The 77-Year-Old Artist Making Sculptural Costumes Out of Her Tribeca Apartment
The 77-Year-Old Artist Making Sculptural Costumes Out of Her Tribeca Apartment
Meet Pat Oleszko.
It’s rare for a press release to grab my attention when I’m scrolling through my email in delete-delete-delete mode, but Pat Oleszko is hard to miss. A performance artist from Michigan who moved to downtown New York in the 1970s, her colorful, provocative, sculptural costumes instantly made me smile and want to know more when I first saw them. Here’s the invite I received to the opening of her gallery show at David Peter Francis back in June…
The inflatable costume above, titled Udder Delight (1989), is one of many delightfully absurdist pieces on view as part of Pat's Imperfect Present Tense, which was extended an extra week and now closes on Saturday. Because this is Pat’s first solo show in nearly 25 years, the gallery is bursting at the seams with five decades worth of the now-77-year-old artist’s work, including Womb With A View (1990), a studio-apartment-sized naked pelvis that visitors are invited to unzip and climb into for a surprise...
Of course, I had to schedule a visit to see all this up close before I left New York last month, and Pat graciously offered to walk me through the show herself. This is the vision that greeted me when I arrived…
Standing behind Pat, who is wearing jewelry and accessories she made from objects like dice and dominoes, are The Handmaiden (1975) and The Coat of Arms (1972), two costumes that nod to her background as a burlesque dancer and, clearly, her love of a good pun. In general, her work aims to comment on serious subjects, whether it’s gender politics, climate change, or the hypocrisies of the Catholic Church, without ever taking itself too seriously. (In the late-‘90s, she was arrested by the Vatican Police for dressing up as The Nincompope.)
The show, which also features dozens of handmade hats, isn’t all costumes. Pat, who describes herself as “an artist who performs,” was also a prolific filmmaker and staged exhibitions and performances everywhere from The MoMA to Lincoln Center, to The Kitchen. She is “quite possibly the only person to ever appear in the pages of Artforum, Playboy, and Sesame Street Magazine alike,” is how Interview explained the breadth of her career, which has garnered her both the Rome Prize and the Guggenheim Fellowship.
As a student at the University of Michigan, Pat was interested in sculpture, but she couldn’t get the hang of welding, and her large-scale work kept falling over. Embarrassed in front of her mostly male peers, she started making things on her sewing machine at home. She realized that costumes could be a form of sculpture and that she could hang her art on her long, lean, six-foot-tall frame—no structural supports necessary. “I became the star of my own show,” she says.
When Pat moved to New York in the 1970s, she eventually settled in Tribeca. As we chatted about the neighborhood, we discovered that Pat’s apartment, where she’s lived and worked for the last 50 years, is just a few blocks away from my childhood home. I’ve passed it thousands of times. So after the gallery tour, I had to ask: Could I maybe come over and take a peek sometime…?
Nothing prepared me for the treasure trove I eventually walked into. My jaw dropped when I saw Pat’s wall of accessories, which she picked from using one of those extendable arms you might find at a deli. She’s fashioned bracelets out of playing cards, puzzle pieces, and other dollar store knick-knacks and was wearing one she made out of tiny wooden doll house cooking utensils that she found at a flea market in Italy. “I have enough earrings that I can not repeat for two and a half months,” she told me of her ornament-like collection, which includes a CD-ROM that a composer friend gave her as a "h-earring." Get it??
There are also shelves on shelves of handmade hats on display. One is made out of weather vanes she bought on Canal Street “before [I] was born,” and another her grandfather’s bowties. “I'm always happy when I can incorporate something from my past somehow,” she said. “I also had a long life of dumpster diving.”
As the neighborhood has changed dramatically around Pat—her view is no longer of her former neighbor, Richard Serra, whom she describes as a “brilliant asshole,” but rather a shiny Van Leeuwen—she’s remained steadfast. It made me happy to see that creative people like her are still there, holding down the fort.
After spending so much time with her and her work, I was also inspired to get crafty with what’s around me and keep my eyes open. You don’t need to spend a million dollars on an outfit for it to feel special. “Now, wherever I go, I'm collecting stuff,” she says. I’m no pun master, but I’d say she made an imPAcT.
Pat’s show at David Peter Francis has been extended through July 27, so run, don’t gawk! Some of her work is still for sale, including several of her hats. To inquire about purchasing, contact gallery@davidpeterfrancis.com. You can also visit the gallery’s website here. Be a PAT-ron of the arts! ;)
she's also briefly featured in the joan micklin silver movie "crossing delancey"!
Love! Glad to hear it’s been extended—will check it out tomorrow.