Artist’s Statement: “My experiences as a fashion designer have instilled in me a love of pattern and an obsession with surface. I am enthralled with the new cultural addiction to home fashions and the marketing of “personal” style. There are different personalities at work in my pieces. Sometimes the transgressive gives way to elegance, at other times a caretaker is at work, veiling and swaddling an idea. My work is shown as sculpture yet it is all from the fiber medium (excepting video and fabricated pieces). The pieces are often sewn, embroidered, perforated, constructed, worn and inhabited in a zone between fashion, fiber and performance.”

      Born in 1962 in Washington D.C., Professor Caskey received her B.S.S. in Fine Arts from Cornell College, Mt Vernon, Iowa; her B.F.A. in Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design, New York; and her M.F.A. in Print/Media from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. In 1997, she was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Fashion Design and Merchandising at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2003. Prior to her appointment at Virginia Commonwealth University, Professor Caskey taught at McPherson College, McPherson, Kansas, and St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota. She also served as a visiting artist at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Kansas City Art institute, Missouri; St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana; and Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as well as Education Director at the Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence, Kansas.

      From 1987-1992, she worked as a fashion designer for Arlequin Inc. and Perry Ellis in New York and as Associate Designer for Urban Outfitters in Philadelphia. Other appointments include Project Coordinator for the interdisciplinary program, Keepers of the Waters, with Betsy Damon, in Chengdu China, where she performed her piece, Washing Silk, in 1995. Professor Caskey has participated in numerous exhibitions throughout the Midwest and Mid- Atlantic regions. Her work was also included in the 1999 exhibition, The Park of the Future, at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. In 2001, she received a fellowship in sculpture from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Her most recent work was an installation at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan (2003) and the site specific installation, Wolf, and, Clearing, in the exhibition, Fathoming, at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (2002). Professor Caskey’s work has been reviewed in Art Papers, Sculpture magazine and numerous newspapers.

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    Assistant Professor Kimberly Guthrie considers fashion as an art and industry. Fashion is an avenue in which many aspects of life can be investigated, celebrated, and represented. Her approach to teaching and developing course content combines these perspectives. In October 2004, she organized an exhibition of her student’s work at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia. The title of the show was The Avant Garde Body: Image and Manipulation in Fashion and featured fashion designs that questioned the cultural perceptions of body image and how they relate to fashion.  During the spring 2007 semester, she and her students had the opportunity to work with the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia again as they used artwork from the exhibition “Counterparts:  Contemporary Painters and Their Influences” as inspiration for designs that were showcased during the show’s opening reception.

Professor Guthrie has been collaborating with Tredegar Film Products Corporation for several years on the product development and design of disposable apparel products. During the spring 2006 semester, Tredegar provided her design class with film and laminate products for students to research and investigate the products’ potential for application in apparel use.  The course and the student designs were spotlighted in the July 2006 issue of NonWovens Industry.  As a consultant for Tredegar, she has designed disposable apparel products for SmartChoices™ and Once™.

Professor Guthrie received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Fashion Design from VCU’s School of the Arts in 1989. While a student, she was selected as a U.S. finalist to attend the Concours International des Jeunes Createurs de Mode in Paris, France. She worked in New York for designer Hal Bernfeld as an assistant patternmaker and draper. When she moved back to Richmond, she joined the VCU Department of Fashion as an adjunct faculty member teaching courses in the design track. The United States Army Quarter Master Center and School contracted her as a subject matter expert in curriculum development and instruction of the proper procedures for measuring and fitting the men’s and women’s Class A uniforms. Professor Guthrie taught the courses at Fort Jackson, Columbia, South Carolina and helped develop the training manuals for on site instruction.  Professor Guthrie teaches across the design and merchandising curricula allowing her the opportunity to teach both design studio courses and computer-aided design.   Her research has provided her with many opportunities to be a presenter at national and international conferences and symposiums.

