGowan, who is also an Adjunct Instructor in MECA’s Textile & Fashion Design Program. LOQUAT’s mission statement is: “We know that art can save lives. Our materials, motifs, collaborations, and contributions are selected to directly benefit and empower marginalized people, causes, and aesthetics. Our goal as artists and designers is to honor the individuals, traditions, and communities that have made LOQUAT possible.” MECA Magazine spoke with both of the brand’s founders about their mission, collaborative process, and upcoming collection.

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Photos courtesy of LOQUAT

Tell us about your current or upcoming collection/ work. What is most exciting to you about it?

What do you think is the potential for art as an agent of social change—who is being engage with in your work?

One of the projects we are most excited about right now is our upcoming spring/summer collection. We are working closely with our friend and mentor Meeta Mastani and her company, Bindaas Unlimited, to create a series of naturally dyed and printed fabrics. This is a great opportunity for us to tell stories of heritage and culture through fashion and textiles. By focusing on our personal journeys and relationships to what is around us, we are able to come up with things that are fresh but also feel timeless. It feels good to know that in an industry like fashion that is shrouded in mystery and abusive labor, we know where and from whom our fabric is coming.

The potential that art has for social change is undeniable. Everything in our world is created, designed, and marketed with artistic thinking. For better or worse. Representation is the key to this—who is being represented, how they are being represented, and where they are being represented. At LOQUAT, it is our firm belief that the relevance of who, how, and where extends past the canvas or the garment and into what exists around it. That is why representation

in our fabrics or models is not enough. In our short time as business owners, we have made it a point to always have a collaboration in the works as a device to empower members of marginalized groups. The work I mentioned before with Meeta Mastani is a good example of this, but you could also look at our work with Indigo Arts Alliance or Pendeja Studio. We also use our platform for more direct political action. Over the summer we made a T-shirt that stated, “MENSTRUAL PRODUCTS SHOULD BE FREE.” From that campaign we were able to raise close to $1,500 for wholesale menstrual products that were donated during Portland’s recent housing crisis. There is no separation of art and life at LOQUAT, so we are committed to making sure that what we do here is with awareness and intention. How do you work together as collaborators? So much of our process is done in-house. The cutting, sewing, pattern drafting, fabric design, sample making, photography, and marketing are split almost entirely between the two of us. We are only now starting to open that process up to other people. Since we chose this somewhat unusual method of starting a fashion company, we have really been able to experiment. There has been a lot of play and one or two items that may or may not ever see the light of day, but that winding, backstreet method is the one we have come to enjoy for now. How has your time at MECA influenced your work? How do you stay connected with MECA? MECA offered us a fine arts fashion education, which was a great fit for the LOQUAT vision. Many of the connections we made in the building have blossomed into genuine mentorships and friends. Both Jill McGowan and Indigo Arts Alliance have been bountiful sources of knowledge and experience. Jill was our pattern drafting teacher and now works with us both. By doing so, she has offered us a serious opportunity for mentorship in both the creative and business sides of fashion. She was also our first wholesale account, which is no small thing. Marcia Minter and Daniel Minter (MECA Illustration Professor), cofounders of Indigo Arts Alliance, afforded us access to a larger professional art world. The connections and resources that have been made available to us and other artists of color by IAA have been priceless.

PROFILE CHLOE ADAMS

Textile & Fashion Design 2020

Chloe Adams received a BFA in Textile & Fashion Design from MECA in 2020. Chloe’s practice is versatile, focusing mainly on creating connections between textiles and the modern human experience. Her work observes textile processes such as garment-making, basketry, felting, knitting, lacemaking, and others, which then expand to other inspirations outside of the field. This process of observation and experimentation has resulted in several projects, including a collaborative photo book (Circle Square) an installation series (Lace Work), and a series of baskets paired with paintings for her final thesis work (Net Work). Chloe currently lives and works in Portland, Maine.

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What are you working on right now, and what is most exciting to you about it? After graduating in the spring of 2020, as I have found with most graduating students, I had to pause for a moment and reflect. Spending so much time isolating is both a blessing and a curse for artists. With the pandemic, all of a sudden you have all this time, but it is very difficult to force creativity in a moment like this. I started really slowly, making work that felt good to me and trying completely new processes without putting pressure on myself to make them perfect. As fall came, I picked up momentum and started using a knitting machine, which has fascinated me ever since

I took a class in this at MECA. I am most excited about a group installation that I am involved with that features my work as well as that of my peers and fellow MECA classmates Ashley Page ’20, Lauren Anderson ’20, MAT ’21, and Keegan Whitford ’21. We did a similar project together about a year ago, and it has been wonderful to communicate with other artists again—even if it’s mostly through digital channels. The show is mixed media—ceramics, sculpture, found objects, wool, yarn, and grass—and all our work has a way of making the others look better. It’s really easy and cohesive.

What do you think is the potential for art as an agent of social change and how do you engage with this in your work? How has your time at MECA influenced your work? How do you stay connected to your MECA network?

There is so much potential for art to explain what words simply cannot. I’m of the belief that we all have the intuition to be creative, that the exploration and process of our emotional self is crucial to our well-being, similar to how we dream. For me, I have to make. It’s a feeling, and a compulsion, and in this way, it can be hard to think about my audience, because I will create regardless. This is why I chose an education in art, because there are no clear answers.

