May | 2011 | Mandy Greer

“Degenerate Art Ensemble” exhibition at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle (until June 19th, 2011), features one of my best known wearable works, “The Slug Princess”.

I’ll also be doing a Gallery Talk at the Frye on June 11th, 2pm with fabulous designers Christine Tschirigi and Anna Telcs. Join us!

"The Slug Princess, 2008"

The Frye Art Museum exhibition showcases Degenerate Art Ensemble’s more than 10- year span of brilliance here in Seattle and all over the world! You’ll find films of many of their performances, handmade instruments, installations, my costume and others including the “Weeble Wobble dress, as well as Steven Miller’s incredible work on many of DAE’s posters (two of which I had the pleasure of working on!). Join in their fantasy world of –(to quote the Frye website)”…an array of warrior princesses, ninjas waging epic battles, hungry ghosts, birds and beasts-shape shifters all”.

image: Steven Miller

Slug Princess , Bruce Tom

image: Bruce Tom of “The Slug Princess” installed at the Frye Art Museum

I’ve had the great privilege of getting to collaborate with Haruko Nishimura of DAE on two different characters, the one now on display at the Frye, my Slug Princess from our collaborative film project with Ian Lucero, “The Silvering Path”, and also a character called “Shiro” from their production of “Sonic Tales” in 2009.

Slug Princess

I also had this mad idea that I would make the dress form for the museum exhibit because I hate the way my wearables look on the standard commercial dress dummies. Check out the hilarious picture of Haruko wrapped in duct tape! She is such a sport and so mischievously funny!

dress dummy

The final form is paper mache with a coating of pages from a 1940’s romance novel…somehow appropriate for the slug princess of erotic appetite and DAE’s love of story.

Don’t miss the show if you are in Seattle, and check out this review in the Seattle Times! Their newest production, “The Red Shoes” sold out in hours….well-deserved for these Seattle icons! I wish them all strength for the final two shows, as they perform a massive multi-sited fairy tale around the city that is their home.

Red shoes

And here’s a recent post on my inspiration blog “A Quickening” about Haruko and the creation of DAE’s new production “Red Shoes”.

Arg….poor blog, so neglected….I have been up to my armpits in a new commission for a Bow Lake Elementary School, and am ONLY just now getting a full set of images up from my January show at Roc La Rue Gallery, “Honey and Lightening”. Here, check out the whole shebang in this slide show..

The show had some really exciting blog press (from me favorite blogs!) and a review in the Seattle Times by the delightful Rachel Shimp. After all the exhausting work, it’s gratifying to see this is the paper…

“Looking at every large-scale work of Greer’s, you’re taken aback by its inventiveness and old-fashioned beauty. The works allow you to be unself-consciously awed by art. And there’s still much to ponder.” –Seattle Times