I’m Emily Powers. I’m a New York based visual artist. I am from Santa Barbara, California, but I have moved all across America. I think moving every five years to an entirely new place has informed my interest in Americana, and love for historical references throughout my work. I currently am studying fashion design and business at Parsons School of Design. I love conceptual aspects of fashion more so than commercial aspects of it. I create because I see fashion as an art form. I love the overall composition that a person in a garment creates. I think that it is like any other artform like sculpting or painting. It is all about creating a feeling and sharing it with other people. The most special part about designing clothes is that you can wear the feelings that you create. I love the way an outfit can change the way you feel and perceive.
Even though fashion design is my major, I enjoy other artforms. I love to sculpt and work with my hands. I also have always had a love for drawing and illustration. I think all of these elements can be combined to make interesting bodies of work.
This semester I focused on making childrenswear for adults, however this then got translated into making Catholic inspired childrenswear for adults, which was then further translated into making avant-garde conceptual looks that took motifs of Catholicism and warped them. My research in ARS helped inform this work and the themes that I looked into will continue to inform it. My work from this semester ended up becoming a very eclectic body of work. Going forward with my thesis, I want to continue working with the theme of American attitudes towards sexual zeitgeist through the lens of Christianity. I want to sprinkle in motifs and themes of Americana so then it can feel unique and authentic to me and my aesthetic. Of course, it’ll be a bit humorous because I don’t like to take myself too seriously.
When it comes to my research style, I need to take my time and just let myself sit down and search for hours. I like finding one article when then links me to another article which links me to another article and so on. It is kind of a bad habit because I do this all the time in my daily life but it is good for research purposes. I love to dig deep! For my senior thesis, I’m going to use the research paper that I wrote in this class as the foundation for what I do next year. It is exactly on theme for me and I’m excited to learn and research even more.
