YOUTHFUL FLIGHTS OF FANTASY

S.F. schoolkids let imagination and talent loose at art & fashion camp.

Pablo Picasso said that it took him a lifetime to learn to paint like a child: To create in a context untainted by convention or critics and unafraid to explore new fantasies.

Perhaps that’s what’s so compelling about the fashion designed by the students in the San Francisco Arts Education Project (SFArtsEd) summer program, who range from 10 to14 years old and attend a variety of schools across the city. At their age, clothing and art can be anything and knows no limits.

“In the classroom I always start by showing them a wide variety of images,” says fashion camp artist mentor Tiersa Nureyev, who began the fashion program at the SFArtsEd summer camp in 2006. “I like them to be aware of what’s going on in fash- ion and art.”

The lessons may be for kids but the material is anything but juvenile: Nick Cave’s Soundsuits, the Lumps and Bumps collection by Comme des Garcons, Sandra Backlund’s knitwear and the stage wardrobe of Lady Gaga are all part of the curriculum that introduces students to some of the most celebrated (and maligned) fashion/art hybrids in recent memory. It’s the kind of high-concept clothing beloved by the art crowd, but Nureyev says it’s also remarkably accessible to kids whose views haven’t yet been narrowed by convention. This year, the student work was inspired by themes of identity and transformation: Every garment was made from reimagined materials Nureyev sourced from the Thrift Town store in the Mission District.

On Oct. 29, students from SFArtsEd’s Players performing

arts program and Broadway Bound summer camp will model the costumes in a special show at the Catharine Clark Gallery as part of the gallery’s Box Blur series of events inspired by artist Kambui Olujimi’s current show “What Endures.” SFArtsEd Artistic Director Emily Keeler describes the evening as a performance-art event, choreographed by Sydney Lozier, where students will create tableaux and interact with one another and the art.

On a recent afternoon at the program’s offices and gallery at the Minnesota Street Project, performers and designers got together to model looks from the upcoming show. As the models changed into the garments, the schoolkids vanished and the performers took over. The student designers on hand did not hesitate to adjust a seam, reposition a mask or tweak a detail to make the final look perfect.

“I like that we’re not treated like kids,” says 10-year-old designer Lillian Orcutt, who attends Sunnyside Elementary.

Fellow designer Beatrice Waits-Mast, also 10 and a student at Sunnyside, agrees.

“We get to have our own ideas,” Waits-Mast says. “They let us make what inspires us.”

Tony Bravo is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tbravo@sfchronicle.com

Emma Johnson (left) models “Nerves” by Lillian Orcutt, 10 (making an adjustment). Lillian says the garment was inspired by “a monster that lives in the heart of the Upper West Side” and by “the Soundsuits of Nick Cave.”

Sofia Schuler (right) models “Beastiful” by Beatrice Waits-Mast, age 10 (adjusting the garment). Beatrice says the costume is inspired by the story of an octopus “who wanted to live on land with other humans, so she wore this outfit to try and fit in,...