Flight Suit

Flight Suit, an early work by textile artist Marilyn Pappas, implies a human figure through a multicolored appliqued aviator jacket and pants with colorful stitching. The installation of this work, one determined by the artist, makes the suit look suspended in the air, as if in flight.

Marilyn Pappas, based in Somerville, MA, has a sixty year career that started during the height of the Second Wave Feminist Movement. She creates artworks from fabric that Meg Rotzel, Curator of the Radcliffe Institute, calls “between sculpture and garment.” Many of these fabric creations embody familiar landscapes come to life through three dimensional textiles and found objects. Her recent work appropriates Greco-Roman goddess imagery for a contemporary context, idealizing the female form and narratives of beauty and heroism today. Her work is exhibited in and collected by  many institutions, including the MFA Boston, DeYoung Museum, and Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and she is the Professor Emerita at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.