Karen Bernthal

I’ve taken an American icon, the T-shirt, and re-envisioned it. T-shirts are ubiquitous and generally not very well designed, but still embraced by our culture. I seek to elevate T-shirts to wearable art status without losing qualities I admire, namely accessibility and comfort. I work with them as a form, much like a clay artist works with teapots as a form. My aim is to keep the tops pure, which for me means without superfluous design. I offer texture and visual tension through the seaming itself, which I call squiggly embroidery. The seaming is created using a merrow machine. The raised seams signal design that’s unconventional, informal and honest. The thread color or, more accurately, the mix of colored threads in each seam balances the texture and introduces grace notes into the composition, making my version of wearable art into the apparel version of hand-made stoneware; casual, inventive, and strikingly designed, but without the formality of porcelain.