Saturday, May 02, 2015
The Sketchbook Of Costume Designer Jess Goldstein
Live Design: In 1979, Goldstein did his first summer in Williamstown, then run by Nikos Psacharopoulos, and as the designer recalls, “Nikos took a shining to me, and I was young enough and crazy enough to often take on three of their main stage productions each season and do them in two weeks each, with big stars. I learned so much, how to prioritize and how to get the job done with not too much money and a staff of mostly kids. I worked there throughout the 1980s, but after Nikos passed away, I chose to not work there and wanted to take more time for myself in the summers.”
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2 comments:
Beautiful work. It is so exciting to see a designer reveal her process, much less see it published online. Often design is overshadowed by the performances of the actors, as it should be. Design is the support for the work of the actors and directors. However, because of their inherently hidden aspect of theatre, I never feel like designers get the credit they deserve. In this case, I love looking at this woman's portfolio to see the artistic effort put into the sketches rarely seen outside of design meetings. I particularly like the way her style switches depending on the show she is working on. For some shows she uses a squat, almost cartoony style, while for other she veers in a more classic direction. It is cool to see such flexibility and talent in an artist. I also never knew that she had worked on this many shows that I have heard of. It just goes to show that designers simply aren't household names, which is a shame, and something I hope to see changed.
This is so cool! I personally have always been a notebook hoarder. I usually keep a to-do list/brainstorm/notes book, and I love looking back on old things I've written down, even if they aren't of too much value. When I was young, my mother used to buy me large notebooks for writing stories, and my favorite part about writing them was looking back through all of it and having a record of my words. I did the same with diaries off and on throughout my younger years. There's just something about the process of thinking of something and writing it down, then going back and remembering what went into it. I think the same thing applies with designers' sketchbooks. A few months ago, my boyfriend brought me through his childhood sketchbooks and it was amazing to see that while he obviously has grown as an artist, the same love for drawing and painting certain things was still there. I think it's really valuable to have someone else's process out there in the world too, because it reminds young designers that what begin as sketches can one day be "the costumes of designer Jess Goldstein."
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