Jane Philbrick MDes ’16, founder of the nonprofit Today’s Industrial Living Landscapes (TILL) which seeks to naturally repair brownfields to create community spaces, was recently quoted in Women’s Wear Daily and Danbury News-Times about a collaboration between TILL and experimental textile designer, Jacob Olmedo. The project opens a store-front in the Redding, CT, home of Philbrick for Jacob Olmedo Studio, which produces sustainable yet wearable garments. These “living” clothes are made with 100% biodegradable fabrics and produced locally. Olmedo is an MFA student at Parsons where Philbrick teaches.

Philbrick sees Jacob Olmedo Studio as the first step to a larger artist community in Redding. In line with TILL’s mission, she envisions the long-vacant Gilbert & Bennett wire mill site as a future destination for artists and designers to live and work. TILL grew out of Philbrick’s work for her MDes thesis in Critical Conservation.

On Friday, November 16, Philbrick is set to chair the “Anywear” panel at Parsons School of Design/The New School’s Anywhere & Elsewhere Conference happening November 15-16, 2018. Panelists will include Jacob Olmedo, Burak Cakmak, Dean of the School of Fashion at Parsons, and Adam Geczy, author of numerous books on fashion and culture. The panel will take place at 2:15pm at the Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnold Hall, in New York City.

The biennial conference will feature artists that have “successfully navigated blind peer evaluation as part of Project Anywhere‘s Global Exhibition Program 2017-2018, together with invited presentations from established artists, designers, scholars, curators and writers actively engaged in practices outside traditional circuits,” according to its website.

Photo shows one of Olmedo’s plant-growing design captured by Gerardo Somoza / Indigita. Courtesy of WWD.