Rebecca Moses will take over the Southampton Arts Center from August 24 through 31 as the East End institution’s new artist-in-residence. The CFDA member and multidisciplinary designer will fill the week with exhibition, working studio, performance, and conversation under the title The Art of Observation.
At the center of the residency sits I Think You Are Beautiful When You Are Bored, a debut series of 11 portraits featuring women dressed mostly in black. Unexpected jewelry, eyewear, cigarettes, and knowing glances give each subject her own attitude, elegant, defiant, amused, detached, or simply bored.
For the Southampton audience, the week is a rare chance to watch a designer work in real time. For Moses, it is a homecoming of sorts, a return to the portrait practice that has shadowed her fashion career for decades.
Moses has moved fluidly between fashion, art, illustration, and design across her career, and the residency brings those threads together in one room. She will paint in public throughout the week, inviting visitors inside a creative process that feeds on exchange.
