Clients
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Jane Wiedlin | 2
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence | 1 | 12
The Monterey Bay Aquarium | 3
42nd Street Moon | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18Children's Fairyland | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
Noir City Festival | 9 | | 10
Hal Robins | 11Nonsemble 6 Opera Comapny | 13
Handful Players | 23
Weddings-Candace Locklear and Doug Fuller | 28
Original Pattern Making | 24
Salada Beach Cafe | 1
Event Costumes | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42
Interior Design | 1
Publicity
**************************************************A days work -sew far from the mundane
photo : Brant Ward The Chronicle
(02-01) 23:00 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- Step into Louise Jarmilowicz's rent-controlled
apartment in the Inner Sunset - a treasure chest jammed with three decades of costumes,
collectibles and cockeyed ephemera - and you'll feel as if you'd fallen into "Pee-wee's
Playhouse."There's an autographed Tom Jones album cover, her father's U.S. Postal Service uniform, the
accordion she's played for 15 years, a mop-topped puppet that an ex-boyfriend made in her
likeness, file cabinets stashed with hats and bags, and a DVD set of "Mary Hartman, Mary
Hartman."Jarmilowicz, who is 6 feet tall, grew up in Lynn, Mass., and moved to San Francisco in 1979.
She works half time making alterations at Held Over, a Haight Street vintage clothing store,
and freelances as a costumer for theatrical companies and individuals. Jarmilowicz also
creates digital collages, which she posts on her website (www.jarmodesigns.net).I had a really overactive imagination when I was little. If things weren't going well, I'd go to
my room and make things. I had cats and would dress them up in costumes.I learned to sew at 14, probably. I have two sisters and we're all tall, and our mother felt
like we wouldn't fit into regular girls' clothing. So she made us learn to sew.The clothes I made were colorful, but they didn't get crazy till I came out here. 'Cause
everything changed, in terms of what I felt like I had permission to do. I felt I could
re-establish my identity and be a whole new person.I love making clothes for people. I love it when they say, "Here's some money. Make me
something you think I'll look good in."I did weddings for a while, but they were too restrictive. I do much better at alternative
clothing rather than normal. There was one couple that got married, Doug and Candace. I
made him an orange velveteen zoot suit. And then she had me make this white strapless
bridal gown that had little pockets all along the skirt where she could put joints.For the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, I made 22 seven-piece matching black-and-white
habits. Six of the Sisters were over here trying things on with their hoopskirts and heels in
this one room. There was barely enough room, 'cause some of those skirts are gigantic. So
there was a lot of shoving and laughing.I had to do their habits in a short period of time. Wimple, veil. Sash, collar, skirt. Then this
long tailcoat. And there'd be cuffs. When I finished they "sainted" me.I have a sewing ad on Craigslist. I never know what people are going to bring me.
Sometimes it's really boring, like hemming someone's pants. Right now this guy is having me
copy a vest and put fur on it. But it's really exciting because I get to find out about people's
lives.I haven't cared about making money for most of my life. Because I'd rather be happy. Not
that those two things can't exist together. But being able to express myself creatively is
probably the strongest motivator in my entire life.The first job I had in San Francisco was a bookkeeping job. I used to work at the Berkeley
Free Clinic. And then I went to Stanford and was in the physician assistant program. I didn't
finish. There wasn't enough time to be creative and be in that field. I felt like a part of me
was missing.Edward Guthmann is a Bay Area freelance writer.
