A child of small business owners, Janelle Abbott (JRAT) grew up exploring and creating within her parents Seattle based clothing manufacturing company. Early exposure to the industry led her to Parsons School of Design where she graduated in 2012 with a BFA in Sustainable Fashion. There she learned about the zero waste methodology which has become the corner stone of her design practice. After graduation, Timo Rissanen, her former professor, employed Janelle to sew white t-shirts in Helsinki’s Amos Anderson Museum as the subject of “15%”, an installation conceived with Salla Salin. The objective of the installation was to highlight both the wastefulness of garment production as well as the true value of the labor necessary in producing clothing. The performance was reprised at New York City’s Kellen Gallery in 2014 with Janelle performing once again. Janelle continues to be committed to advocating for radical change in the fashion industry including: an end to slavery, forced labor, wastefulness (both pre and post-consumer), as well as environmental degradation perpetrated by multiple facets of the production process.  Utilizing second-hand, found, and post-consumer materials, Janelle creates clothing, tapestry, sculpture, wearable furniture and rugs, paintings, and much more. She is a dancer, runner, yogi, cyclist, and writer. She offers Wardrobe Therapy as a service for private clients seeking to transform old beloved, yet unworn garments into new, wearable pieces. Teen Vogue named Janelle and her collaborative venture, FEMAIL, one of 2019’s Emerging Designers. Janelle’s work has been featured in Interview Magazine, Nylon, Teen Vogue, Crosscut, and in a solo exhibition at the Bellevue Arts Museum (2018). 

Instagram: @janellerabbott 
Website: janellerabbott.com

Brie Flora is a contemporary jeweler, artist, and educator currently living in Tennessee. Flora graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a dual degree in Metalsmithing & Jewelry and Art Education May 2015. Her handcrafted jewelry plays with symmetry, negative space, patterns, and color. By using traditional metalsmithing techniques such as piercing, forming, and soldering, Brie takes inspiration from nature, fantasy & fiction to create unique sculptural objects and wearable art. Working in both sterling silver and powder coated brass and now sometimes laser cutting steel, she looks to achieve an organized maximalist aesthetic that celebrates pops of color, intricate marks, and illustrative forms.

Brie Flora has been featured in over 10 group exhibitions including “AMEND” an online exhibition put together by Secret Identity Projects which was on view during NYC Jewelry Week 2020, and "Bling: Jewelry Invitational" in the main gallery at Blue Spiral 1 - Asheville, NC 2019. Brie currently is teaching workshops both virtually and in person and is a Virtual Teacher Assistant (VTA) at Metalwerx and co-owns a storefront gallery in Cookeville TN called The Silver Fern. She also created and curated “Guidelines – A contemporary jewelry project” For more information and updates on the next Guidelines project, follow @guidelines_jewelry on Instagram.

Instagram: @brie_flora 
Website: brieflora.com

I am a multi-media Maker, proficient in a number of disciplines. Among these are  literary, performance, sculptural, audio-visual, and wearable. The nature of my practice  is such that, combinations of art forms amalgamate into multi-media installation, or  simply, in a craft fair booth (Which, in my view, is also installation). I create with a  generous measure of vulnerability. I'm going ALL the way in! That is what breathes life  into the layers of my work. EVERYTHING is conceptual, and expresses, a more sub surface thing (occasionally discovered when a work is finished)! I assert that few things  are more satisfying than something awe-inspiring, born of that, right in my hand!  

The Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design, are  where these attributes have been fostered. In addition, I am among the distinguished  2020 graduating class, of Boston Arts & Business Council’s, Creative Entrepreneur  Fellows.  

The work stirring excitement at present, is the crafting of my colorful fine art leather  rings and collars, which are largely constructed of re-appreciated materials. Equally  as exciting is the crafting of my fine art sculptural paper art, which are, but go far  beyond greeting cards! They are one-of-a-kind collectible art pieces.  

My ongoing focus, as with most Creatives, is to balance the joy of making, with the  ability to thrive economically.

Instagram: @artisanlisaleeofboston
Website: lisaleeofboston.com

I’ve sewn since childhood when my grandmother taught me to sew.  Both hand stitching and machine sewing she highly stressed.  As a young adult I furthered my skills at Fashion Design School in Houston, TX.  Since then I’ve pursued various avenues of fashion creation.  After working in production and seeing the waste firsthand, I decided to use only recycled materials in my pieces.  I've always loved sewing with recycled textiles and now, more than ever I feel it is of the greatest importance to demonstrate the advantages of utilizing the abundant resources of used textiles to create clothing.

Instagram: @kimmidesigns
Etsy Shop: Kimmi

Jillian Moore is an artist and writer based in rural Iowa working primarily in the field of contemporary jewelry and small sculpture using alternative materials, most notably for her use of layered resin. She received her BFA in Metalsmithing and Jewelry Making from Western Illinois University in 2004, and she received her MFA in Jewelry and Metal Arts from the University of Iowa in 2008. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and is in the permanent collections of the Racine Art Museum (WI) and the Mint Museum (NC).

My work has always resulted from a blending of organic forms, both zoological and botanical, with the intention of creating wearable objects that seem both familiar and uncanny. These structures, systems, and surfaces are repurposed and filtered through abstraction. More recently I've been pushing the implausibility, looking for colors and patterns that would further eschew familiarity. I've been ruminating on transgression, and how the natural world can sometimes defy easy categorization. There is a direct link in my productivity and risk taking in the studio to my rage, heightened anxiety, and rebellion against the rise of bigotry. Coupled with the desire to amplify the ambiguity, peculiarity, and otherworldly qualities in my work, references to mineralogical forms have become very interesting to me, and I find myself now exploring alien territory. This current body of work is much more overtly about defiance, and in particular, objects for and about bodies that are exuberantly, confrontationally weird and queer.

Instagram: @phlaznatch
Website: jillianmoore.net

You’re a new addition to the crayon box: what color are you?

Janelle R. Abbott
Clear

Jillian Moore
I’d like to be one of those amalgamations of all the other colors melted together, please? I had a chunky one as a kid, and it was excellent.

Brie Flora
I feel like my answer to this question would change month to month… but right now I feel like I would be a taupe green, or a light moss.

Kim McCormick
Autumnal Orange. The depth of color and the warmth it invokes makes me happy.

Lisa Lee
Golden brown, with olive undertones!