Kyle Schellinger Half-Scale Costumes

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Artist Statement

I began working in half-scale as a lark; something to occupy my talents, skills, and mind during the pandemic while the making of theatre was on an indefinite pause. Costume history is one of my passions, so I chose periods and garments with details that I’d always found intriguing, but never had the chance to pattern or make. Quickly, my work became a walkthrough of Western costume history while seeing just how detailed my small-scale work could be. I developed my eye for scale and three-dimensional interpretation while also forming new teaching methods. I took the half-scale dress form, usually a tool used by designers and patternmakers to figure out complex garments and used it to trick the eye and display the intricacies of costume history.

Aritst Bio

Kyle Schellinger is a costume maker and designer based in Knoxville, Tennessee. Since 2008, he has been the staff draper at the Clarence Brown Theatre at the University of Tennessee where he has patterned the costumes for over 80 productions and designed the costumes for various plays such as Moonlight and Magnolias, Our Country’s Good, and Outside Mullingar. His technical and design work has been seen at Great River Shakespeare Festival, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Actor’s Theatre of Indiana, Lexington Children’s Theatre, and Arizona Theatre Company among others. He has presented his half scale work at the Southeastern Theatre Conference and shared his expertise with students at several universities around the United States. Kyle holds a B.A in Theatre from Truman State University and an M.F.A. in Costume Design from the University of Arizona.

Marianne Custer Leather Work

masks

Leather, Velvet, Waxed Thread

Artist Statement

As a costume designer, I loved every aspect of my work, from the intellectual exercise of interpreting the play, the social and historical research, the sketching of the costumes, to the making of costumes. As a hands-on designer/maker, I did little cutting or sewing, but found my niche in dyeing and painting costumes, and costume craft. One of the crafts that I learned and taught to UT students was that of leather draping. This entails using “raw”, undyed vegetable tanned leather dipped in water and formed into objects. I learned to use the technique to make masks. As I stepped away from my teaching at UT, I began to explore the creative possibilities of this material in other kinds of objects, hats, flowers, leaves and abstract structures, eventually returning to the mask. I believe I have only begun to tap the creative potential of the material and look forward to continued exploration.

Hats

Leather, Velvet, Glass Beads

Boxes

Leather, Velvet, Glass Beads, Waxed Thread, Gold Leaf

Artist Bio

Marianne Custer, is a Professor Emerita of the University of Tennessee, Department of Theatre. She was Head of Design at the University of Tennessee and one of her proudest accomplishments is the development of a distinguished MFA design program with her scene and lighting design colleagues. Her costume designs have been seen on Broadway, in regional theatres and international theatres including  the Municipal Theatre of Istanbul, Turkey, the Avignon Festival in France, and the National Theatres of Germany and Hungary.  Her designs have been included in the Praque Quadrennial International Exhibition of theatre design in 1972, 1999, 2003 and 2007.  She was resident costume designer for the Clarence Brown Theatre Company from 1974 to 2018. 

Marianne Custer, Designer + Kyle Schellinger, Draper

Collaborative Work

For 10 years, and on many different productions, Marianne Custer and Kyle Schellinger worked closely as theater artists; Marianne as the costume designer and Kyle as the draper. Collaborating and with great respect for each other’s skills and talents, they created costumes that helped to breathe life into characters.