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Mode Brut


  • Museum of Craft & Design 2569 3rd Street San Francisco, CA, 94107 United States (map)

Join Creativity Explored for a fashion-related exhibition featuring four collaborative collections, presented in partnership with the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco.

Watch the Mode Brut Fashion Show below, take the 3-D tour on Artland, meet the artists and designers, and learn about all the programs celebrating the milestone exhibit.

The MAKE: Mode Brut Closing Party scheduled for January 20 has been canceled. If you purchased tickets, you will be refunded via Eventbrite. Updated January 7, 2022

About the Exhibit

Featuring unique designs by over 50 Creativity Explored artists, Mode Brut challenges museum-goers to think past the familiar modes of apparel by redefining what – and who – is fashionable. The exhibition encourages viewers to consider the role fashion can play in responding to questions about accessibility, gender roles, and identity, through the lens of artists with developmental disabilities – at the corner of visual arts, fashion, and Outsider Art. 

Focusing on art practice as fashion with CE artists at the center, the large-scale exhibition will feature four independent collections of inspiring new fashions – each made by designer teams working alongside local developmentally disabled artists: Creativity Explored studio artist team led by teaching artist and designer Victor Molina, community art collective Bonanza, queer advocate and model Ayana “Yanni” Brumfield, and San Francisco-based haute couture fashion brand Tokyo Gamine.

In creating the fashion behind Mode Brut, Creativity Explored artists and our design partners have overcome unforeseen difficulties of collaborating through a global pandemic. When this project began, our teams expected to be able to create art together in person – in the tradition of Creativity Explored.

Group weave handbag created in collaboration with SAORI Arts, painted shoes by Jesus Huezo. Garments for the Creativity Explored studio line for Mode Brut.

Constraints required innovation, leading our community to redefine how we create, collaborate, and inspire. Our teams spent the last year making fashion over Zoom, navigating phone calls and mail projects, and enjoying walks filled with rich conversation and art sharing. The creative spirit of our artists and design partners comes alive in the garments of Mode Brut, created together, by and for CE artists. Many of the garments in the CE studio line feature embroidery and projects artists created as part of the City College of San Francisco surface design class, which has been meeting at the CE studios for over 30 years and virtually during the pandemic. Mode Brut is curated by Cléa Massiani and Ariel Zaccheo.

Garments and artwork included in Mode Brut will be for sale after the exhibition closes in February 2022.

Subscribe to the Creativity Explored newsletter to receive updates about Mode Brut programming and hear the stories behind the garments.


Art Projects

MCD@Home Make Art Kits featuring Katherine Finn-Gamino

Ongoing
Visit the Museum of Craft and Design to see Mode Brut and pick up your own Make Art Kit to create embroidered flowers on felt, inspired by the practice and artwork of CE artist Katherine Finn-Gamino. View the project online ▸

MCD@Home Make Art Kits featuring Joseph “JD” Green

Ongoing
Visit the Museum of Craft and Design to see Mode Brut and pick up your own Make Art Kit to try your hand at bleach tie-dye techniques used by CE artist Joseph “JD” Green in his fashions created with Ayana “Yanni” Brumfield. View the project online ▸

Accessibility References

MODE BRUT WALL TEXT TRANSLATIONS

View Arabic Translation | View Chinese Translation | View Spanish Translation

MODE BRUT DESIGN PARTNER’S SECTION TEXT

View Arabic Translation | View Chinese Translation | View Spanish Translation

AUDIO TOURS

Click to listen to the Mode Brut At a Glance Audio Tour recording.
Read the script of the “At a Glance Audio Tour.”

Click to listen to the Mode Brut Immersive Audio Tour recording.
Read the script of the “Immersive Audio Tour.”

About Museum of Craft and Design

The Museum of Craft and Design (MCD) makes creativity accessible to everyone. The Museum of Craft and Design is the only museum in San Francisco devoted to craft and design. Founded in 2004, MCD showcases designers, makers, and artists through an exciting and distinctive series of craft and design-focused exhibitions and public programs. As a non-collecting institution, the museum actively collaborates with artists, designers, museums, and universities, as well as design venues and practitioners to create inspirational experiences in the world of craft and design for visitors of all ages.

sfmcd.org | @museumofcraftanddesign

Featured Artists

MB_bio_600sq_0000_Copy of IMG-6127.jpg

TOKYO GAMINE

tokyogamine.com | @tokyogamine

Tokyo Gamine was founded in 2015 by designer and artist Yuka Uehara as a way to create couture in collaboration with her clients. Her designs take much inspiration from nature, mythology, and psychology and are often influenced by the wearer’s personal history.

