Who am I?
David Stephan Graves is a designer, photographer, maker and art educator from Southcoast Massachusetts. He received his BFAs (design and photography) from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and his MFA (design) from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
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David currently teaches at Bristol Community College, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and Wayne State University. He has worked as a printer, designer and creative director in the printing and manufacturing industries, and has run a photography studio since 2012. Recently, David co-founded Material Creative Studio (materialcreativestudio.com), acting as both a design studio and workshop resource to the Southcoast.
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David’s work explores materiality and social issues in tandem, including topics of waste, temporality, identity and mental health with both traditional and experimental making processes and mediums. His research, writing and presentations explore trauma and the making process, and the inclusion of art therapy techniques in art and design pedagogy.
Ephemeral Fashion
This three year project was born out of an appreciation for fashion photography and an abhorrence of the fashion industry. To express that love/hate relationship, David crafted five dress collections using found materials: trash bags, newspapers, cocktail napkins, cardboard, and bubble wrap. Each collection was created using makeshift methods; tape, glue, melted edges, to enhance the temporary nature of each dress, addressing the ephemerality of fashion trends, and giving the dresses a shelf-life that lasted only the length of the photoshoot. Each dress had to be destroyed to be removed from the model.
Why Dresses?
David began working using the dress form as a medium with Ephemeral Fashion, and has continued to return to that form using paper. His exploration of the dress as sculpture, not attire, is a commentary on sexuality, identity, motherhood and parentage. More recently David has begun to explore the dress form as a medium for portraiture, beginning with “Portrait of Sookie” exhibited at the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery, made from Sookie (the dog)’s medical refuse.
Papyrophile
David’s fascination with paper grew out of his love for materiality and experimentation. Much of his early work used materials in non-traditional ways. Paper has an inherent fragility, but can be broken down and reconstituted repeatedly, so it’s perceived fragility is actually a misnomer; paper can have many lives. When making his own paper from pulp, David prefers to add cotton, to enhance the durability and enable sewing techniques. He’s interested in how paper itself can be the artistic medium, not just the canvas for other mediums.