Please join Brandt-Roberts Galleries, in collaboration with fellow Short North Arts District galleries and the Columbus Fashion Alliance, for Fashion is Art: Gavin Benjamin & Everett Johnson as we share the results of an artistic collaboration between Pittsburgh-based artist Gavin Benjamin and St. Louis-based fashion designer Everett Johnson. The idea for this collaboration between fashion and art spawned between the minds of Yohannan Terrell, Founder & Director of Columbus Fashion Alliance, and Michelle Brandt, Owner & Director of Brandt-Roberts Galleries, during a conversation amidst Benjamin’s inaugural exhibition at BRG. The idea “Art is Fashion” and its inverse, “Fashion is Art,” became a seed of inspiration to highlight the rich fashion and art communities bustling in Columbus.

Both Gavin Benjamin and Everett Johnson source ideas and imagery from family lineage and personal history, creating a symbiotic relationship between their practices for this collaboration. A series of still-life photographs created by Benjamin will incorporate handbags from Johnson’s The Baggage Collection. These handbags were meticulously crafted by Johnson as he watched protestors from his studio just days after the murder of George Floyd. Inspired and called to action to create, the designer realized he couldn’t craft a bag quickly enough before another murder hit the news. For Benjamin, this process recalled his Dressed to Kill series, as he explored the clothing and objects worn by murdered Black men and children in America. Both artists, as Nina Simone said, are fulfilling their purpose to reflect the times.