The Surreal, Spectacular Collages of Louise Jarmilowicz
Submitted by Meghan RutiglianoJuly 1st marked the opening of Bay Area artist Louise Jarmilowicz’s vibrant colorful
collage show currently on view at Chez Poulet, a gallery and residence near Caesar
Chavez and Mission. A cast of colorful San Francisco characters came to the show
and together looked upon another cast of colorful characters, albeit two-
dimensional, playing out surreal scenes on Jarmilowicz’s wild canvases. With titles
like “Competition at the Toy Factory,” “Adventures of the Birdwomen,” and “Leaving
the Circus,” the artist’s collages are fun, irreverent and outlandish slices of life with
surreal twists. Like seeing Technicolor screenshots of scenes from the Twilight
Zone, looking at Jarmilowicz’s pieces feels like looking through windows into vivid,
bizarre scenes of captivating little worlds.Many of the figures in her collages come from vintage magazines. “I’ve always
sort of loved the look and feel of 1950s images and publications,” Jarmilowicz
explains. “I started collecting photos and magazines, playing around with them,
and found my own way to put them together.”Her unique way of putting the images together involves the exploration of new and
strange contexts for the people, pets, and even “Birdwomen” in her works. She sets
her subjects against unexpected backgrounds. For example, in “A Lady’s Garden,” a
stylish, 1950s blond bombshell in a bright pink bathing suit sunbaths next to some
green shrubbery, but each leaf of the shrub is a moving, human face. It is almost
as if the leaves are the voices in her head or strange bush-people from another
world communicating through her. It’s a moment in time but a perplexing, playful,
and surreal one.“Louise is just so creative and unique,” offers Cristine Kristin aka Lady Bee, the
show’s curator and lover of the arts, the evening’s host, and a dear friend of the
artist. “Her work is definitely something special and it’s fun to view it as a
collection.”Lady Bee and Jarmilowicz met at Burning Man, where Lady Bee served as curator
for many years and where she currently manages the many ephemera and art
collections from Burning Man’s colorful history. “Louise always wore these over-the-
top costumes, really amazing,” Lady Bee recalls. The two have kept up a friendship
over the years.In “Dad Visits the Aquarium,” one sees the framework of a typical 1950s America
scene: a clean-cut man in a suit waving gleefully at his wife and kids. At first glace,
it looks like he’s waving from a moving train on his way to the big city. But, as the
title suggests, his cookie-cutter family actually looks to be inside of an aquarium,
perhaps as stranded life forms taken out of their normal environment and plunked
down in an aquatic world. Here, Jamilowicz creates a humorous effect by playing
with context. The scene at the Aquarium is at once disturbing and comical.Her vibrant works are not just moments in time, but also imbued with their own
narratives. “Every one of these [pieces] has a story to it,” Jarmilowicz explains.In “The Knife Ran Away with the Spoon,” Jarmilowicz picks up where Mother Goose
left off and gives the viewer a snapshot of the Knife and Spoon’s escape story. She
quirkily collages together silverware and human extremities to create a Knife-Man
and Spoon-Woman in their moment of running away, of fleeing the cupboard. Set
against the backdrop of a vibrant, starry sky and running on what looks like a
cabinet shelf floor, the Knife-Man and Spoon-Woman are making their great escape.
The Knife-Man looks determined to move ahead but the Spoon-Woman looks
terrified, face raised to the starry heavens in desperation. One is left to wonder:
what happens next for this odd couple? And, in part, it’s the wondering how the
artist’s stories continue or end that makes the work enjoyable.In addition to leaving her viewers guessing at the twists and turns of her subjects’
plot lines, Jarmilowicz has a clear ability to evoke feeling in her viewers. Seeing her
surreal canvases brings out emotions and questions.In “Purveyor of Metallic Flesh,” she takes an image of a stereotypical “creepy”
salesman, in this instance a lunchbox salesman, and makes her own fun with it.
She replaces the male “purveyor’s” head for a dog’s head, which makes for a very
doggy-dog salesman character, made all the more lecherous with his K9 features.
His wares, the lunchboxes, are adorned with images of vivacious female vixens.
Upon glimpsing into this surreal scene, one can’t help but feel a bit on edge, a bit
jostled by the creepy nature of this particular slice of life.A long-time Burning Man participant and member of San Francisco’s Cacophony
Society, a free-spirited band of freaks known for outlandish pranks and creating
public scenes, Jarmilowicz has found many outlets for her creativity over the years.
Her current show at Chez Poulet show's another medium that Jarmilowicz is able
to imbibe with the surreal.She currently works mainly as a costumer, lavishly styling out the city’s most
extravagant individuals, including the fabulous Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. “I
used to also be a musician, but there’s just not enough time in the day,” she
explains. Still, somehow, she’s managed to build up an extensive portfolio of
collages and just released an ebook through Puzzled Squirrel Press on Kindle called
What the Children Saw, which includes many of the images from her collage show
currently on view through the end of the month at Chez Poulet.Jarmilowicz’s surreal collages are a delight to experience. Try to catch them at Chez
Poulet this month or check them out on the artist’s website:
http://www.louisejarmo.com
What The Children Saw collects, for the first time,
the extraordinary collage art of Louise Jarmilowicz.
It is the guidebook to an uncharted city of dreams,
an enigmatic land where the esoteric and the
ordinary mingle and flirt at the intersection of
Arcane & Mundane. A world of lost innocence and
forbidden knowledge, where Eros and Thanatos do a
slow waltz to the strains of The Blue Danube, and
Past, Present and Future are having a ménage à
trois in the Uncanny Valley. These are scenic
postcards from our universal interior landscape, as
familiar as your nightmares, as mythic as a family
reunion.
Laughing Squid Post Cards A collage by Louise Jarmilowicz.
©Louise Jarmo Designs 2016-2020
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