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| Image: http://www.lesliehall.com/ |
There are many trends in which we may regret having participated through the years, and others in which we may deny having participated. There is, however, a point at which a sense of nostalgia overtakes our desire to wretch when we think of some special trends and phenomena. A certain lapse of time somehow softens the lens of our critical eye and kitsch can become something about which we reminisce with joy, affection, and even a sense of pride. It can become regarded as something uniquely American: Americana.
This is what artist Leslie Hall has achieved with her popular website celebrating, amongst other things, gem sweaters. Gem sweaters: we've all seen them, we may have owned them, and we may know people still sporting them. Hall discovered her first gem sweater over a decade ago in an Iowa thrift store, and was immediately taken. She began collecting the sweaters and decided to share them with the world via the Internet. Hall has an extensive gallery wherein she photographs herself modeling the sweaters with a dead-pan countenance and more than a hint of Grant Wood's American Gothic. Not content to simply offer her sweaters virtually, Hall has a Mobile Museum of Gem Sweaters housed in an RV which she takes on tour with her hip-hop band, Leslie and the LYs.
While Hall's sweater crusade can be appreciated as the height of irony, her painstaking efforts to preserve, document, share, and even name these sweaters and the web community's enthusiasm for her efforts show a clear transcendence of these gemmed beauties from kitsch to Americana. Clement Greenburg be damned! Hall does not archive these sweaters to be hip and clever (though she is), rather she wants to share this expression of the American aesthetic with the world. Her earnestness is refreshing. Best sweater name: "Route to My Feelings."
Later,
Beth
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