Don't Call It a Costume Party: UC Body Mantle Show Is Friday

The University of Cincinnati School of Design's Annual Body Mantle Show at its College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) will take place at 4:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, in the 4th Floor Atrium at DAAP.

This spectacle showcases a collection of over 450 “mantles” created and modeled by first-year foundations students in DAAP's School of Design, School of Architecture and Interior Design, and School of Art.

DAAP's foundation courses teach new students the basics of color, shape, and form, as well as introducing them to the tools and materials they will be using for the rest of their careers in the visual arts. For the Body Mantle project, students are challenged to create a wearable piece of art, using either free or very inexpensive materials, that is made of at least 100 pieces of a repeatable, unaltered unit with one connector. Students must consider numerous design aspects — fabrication and detailing, transformation of a ubiquitous material into something else entirely, the body as a site for design.

This year's Body Mantle Show will feature music by DJ Mowgli and six guest judges representing various creative industries: Duru Armagan of Sloane Boutique, Jay Becker of BLDG, Patti Bresler of Brandimage, performance artist Pam Kravetz, Joe Rigotti of Accent on Cincinnati and UC Senior Vice Provost Eileen Strempel. Award-winning projects, along with four additional faculty-chosen projects from each participating school (Design, Architecture and Interior Design, and Art) will be exhibited at the Niehoff Urban Studio for a week in November. The opening reception takes place 6-8 p.m. Nov. 5. 

Awards will be given to body mantles for the following project categories: Best of Show, Most Spectacular, Most Gravity-Defying, Best Transformation of Material, Most Courageous, Best Detailing, Most Harmonious, Most Surprising, Most Ergonomic, Most Economical and Most Articulated.

Awards have generously been provided by: Ace Hardware Clifton and Plaza Art Materials. Additional sponsors include: Dewey’s Pizza, Esquire Theatre, Sitwell’s Coffee House and Habañero.

The Body Mantle Show is free and open to the public.

If you are attending, look for the Snapchat Body Mantle geofilters: open the Snapchat app while you are at the show, take a photo, and swipe left or right to find the filter options.