ISABELLA LUCCA CHENAULT
2021-CURRENT
Isabella “Lucca” Chenault
I am a visual artist and designer from the Southwest, with a focus on painting, illustration, and clothing design. The goal of this project is to inspire the use of repurposed clothing and recycled elements from the surrounding environment. I desire to empower people to be confident and creative, to express their beautiful individuality in every way possible while practicing kindness and active preservation of the planet.
Throughout my life, the physical expression of my true spirit has been an exhilarating experience in self-exploration and personification. My community, culture, and environment are the collective factors that continue to shape me. I began making my own clothes because nothing I wore fit my body or my person correctly. Additionally, I felt guilty for buying "fast fashion" from corporations, knowing our environment and communities are damaged by the pollution and wastefulness of their practices.
INSPIRATION:
My inspiration arose through the reflection on those who speak to and connect with their earth, who work in harmony with the land as part of an ecosystem. The general population of humans has been violently torn from this role. It is our responsibility, as a population of people conditioned to crave constant newness and overindulgence, to be mindful of our consumption of material items. There is a need to further diversify the fashion industry, to be a catalyst for change, and to do things better.
With this project, I want to show how community, culture, and environment influence the self-expression of the personal being, and to do it in a way that is resourceful but not detrimental to our beautiful planet. I will be presenting clothing and jewelry made entirely of repurposed items, sourced from thrift stores and local shooting ranges, collected with the help of friends and family in my community.
I’m excited to tell the story behind each article of clothing and the journey it took to create each piece.
GATHER has been generously funded by NDN Collective.
Part of the NDN Collective statement reads - “…Building indigenous power…”. One of the goals of Gather is to help build “indigenous power" at the grass root level - using art.
Visit www.ndncollective.org for more information.