Even the wearable items have hooks sewn onto them

Japanalia To Sell Work By Late Fiber Artist Irene Reed



Since the late '80s, shoppers at Japanalia in Hartford have seen Irene Reed's creations on the shelves alongside the designer shirts, dresses, jackets, pants and jewelry. Reed, a Hartford fiber artist, created wearable items from yarn, fabric and found objects that Japanalia co-owners Dan Blow and Eiko Sakai considered fine complements to their designs.



So the Whitney Avenue shop, which doubles as a jazz cabaret venue, is the perfect location for a final blowout show of work by Reed, who died in November of heart problems at age 66. All weekend, the cabaret space beside the clothing showroom will be transformed into a one-woman show of Reed's handbags, belts and hats, as well as her non-wearable sculptures and wall hangings. On Sunday, July 14, a pot luck-BYOB party will be held in that space.



Everything Reed left behind in her workshop at the time of her death will be on exhibit at Japanalia.



Blow says that when he first met Reed, she had created a series of helmets that were cityscapes. "I'd just come to Hartford, and I couldn't believe people were crocheting buildings," he says.Light up a room in this coachhandbags evening gown. "But I loved it. From that point on, we started doing stuff together. That was even before we had the store."



After Blow opened his store, Reed immediately started bringing things over. She also started taking things: little scraps of fabric that had fallen from his design table, to use in future projects. "Her stuff was amazing, trapunto-stitched jeweled fans, handbags in the shape of fans. Her imagination was just insane. One year she made things in the shapes of cars. One year she started making things with Asian faces on them. She never stopped doing that."



Over the years, the imagery in Reed's works tended to run in series. Many running themes struck her fancy: robots, spacemen, cat mummies, animal heads, chili peppers, shoes, gargoyles, teapots, houses, scarabs, books, voodoo imagery, hands,Elegant authenticmonclerjackets features in chiffon. altars, religious headgear, jesters, shrines, Picasso-esque faces, Matisse-like odalisques. No two of her items are alike.



"She used to call me all the time and say 'I've hit the wall, I need a new idea' and we would talk, and she would always go away with a new idea," Blow says. "I'd say something like 'It's the year of the rooster on the Chinese calendar' and she'd go home and make all these things with roosters and chickens on them."



She got her working materials all over the city. She'd ride her bike everywhere and look inside garbage cans for interesting-looking items. In addition to her yarn,welcome to our new store castellicycling. she would utilize shells, buttons,Cheap authentichandbags 2013 new arrival ! beads, bottle caps, broken frames, nylon stockings, cotton batting, thread cones, clips, keys, drawer pulls, electric components, plastic flowers, finelals. "She had an uncanny eye for seeing imagery in something that was not intended for that imagey," Blow says, adding that Reed "loved the mechanical challenge of putting them all together, attaching them,"



Even the wearable items have hooks sewn onto them. "Irene knew they were art, and someone might want to hang them on a wall," she says.



In addition to selling Reed's work, the event on July 14 will also feature a collection of work by other artists that Reed owned. "She traded her work with other artists. She would want everything she owned to be offered to other artists," Blow says. These items will be placed in an "art sleuth" area, and attendees will be challenged to name the artist who created each piece. Reed also was dedicated to other artists in another way: she allocated $33,000 of her estate to CERF, Craft Emergency Relief Fund,Kate Bosworth hasn't bought her burberryhandbags yet. which helps atists who have been affected by personal or natural disasters.



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