    Linda Lee is Assistant Professor of Fashion Design at Virginia Commonwealth University, School of the Arts and a member of the Dept. of Fashion Design and Merchandising. She teaches Design Theory and Illustration and design studios in apparel. Her courses include sustainable design and fair trade fashion. Prof. Lee directs the service-learning course on Line Development in Guatemala. She is co-curator of the upcoming exhibition, “Ixchel’s Thread: Maya Weaving from the Bowdler Textile Collection,” at the Anderson Gallery.

In 2005-2006, Prof. Lee was invited to organize and team teach a weeklong design workshop for “Style and Status: Imperial Costumes from Ottoman Turkey,” an international exhibition organized by the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington DC. She was invited to participate in a tutors design workshop in Denmark by Saga Furs of Scandinavia. Prof. Lee also made presentations in Copenhagen, Denmark and Honolulu, Hawaii.

Prior to joining VCU, Prof. Lee taught design at the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY) and Pratt Institute in New York. Her professional career spans over 30 years in New York City’s garment industry as a designer, design director and freelance consultant in women and children’s wear. Throughout her career, Prof. Lee’s work has appeared in Women’s Wear Daily, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Fashion of the Times, Earnshaw’s Review, Children’s Business and Child Magazine. Her research interests include the indigenous textiles of Guatemala and Southeast Asia, focusing on efforts to preserve the traditions of weaving and embroidery with an emphasis on their cultural context.

     In her position as Assistant Professor in VCU’s Department of Fashion Design and Merchandising, Professor Reamy has been able to combine two areas of interest - the fashion business and educating people. Professor Reamy graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing Education. She completed graduate work at Virginia Polytechnical Institute where she graduated with a Master of Science degree in Education. She gained industry experience in the areas of buying and merchandising prior to teaching fashion at the high school and university level.

      Professor Reamy has written and presented papers on such topics as merchandising and the global impact of fashion on body image in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Queensland, Australia respectively. She has published essays and articles in the books titled, Contemporary Fashion (2nd edition) and the Dictionary of American History (2004). She is currently writing a textbook on importing fashion apparel into the United States.

     Rosalie Jackson Regni joined the faculty of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia in January 2002 after completing over 30 years of a distinguished career in retailing and manufacturing in New York City. She holds a degree in Fashion Merchandising from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and began her career at the J. C. Penney Corporate Office in Manhattan. Following a 15-year tenure there, she became Divisional Merchandise Manager and then General Merchandise Manager at Montgomery Ward. She then spent 12 years in the manufacturing side of the fashion business, including a stint as President of the Sanmark Division of the Movie Star Corporation. Just prior to joining the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University, she spent 6 years as Vice President of Sales for Character, Inc., a worldwide manufacturer of ladies’ sleepwear with headquarters in New York City.

      During her career, she traveled extensively in the United States, Far East, and Europe doing trend research, product development and international negotiations. As professor of merchandising at Virginia Commonwealth University, she teaches classes in Fashion Forecasting, Product Development, Senior Seminar and Advanced Store Development, a class which simulates the process of opening a new small apparel store from business plan to turn-key development. Rose has delivered several papers since joining Virginia Commonwealth University, including one at an international conference in Australia in July 2002. She is in the process of co-authoring a textbook on Product Development.

     Janus Watson, Associate Professor in the School of the Arts, currently teaches in the Department of Fashion Design and Merchandising as well the Art Foundation Program at Virginia Commonwealth University. She joined the School of the Arts faculty in 1981. Professor Watson holds a BFA degree in Fashion Design from Moore College of Art and Design, and MAE in Art Eduction from Virginia Commonwealth University.

      She began her fashion career as a Junior Sportswear Designer for Step Ladder located in Philadelphia, PA, and later worked as a manager of the Nipon Boutique Line for Tokyo Style for Albert Nipon also in Philadelphia. Ms. Watson taught two years at her alma mater, and the University of Philadelphia before coming to VCU. She also co-owned a men's wear line called The Master's Tailors. Ms. Watson served a professional internship specializing in computer-aided patternmaking with Gerber Garment Technology in Tolland Conn.