MANY VISUAL ARTISTS have extended their practice to include theater —Picasso, Chagall, Hockney, to name a few. Galleries and museums have presented this work not as an 'aside' but as a vital part of each artist's oeuvre. Calder’s Circus at the Whitney comes to mind, as do the activities of Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York. During the COVID quarantine, when theaters closed and educators became desperate for arts and culture content that could easily be shared on remote learning portals, my wife (Tony Award-winning costume designer, Linda Cho) and I decided to collaborate on a novel way to present theater, inspired by the tradition of Theatre de la mode, which allowed fashion houses to share work during the privations of World War 2. Below are in-progress frame stills of work so far on our first production— Shakespeare's Twelfth Night— in miniature, using beautifully fabricated and costumed dolls and elaborate sets, sound, and filmography. You’ll easily see how my palette and painterly style remain in this new form. Our pitch document is at the end, and you can see a rough cut of our work to date by scrolling in the "WATCH" menu tab above.
