My FMP will take the form of an experimental & unbound fashion publication. I aim to create a sort of artifact / almanac of the post-industrial suburbs through my own photographs, text, archival imagery, and obscure contributions from figures in my area. Sugar Bush is a delusional retelling of suburban life. The publication unfolds as a loose compendium of ideas, characters, and memories, while questioning the surrealism of a “suburban bubble” and the strangeness that exists within and around it. Collectively, 50 pages draw from a range of temporalities and landscapes that skirt the Rust Belt. Such landscapes include but are not limited to: Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe, Abandoned Dance Moms Studio, and the Hall of North American Wildlife. Contributors will include local figures such as the Amish community and a Trader Joe’s cardboard sign painter—commonly ignored “ghosts” of my hometown who have helped to shape my memory of home.
Within my publication, adornment appears as both an everyday practice and an act of provocation. Personal style holds traces of class aspiration, inherited mythologies, and the strange experience of living within a nation whose promises are constantly being cantillated and unsettled.
TONE
Unsettling yet eerily familiar, with a dream-like visual language that navigates the atmospheres of my hometown in Western Pennsylvania.
AUDIENCE
Readers interested in fashion imagery, entertainment, poetry, and experimental artist publications. Americans and non-Americans alike!