“FACT: fashion + art construct tomorrow”

January 28–April 4, 2025

“FACT: fashion + art construct tomorrow” features paintings by Erik ReeL ’75 and fashions selected by fashion curator and writer Rhonda P. Hill. 

“FACT” explores a cleansing of the mind, embraces possibilities, challenges how we think of the future, empowering personal agency for both the artist and viewer, while striking an urban sensibility. 

Designers Palani Bearghost, Alena Kalana, and Fabiola Soavelo present future-thinking ideas on critical issues such as the environment, multiculturalism, trans-cultural exchange and redefining identity, while painter Erik ReeL explores our understanding of cognitive processing and human consciousness. 

“FACT” presents ReeL’s most recent body of work exploring, without machine or mechanical assistance, how we “read” markings on a surface. For ReeL, “marking is a defining characteristic of the human and the primordial act of signification and meaning for human consciousness” [Arconi].

Channeling futuristic ideas, Bearghost, Kalana and Soavelo create high-street, avant-garde collections with grass-roots energy manifested within urban culture. The exhibition examines ecological thinking—how this is embedded in their design practices—as they divert material waste from a heavily polluted environment of which fashion is the planet’s third largest polluter.

Related Events:

• Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025 at 4 p.m.
  Olin Hall, Room 129
  Northwest painter, writer and art philosopher Erik ReeL will speak on his life and work and how Ecology + Art can help us envision tomorrow.
  
  
• Friday, Feb. 21 at 5:30 p.m.
  Olin Hall, Auditorium (Room 138)
  A panel discussion with Erik ReeL, Rhonda P. Hill and Palani Bearghost, moderated by Kynde Kiefel, Director of Donald H. Sheehan Gallery, and followed by a celebration in the Sheehan Gallery