Shirt Happens

The Dow’s down 3.5 percent, Congress is preparing a second $350 billion bailout package, and Kia’s offering cars for a buck. It seems the only one who isn’t losing her shirt these days is local artist Kaori Takamura, who retired from graphic-design work to pursue her craft full-time. Takamura’s signature works are plaster-cast shirts, painted and machine-stitched in creative designs, as displayed in the exhibit “The Shirt Shop: Kaori Takamura” at eye lounge.

Why not pants or dresses? “I chose shirts to capture the individual’s image like a portrait,” Takamura tells New Times. In the exhibit, the completed shirts are hung up, while blank plaster shirts are stacked on adjacent shelves. “[The] plaster-molded shirts represent the anonymous individual,” the artist says. “Every life starts with a blank shirt that is later altered through one’s individual experiences.”