#maplemoonrise — Public Fediverse posts

Maple Moonrise – Glamour and Gleam

When Friendship Becomes Art

Lo, in the east is a glamour and gleam,
Like waves that lap on the shores of a dream,
Or voice their lure in a poet’s theme!
— L. M. Montgomery

My friend Resa McConaghy was working on a drawing of me when a box of fabric arrived. She was preparing a post called La Belle Époque, and the newly arrived fabric caught her attention. She draped it over the drawing, took a photograph, and somewhere in that curious meeting between image and textile, another idea began to emerge. An Art Gown was born. Resa named her creation Maple Moonrise.

Her imagination did not stop with the naming of the gown. Maple Moonrise, she tells us, is a neo-goddess, Canadian born simultaneously on the Pacific beaches of British Columbia and the Atlantic shores of Prince Edward Island. And she dedicated Maple Moonrise to me.

I am overwhelmed by that thought. I am still trying to find the words to describe what it feels like to have a friend take fabric, imagination, artistry and hours of work and create something that carries a little of my story within it.

The Art of Seeing Possibility

I have followed Resa’s Art Gowns for many years. Again and again, I have watched fabric, lace, remnants, ribbons, bows and notions pass through her hands and emerge with new lives. Her gowns are beautiful, but beauty is only part of their story. Behind the Art Gowns is a mission.

Resa encourages us to learn a few sewing skills to prolong the life of our garments, to step away from mass-produced ideas of fashion, and to discover the creative possibilities of NOS or new old stock, along with used textiles and notions that might otherwise be forgotten or discarded.

Her vision reaches even further. She hope manufacturers will bring together designers and engineers willing to think differently about existing products and find imaginative ways to reuse them in mass production.

There is something wonderfully hopeful in that idea. Resa is not simply asking us to use less. She is asking us to imagine more. And Maple Moonrise shows us what that can mean.

The lace that became Maple Moonrise arrived in four unusual panels. Instead of forcing the material to conform to a predetermined design, Resa began experimenting with what was already there. She draped it, photographed it and allowed the shape of the lace to help determine the form of the gown.

Listening to the Material

Even the magnificent asymmetrical train grew out of the material itself. Rather than cutting away fabric merely to make both sides match, Resa incorporated it into the design.

Her comment was so very much Resa: “No waste here!”

Those three words contain much of the philosophy behind Art Gowns. What already exists does not need to be discarded simply because it does not conform to our expectations. Sometimes the irregularity is precisely where the creative possibility begins.

And then there is the light. The lace changes as the light moves across it. Shimmering gold, brown, reddish brown, the colours of maple syrup and autumn leaves. Beneath it, the luminous satin seems almost liquid.

When I look at Maple Moonrise, I see both earth and sky. The warmth of maple in the lace and moonlight flowing through the satin. Perhaps our neo-goddess has dressed herself in a little of both.

When Friendship Becomes Art

Maple Moonrise is also a story about friendship.

Resa and I create in very different ways. She works with fabric, lace, line, texture, art, form and movement. I am drawn to words, literature, history and conversation. Yet our paths have crossed again and again because beneath those different forms lies a shared belief in the importance of creativity.

I believe that friendship itself is a creative act. We notice something in another person. We encourage it. We respond to what they create. Their ideas influence ours, and ours sometimes find their way into theirs. Over time, without quite realizing it, we become part of one another’s creative stories. And every so often, friendship becomes something we can actually see. Today, it became a gown.

Thank you, Resa, for Maple Moonrise. Thank you for allowing me to become part of its story and for reminding us to look again at what is already around us. In your hands, reuse becomes elegance, resourcefulness becomes artistry, and forgotten materials become something worthy of wonder.

Your Art Gowns remind us that sustainability need not be simply about doing without. Creativity offers another possibility. We can repair and we can reuse. We can transform and we can look at something whose first purpose has ended and imagine a second one.

Perhaps that is why Maple Moonrise feels to me like much more than a gown. It is a testament to imagination and a celebration of friendship.

And somewhere between the Pacific and Atlantic shores, between maple and moonlight, between fabric and friendship, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s words seem to have been waiting for our Canadian neo-goddess: “a glamour and gleam.”

I cannot think of a lovelier description for Maple Moonrise.

Rebecca