Senior Highlight : Dylan Teaford 

Written and Interviewed by: Cj Bowser

Dylan Teaford is one of the most promising students coming out of Harriton going into the fashion scene.

Introduction

Dylan Teaford is a senior at Harrtion this year with no shortcoming of natural talent. He has spent his four years developing his craft and his skills. Primarily he is based in fashion, however, he has just begun to branch out into other art mediums such as painting and mixed media art like his recent piece which was done entirely on cardboard.

Dylan has come a long way from freshman year and has grown exponentially as a person and as a friend so I am very proud to be making him a featured artist of this launch.

Beginnings

As long as I’ve known Dylan he has been drawn to fashion or at least aspects of fashion. Whether it be new launches or what an artist is wearing he had an opinion and how he could improve it. 

Last year in efforts to hone in his ideas and skills Dylan took Textiles at Harriton. He was able to maximize efforts to gain important skills in clothing production, while also gaining knowledge in the fashion industry. This paid off as he was able to visit Parsons over the summer for a high school program. Taking classes during the day and creating stunning pieces. Parsons gave him a place where he was around numerous other creatives that assisted in fueling his passion for not only fashion but for the creation of art in general.

Now Dylan is applying to colleges and continuing to create visually aweing pieces, both clothing and paintings. It was a pleasure to interview such an amazing artist, please enjoy the result of our interview below and make sure to check out his process in his art instagram @velvet.tires !

Interview

~ Who are your favorite designers and why?

-Rei Kawakubo she’s the lead designer for Comme Des Garçons (CDG), I'm not crazy about the heart sneaker stuff but she’s really cool I like all of the stuff that she does, I’m very inspired by her unique ways of construction where everything is just unique and breaks a lot of rules.

~ Any others?

-I don’t know, I like Acne studios. I think their colors are really cool the way they do casual clothing but well done, everything that they do is really tight, stuff like that.

~ Who was the first designer that made you realize you wanted to know more about fashion/the production of runway fashion versus fast fashion?

-That's a weird question because everything came at once for me. I thought fashion was kinda cool and then it all just hit me. It wasn’t any individual person, it was like being Nickelodeon slimed in a sense because  you have no idea what's happening but you’re enjoying it.

~ How would you describe both your personal style and the style you create?

-I wear clothes that are comfortable and that I like. Whenever I try to make clothes I try to make them as though they’re living creatures that have odd systems in how they move, they’re oblong and not perfect just like actual creatures are. I treat it like Spore almost where you can make anything and it feels super organic. That's what I always do, I make it organic.

~ You went to Parsons over the summer, what was that experience like and how did that help you grow as an artist?

-I think it was a very beneficial experience, it was a new sort of feeling that everyone was moving in their own direction. Everyone was highly driven by themselves and their thought process was  “I know what I'm doing and I’m doing what I want.” But it was a huge community too and everyone was always giving each other feedback so it felt like you weren’t just pushing yourself to be better everyone was pushing you to be better and that highlighted how collaboration doesn’t have to just be two people making something together but it can be an environment fostering stronger creativity. 

~ Do you think that wherever you end up going to college are you excited for being in that environment and even moving forward in the fashion industry?

-Yeah that’s my ultimate goal. I want to be able to create that environment in anything I do because I like creating like that in an environment like that. The Grateful Dead,for example, were a hundred people just doing whatever creative things they wanted to because the community they created fostered that kind of creative action and thought. I don’t know if I will continue doing fashion. I like doing fashion but there are whole different venues of art that I could see myself working in but I’ll end up doing whatever I end up doing.

~ Talk to me about the work your most proud of and explain to me why

-I am probably most proud of everything I made over the summer, that's when I kinda went crazy, there are three that I made there. Three dresses over the course of the summer. All of those I felt super refined my style not even just within fashion but within art as a whole. Because all of those things I made influenced how I worked as an artist. It was the first time I tried almost full improvisation in drapery and everything where I wouldn’t really have a plan of how I’d make the things I'd just play with them until they looked right and that’s how I still make art to this day I don’t usually have plans or anything and if I do it's really minimal and everything kinda happens in the moment.

~ Was there a reason you chose to make dresses or was that just a part of the assignment?

-I think they are the ultimate blank canvas in clothing. It can be really short or really long, it can have sleeves it can not have sleeves. It's the most open tool in fashion, because if you’re making a t-shirt you have to have arm holes, neck hole, a bottom there are certain rules you have to fit it to or with pants you have to make two legs you have to make it a waistline and everything so with a dress those rules don’t exist anymore just someone has to fit in it and that’s all that matters.

~ You recently started painting so can you talk to me about how the transition from making clothing to painting was for you?

-I’ve always had a hard relationship with drawing because I’ve never been super good at it and that’s like a requirement for doing anything so i've always felt like i've had a really tenuous relationship with it where it's a tug and pull and didn’t feel fun. The only experience with painting before which was a similar relationship was in middle school where I was told to paint things a certain way; it just didn’t resonate as strongly with me then. But then when I came back to it of my own desire it was a much different feeling, cause I knew more about art and I knew art wasn’t just recreating something that you saw in the world and making it look exactly as realistic as possible. So I went in using the kind of perspective that a lot of what people make can still be valid without fitting into certain norms, so I kind of knew that I could do whatever I wanted to do and if I just tried hard enough at it I would be satisfied with my results. I try to make it less of a “ I can’t do this thing good enough” and more of a “I’m gonna find my way around the problem that does use my skills” it was good to transition that way of thinking over to a new medium. 

~ What was the creative process like in comparison to making these organic beings that you did into creating an idea onto paper or canvas or cardboard?

-I think it offered more access to symbolism that I wasn’t used to within fashion, it's usually harder to sneak in themes or symbolism when it's just a piece of clothing it has to fill that purpose first. So I enjoyed being able to use how I could present something in a flat way. It doesn’t have to be worn by someone it can literally just be looked at. It allowed me to flesh out ideas a lot more and still use that improvisational feeling where I just kind of figure it out as I go but then I can also make changes as I go back and put in little things so I can make it feel more themetically present. 

~ What do you hope to accomplish with your art in the future whether it be painting or fashion or a different art medium?

- I think I wanna develop a more defined style because right now I feel like I work in a lot of different media just because of the classes I’ve been in.  I personally want to set in more and define my style a lot more cause right now I’ve been trying all different ways of attacking art and even in painting just trying numerous different ways of doing it I wanna streamline my own style so everything I make feels more cohesive because I feel like right now the things I make aren’t as cohesive as I feel like they could be. 

End Of Interview

Thus concludes the Featured Artist Article. If you have more questions for Dylan or want to see more of his work I cannot stress enough to view his artwork on his second instagram @velvet.tires you will not be disappointed and you will have the ability to follow him on his journey into various different art mediums.