Wearable Wonders

Art and fashion come to play at Wowza Ball

No Jell-O, no fire, no nudity. Those are the rules for the Wowza Ball on Feb. 10 at Millar Lodge on Mount Sequoyah. Otherwise, have fun, says organizer and Fayetteville-based artist Gina Gallina.

While she’s known for her spectacular large-scale crochet works — a mushroom you can bike through, Elvis’s jumpsuit, and her wine-loving caterpillar — she says that the Wowza Ball will celebrate all wearable art.

“I am a crochet artist, and I do love doing that. But I also love doing other things. So this has been a great opportunity to show the other side of my artistic skills and my organization skills,” Gallina says. Plus she has tennis elbow from her vast array of creations!

Gallina and friends recently hosted a series of workshops also called Wowza at Fenix Gallery, leading participants in papier mache, sewing basics, needle felting and upcycling clothing to help them begin to create their own manifestations of wearable art.

Gallina specifies that wearable art is different from creating a costume.

“A costume is something that you wear to transform yourself into something, but with wearable art — you’re the canvas. So you’re wearing art,” Gallina explains. “I want people to understand that fashion is art, and art can be fashion.”

The evening will feature a pageantstyle competition with a $500 cash prize. Participants will have to impress a panel of “Judgy Judges” — Brandy Lee of Big Sister Studio, Hannah Withers from Maxine’s and author Crescent Dragonwagon — who will interview the candidates and assess their apparel to find the best of the ball.

Those who are there for the party and to see the clothes may enjoy a cash bar, snacks, an interactive photo selfie booth and all sorts of games, Gallina says.

Area artists will be set up around the event to share their own wearable art, including local “craftivist” and musician Donna Mulhollan, as “Dotty in the Head.”

Dotty, as expected, likes wearing dots and reflects the playful nature that’s a hallmark of Mulhollan’s needle-felted artwork. For Mulhollan, Dotty is a way of embracing the inevitability of aging as she begins her 70th trip around the sun in May.

“Everyone our age, we are forgetting nouns and names. I want to normalize that, because that is normal. Our hard drives are full,” she says. “It doesn’t mean we have Alzheimer’s!”

Mulhollan says that she came up with the idea for Dotty when Gallina told her to create something for the Wowza Ball. She and Gallina have collaborated many times before. However, this persona aligned with a new series that Mulhollan is writing on viola. A longtime fiddle player, Mulhollan started learning to play the deeper, darker and larger cousin of the violin during covid lockdown.

While she’s not yet releasing all the details about Dotty, she’ll offer guests a chance to meet Dotty and see a few manifestations of her image in a fun display during the Wowza Ball.

Tickets for the ball are $20 at ginagallina. com/wowza. Guests are invited to dress up however wild and crazy they want or dress down. Just leave the fire and Jell-O at home.

(Courtesy Photo) Artist Gina Gallina models her “trash hat” made from recycled and upcycled materials. The hat is an example of the recent WowZa workshops led by Gallina at Mount Sequoyah. On Feb. 10 an event dedicated to the wonders of wearable art, the Wowza Ball, kicks off at 6 p.m. at Millar Lodge at Mount Sequoyah.

(NWA Democrat-Gazette/Monica Hooper) Detail of needlework by Jessica Robin is part of the “Hanging By A Thread” exhibit on show at Fenix, also on Mount Sequoyah. The piece is part of wearable art created by the artist.

(NWA DemocratGazette/ Monica Hooper) Donna Mulhollan will introduce a new persona, “Dotty in the Head,” on Feb. 10 at the Wowza Ball on Mount Sequoyah.