ORGANIZATION HISTORY

Fiber artist and Fairfield Fashion Show Designer, Cheryl Trostrud-White founded the Wearable Art Connection of Southern California (WAC), a non-profit organization, in 1991. She served as it’s first President.

Wearable Art Connection (WAC) holds quarterly Saturday meetings (on the 3^rd Saturday of Feb. May, Aug. & Nov.), inviting nationally known guest artists to present programs and workshops on a variety of topics such as quilting, dyeing, textile painting and surface embellishment. Designed for professionals and amateurs, WAC is a group where wearable artists can relate to and share with each other. The WAC membership includes many award winning artists in the field of wearable art, teachers in the fiber arts, weaving and sewing as well as a number of Fairfield and Bernina Fashion Show Designers.

WAC activities include the Annual WAC Challenge, a wearable art competition open to all members, with awards for winning garments chosen by the membership at the November meeting. In 2005 members of WAC put on a Art to Wear Exhibition called “Opulent Splendor” at the Brand Library Art Gallery as a celebration of ornamentation, pattern and fantasy through painting, fiber art, costume and fashion. In 2000, WAC members' garments were in an exhibition of wearables at the FIDM Museum LA. Also in 2000 WAC co-sponsored a lecture at LA County Museum of Art given by Melissa Leventon from the M. H. de Young Museum in San Francisco. In 1997 and 1998 members' wearable art was displayed in "ART WRAP" at the World Quilt and Textiles Shows in Pasadena. And the upcoming "Wearable Art Connection Celebrates 20 years of Wearable Finery" at "Road to California" in 2012.