The label has since been seen on many red carpet events such as San Francisco Opera, Symphony, and Ballet openings and balls and several film events such as the Academy Awards. Tokyo Gamine is also responsible for dressing the SF Girls Chorus and the SF Symphony’s production of Candide and has produced two ready-to-wear lines.

In 2020, Yuka Uehara created Tokyo Gamine Gallery in order to collaborate with Japanese ceramic artists and potters. The project seeks to re-examine our relationships with the objects we consume. Read “What will become of San Francisco’s high fashion?” in the San Francisco Examiner for an interview with Uehara about creating high fashion in the pandemic, including her line for Mode Brut.

Conrad Guevara, Lindsay Tully, and Lana Williams standing in front of a multicolor background with arms around each other. They are wearing casual professional clothes and smiling at the camera.

BONANZA

bonanzaart.com | @bonanza_llc
@lana_williams_official | @djmadre | @nocanhandle

Bonanza is the collaborative practice of Conrad Guevara, Lindsay Tully, and Lana Williams. The singular name, Bonanza, acts as the persona under which they perform. It is with this moniker that they challenge the notion of the singular, heroic artist. Bonanza’s diverse projects include installation, film, fashion, and performance. Their work strategically challenges the fixity of identity through different forms of signaling, posturing, flexibility, and resilience.

Bonanza's work has been exhibited at Gallery 16, the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, and the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art. Their work has been written about by VICE, SFAQ, San Francisco Chronicle, KQED, and East Bay Express. They were selected for the San Francisco Recology Center artist in residence program in 2018, and recently finished their fourth film – a gig comedy that satirizes the so-called sharing economy and the excessive demands it makes on its workers. Read “How Artists Transformed San Francisco's Trash into an Audacious Runway Show” in KQED to learn about and see fashions from their Recology residency.

Ayana Brumsfeld is holding a flower while wearing a delicate see-through, iridescent light blue suit and pants and a matching headband. They have short cropped black hair, brown skin, and a few small tattoos on their face,

AYANA ‘YANNI’ BRUMFIELD

@yxnibrmp | @limitlessqueerfashionshow

Ayana ‘Yanni’ Brumfield is a Black, queer, non-binary, multimedia artist from Oakland, CA. They are a community activist, public speaker, and event producer. 

Brumfield is the founder of the annual Limitless Queer Fashion Show, which prioritizes increasing representation of people who look like them in the fashion industry. They regularly walk in New York fashion week, have been featured in Teen Vogue, Vogue, Allure, Paper Magazine, among others. Brumfield also curates discussion circles, food drives, and nightlife events; their life’s work is to uplift and to help others find their confidence and live authentically. See “'Generations of Resistance': San Francisco begins Pride celebrations” on ABC7 to learn about the Limitless Queer Fashion Show and hear more from Brumfield.

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VICTOR MOLINA (CE STUDIO LINE)

Victor Molina is a teaching artist at Creativity Explored, heralding from pre-revolution Havana, Cuba. After the revolution, his family moved to Pasadena, California and later Molina moved to Los Angeles, working as a fashion designer and illustrator. Running an equity waiver theater in Silverlake proved a formative experience, collaborating with a team of creatives much like our collective studio at CE. Later, Molina moved to Montreal where he started a clothing design company crafting one-of-a-kind items and collections for boutiques.

Molina was first introduced to the CE studio in 2010 as a volunteer artist-in-residence, creating hat sculptures with CE artists. He feels extremely fortunate to have found the CE community and joined the staff as a substitute teaching artist in 2013. In his spare time, he enjoys reading about the philosophy of mind and history of ideas and practicing mindfulness meditation.

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“Even if it looks like there’s not, there’s always a ton of effort in our artists’ work.

Nothing the artists do is careless. It is in many ways like a circus, and a lot of effort goes into all of it.”

–Victor Molina, Teaching Artist and Lead Designer for the CE Studio Line

Thank you to our sponsors

Support of Mode Brut is provided by Premium Sponsors Pamela and David Hornik. Additional support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The California Wellness Foundation, Coordinated Resources Inc. of San Francisco (CRI), Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), Clair and Jeff Bright, and HomeLight, Inc. Mode Brut is made possible in part by the Gucci Changemakers Impact Fund, and The Creative Work Fund, a program of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund that also is supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In-kind support provided by Saks Fifth Ave and DOGO.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Sponsorships available. Contact development@creativityexplored.org for more information.

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