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The Red Hat Project |
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Jean Hicks began the Red Hat Project as an 2002 Artist in Residence at the Penland School of Crafts, inspired by a desire to utilize the gesture wearing a hat entails. |
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"Just putting on a hat signals some intention. The red hats I made at this time are deliberately extreme shapes, because I wanted to give them a spirit of real animation. I wanted them to be about speaking up and speaking out." |
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"The project came out of my emotions about the politics of the moment. In the face of warmongering, hatred and the curtailing of rights, people simply were not speaking up as much as they should."
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The project evolved into a theatrical presentation at Seattle's 2003 Bumbershoot Visual Arts Festival. For this, the hats were modeled by women who performed kajukenbo - an eclectic style of kung-fu that blends five distinct traditions.
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Under the title "Fashion is Fascism, Style is Self-Defense", the Project and performance are featured in the catalogue "Fashion is...Art" published in 2003 by THREAD for ART. |
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