Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Huetation

Sooo-z Mastropietro
Westport, CT

 

 

Inspiration can appear unexpectedly just like progress born from sickness. Huetation, inspired by Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and film documentary The Way of All Flesh took awe from an 8 second visual of mutating cancer cells, displayed with a sequence of 3 images in textiles. The countless contributions these virulent cells eventually made to modern science have been experienced by everyone on the planet today. The Huetation sequence illustrates the rapid movement they undergo and the unstoppable forms they take on. Conveying this image in fabric tubes parallels the tedious complexities of the very thing it is representing. The use of fabric tubes has always been part of the artist’s vernacular from years of fashion engineering. While it satisfies a calculated methodical application, it simultaneously embarks on an exciting journey of color and tactile variations. It utilizes hand sewn tubes and chunked pieces of cotton lycra knit jersey for mosaics, linear configurations, millefiores, and sculptures.

 


 

SOOO-Z MASTROPIETRO is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology and holds a BFA in Fashion Design and Textile Design. With a dueling interest in science, she had a brush with medicine 15 years ago when she became a certified surgical technologist. This short-lived career went into remission once she started a family but she has managed to maintain a very full dossier in the arts. She has served as an art director, designs costumes, teaches fashion design, curates, judges, plays classical bass in two symphonies, and actively creates a variety of art as Mastropiece. Her current work under the moniker, Knitiot Savant, is a fiber art form utilizing a triumph of fabric tubes, nuggets, and shreds.

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