My work visually expresses feelings and emotions that can’t be represented in other ways. My work has themes—how we work together, who we are, what our interactions mean—but my goal is resonance. My goal

(L-R): Atmos-techne-sphere. Photo by Jay Wickersham ’19 | Circle Square, 2019. Photograph by Adam Fowler ’20

is for my viewer to feel in touch with their compassion, with further appreciation, with emotions that are harder to reach. In this way, we employ social change; when we force ourselves to feel new emotions, like discomfort or joy, we become more connected with our humanity.

I chose MECA for the community. The intimacy was important to me, and I have absolutely found that. I cannot thank my peers and professors enough for helping me to find my own confidence and helping me to distinguish my path. It sounds so simple, but the small community really allowed for a support system that was greater than I could have ever expected. People show up for each other here, we lift each other up, and not just professionally, but beyond that. It’s a difficult task, to put an emotional investment into your profession, but I’ve never felt invalid or alone. In this way, I consider the connections I’ve made at MECA to be like family, a deeper support system than a recommendation or a studio visit. It’s so easy to stay connected, from seeing people on the street in Portland or online. I know I will be supported by the people here for the rest of my life.

PROFILE KINCAID PEARSEN

Textile & Fashion Design 2019

Kincaid Pearson ’19 grew up in the rural New Hampshire town of Henniker. Surrounded by nature and with little desire for interactions with technology from a young age, Pearson developed an interest in incorporating bright colors and organic shapes into his work. An interdisciplinary artist, Pearson incorporates his textile skills with sculpture, painting, furniture design, and home decor, and plans to expand into interior design. Pearson received a grant from MECA’s Belvedere Fund for Professional Development in 2020 to purchase a tufting gun to fabricate his rug designs. His work has been featured in MECA’s 2017 and 2018 MECAmorphosis Runway Fashion Shows, and his curatorial projects include the 2017 Virtual Reality Art Gallery Experience (VRAGE) at the ICA at MECA.

Tell us about the recent Belvedere Fund grant you were awarded. What inspired you to apply for this funding, and how will you use the tufting gun that you purchased with the grant? Tell us about some of your current work.

How has your time at MECA influenced your work? How do you stay connected to your MECA network?

This Belvedere Fund grant is open to MECA alumni who graduated within the last 10 years and who are working in the field of crafts. I applied for this grant because I wanted to purchase a tufting gun. For those who may not be familiar, a tufting gun is a machine that allows you to create both loop and cut pile tufts using yarn to puncture a backing fabric to create rugs and/or wall hangings. This process is how most rugs are made, with the exception of hand-knotted and woven rugs, both of At the moment I have a number of different projects that I am working on. My main project is creating a series of rugs based on motifs that I find myself using in the gouache paintings that I have been working on for the past year. I am trying to create rugs that have a sort of painterly quality to them. I think of rugs as canvases that lay upon the floor in the same way a painting hangs upon a wall. Rugs, though, of course, have a tactile nature to them and allow the viewer to actually interact with them, as opposed to most paintings.

My time at MECA influenced my work greatly because it was a place where I could really explore any and all avenues of art that I was interested in. With MECA’s many great faculty and resources, I was able to figure out that I had a passion for making rugs in my senior year. MECA really let me do exactly what I wanted to do, in particular during my thesis year. I was able to learn about making rugs at the same time I learned how to create CNC-made furniture. I don’t know many other schools that would allow for or have the resources to let you do something like that. I like to stay connected to my MECA network by going to gallery shows that happen in Portland and by supporting other MECA alumni. Currently, Naomi Russo ’19 and I are in the very early stages of creating a series of mirrors. Without MECA, I would not know all these other fantastic artists.

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Photo by: Nicolas Tanner Salt ’11 Isaac Kestenbaum Salt ’08, the Director of Salt, is a veteran audio producer and journalist. He is the co-founder, along with Josie Holtzman Salt ‘08 of the production company Future Projects; their true crime podcast Midnight Son recently won an Online News Association Award for excellence in audio digital storytelling, and a National Native Media Award for best coverage of Native America.

Photo by: Yevonnie Lowe Salt ’13

Photo by: Sofia Aldinio Salt ’14

Since 1973, the prestigious Salt Institute has taught students from all over the world to become truthful, thorough, creative, and responsible storytellers and documentarians. In April of 2016, Maine College of Art was pleased to be in a position to ensure that the Salt Institute of Documentary Studies legacy would endure. Since becoming part of MECA in 2016, the full Salt experience has been accredited, offering a Graduate Certificate to those who successfully complete the program. The Graduate Certificate is not limited to those with an undergraduate degree. Anyone who is prepared for the rigor of a graduate program—such as a working professional in a similar field— can complete the program.

Salt is committed to transforming the field of documentary studies so that it reflects and amplifies a diversity of experiences, identities, and voices. The Salt Diversity Fellowship is specifically dedicated to providing assistance to accepted students from underrepresented communities who wish to attend the Salt at MECA Documentary Studies Program. MECA’s ability to honor and continue the Salt legacy was made possible by generous gifts from the Quimby Family Foundation and The Betterment Fund, which committed significant operational funds in recognition of the deep value of this program.