fusionwear sv will provide a new source of inspiration for innovative and unique creations from artists known for their playful spirit and original points of view. Through fusionwear sv, the artists will draw inspiration from the public's own conceptions of what Silicon Valley lilfe is all about as they design new textiles and an artwear installation that reflects on the Silicon Valley identity.

Past collaborations between artists Takara and Quen include the Year of the Monkey Celebration at C.S. Wo Gallery in Honolulu in 2004 and a fashion show at the de Young Museum for Takara's artist residency in 2008. Takara has recycled fabric remnants from Quen's art garments into Takara's mixed media creations since 2003.

Corinne Okada Takara
Mixed-media artist and arts educator Corinne Okada Takara composes sculptures of both elegant and mundane materials that tell stories about the collision and intersection of cultures. In 2000, after ten years as a digital graphic designer Takara transitioned to pursuing fine art. She blends precious fabrics, rice bags and simple discards such as food wrappers to bring to light the cascade of cultures people experienced through the sharing of food, clothing, and myths. In her 2008 artist residency, Rhythms in Space, at the de Young Museum she explored the museum's online textile database and merged textile pattern imagery with family stories of plantation era Hawaii. The resulting pieces were large mixed media tapestries.

Takara majored in Design at Stanford University and received the Guilla MacFarland Award in Design upon graduation. She has been recognized by the City of Cupertino with The Distinguished Artist Award and this year was honored as a KCI Merit Scholar by the Krause Center for Innovation.

Takara's creations range greatly in size from large eight foot tall kimonos and butterflies for the main lobbies of Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Santa Clara and Boston Children's Hospital to small floral broaches and hats for fashion events. Her works have shown in galleries across the country and are in private collections in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Paris. Takara's Jan Ken Pon Kimono is the first piece in the Peabody Essex Museum's Asian American Artist Permanent Collection. Most recently she was selected to participate in an Art in Embassies exhibit, Pluralism in America, in Brussels, Belgium and a Fuller Craft Museum exhibit, A Perfect Fit: Shoes Tell Stories, in Brockton, MA.

fusionwear sv is an exciting opportunity for Takara to blend her digital arts skills with her culture and textiles interests.

www.okadadesign.com
Tech Fusion Fabrics

Corinne Takara

Domestic Bliss

Yelling Hat

Sushi Grass Tapestry

Fortune Tapestry

Colleen Quen
Inspired by nature's motifs, Colleen Quen creates a realm of whimsical innocence with her contemporary fashion design, marrying expressive structure with luminous volume of textile. Walking through Quen's atelier, one is in awe of the various sculpted garments that lines her spacious workshop where she designs exclusive fashion collections for private clients and museums. Influence by the the array of colors in Matisse's oil painting and classical Chinese calligraphy, Quen employs an artistic practice of defining open space within physical form, layering colorful movement of fabric and texture. Through her vivid ideas and graceful sensibility, Quen articulates a strong compositional sensation in her work, pushing the transparency of her fabric beyond its physical form and taking the audience through a magical mirror to explore their imaginations.

Quen graduated with a Fashion Design degree from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) in 1986. Following her path as a designer, she cultivated an impressive career, working on a ten-year foundation for Wilkes Sport by Wilkes Bashford, Eileen West, Gap, Jane Tise/Karen Alexander and Joan Walters. Recognizing the vitality of attaining the highest form of mastery in her craft, she went on to study at Simmone Sethna School of French Couture, adding to her repertoire of refined fashion discipline. She graduated with a certificate in French Couture in 1996. Quen decided to open her own couture design company in 2000.

Her most recent imaginative undertaking, in collaboration with LINES Ballet's Associate Artistic Director Robert Rosenwasser, is the creation of costumes for Alonzo King's 21st-century vision of the historic ballet Scheherazade. By uniting haute couture and costumes for dance, Quen continues influencing the context of fashion.

www.colleenquencouture.com

Colleen Quen

300 Papillon

Green Maio Dress

Butterfly Dream Dress

Pyramid Coat

Rick Lee
From a gnarled oak tree to a sleek pocket knife, award-winning San Francisco industrial designer Rick Lee finds inspiration in everyday objects. An innovator at the vanguard of modern design, Lee combines rational thinking with radical influences to create whimsical minimalist pieces.

Upon obtaining a degree in industrial design, Lee began his career in Chicago with notable furniture manufacturers and design studios. Relocating to Milan, he then honed his distinctive artistic style seen in his work today. Incorporating minimal principles of Bauhaus with the experience he gained at the irreverent Studio Alchimia, Lee nurtured a unique aesthetic that is both vibrant and charismatic.

After 15 years of multi-disciplinary exploration, Lee and his team now design for major furniture manufacturers and independent clients that include Bolnaldo, Magis, American Leather, DWR, the San Francisco Opera Guild and the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art. His work has appeared in movie sets and in celebrity homes of Bruce Willis, Kathy Griffin and Michael Jordan.

Lee's designs have also been exhibited internationally and reviewed in notable publications such as the New York Times, ID, Elle Decor, Surface Magazine, Dwell, Casa di Abitare and Interni.

Lee's theoretical approach to design is not unlike an actor's tactics. Working with a wide range of materials and resources, he prefers not to use any one particular material on a consistent basis. Lee considers "California Cuisine" an apt metaphor for his art - a mix of seemingly incongruent ingredients carefully combined to create something inspiring and exceptional.

www.rickleedesign.com

Rick Lee

MoCA Installation

Colleen Chair

Night Owl Lamp

Mask Chair