“Between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2003, Thompson designs clothing with one garment for each day of the month. He customizes each outfit for a specific daily activity such as going to work, shopping, attending a wedding, embarking on a road trip, or removing snow. His cotton fabric designs were functional and varied from playful to pragmatic, regardless of a lack of professional patterns. In the subsequent year at the Cranbrook Art Academy, Thompson wears all the outfits again and creates overcoats from the leftover fabric scraps, adding silkscreened garment labels. The photomontage Month of Uniforms Calendar (2003–2004) presents these garments in a chronological order from Monday to Sunday, displaying the 2004 outfits crafted in Michigan on the far right of each row. Month of Uniforms draws inspiration from the documentation of daily experiences by performance artists, an approach that has gained popularity since the late 1960s.”

— Curator Nadja Rottner’s wall label text for Andy T’s Urban Vision

Month of Uniforms Calendar, 2003-2004

Weeks 1-2, 2003

Week 3-4, 2003

The project A Month of Uniforms is an exploration of how my body relates to the clothes it wears. I made a new set of clothes everyday for a 30 day period to free myself from memories associated with the clothes I would wear with frequency. At the time I was working three part-time jobs, with no consistent schedule so decided to construct a uniform schedule of making uniforms. The time of year was also important to the piece as it was the height of shopping and consumerism between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Though the many bolts of fabric for this project were expensive, the cost pales in comparison to what I could have spent on 30 sets of socks, underwear, pants, and shirts. I was excited to make my artwork “work for me”.

— Andy T

Month of Uniforms Reworn — Monday: In the Studio 11/22/04

Month of Uniforms Reworn — Friday: Changing a Tire with Dad 11/26/04

The subtlety of everyday life is burdensome. The mind cannot contain a record of every detail of the things it comes in contact with, so it finds ways to store the information coded in objects. We are unaware of the associations our brain makes, until we are confronted with that one shirt, or that cup, or the one particular smell that sends memories reigning down upon our heads. I work with clothing in my art because of the richness with which our bodies familiarize themselves with clothes. The tactile nature of fabric on our skin and its scent so surrounding, allows for people to easily associate a component of their identity with what they are wearing.

In an experiment to try to direct my identity and the way my mind associates memories, I have made a new set of clothes for each day over a month-long period. This piece, A Month of Uniforms, is an activity in starting each day with a fresh set of clothing, clothing that I had never worn before, in order to minimize mental baggage that might accompany clothing worn from the previous day, week, or year. The relationship I have to the clothing is controlled, where I wear the clothes once in a year, and on the same day of the week each following year. This is a process of internalizing the day’s activities/memories on my body. The mind keys ideas and experiences into objects, which then can be unlocked at a later date. With the re-wearing of Month of Uniforms, I am setting the date for the unlocking of memory. Which memories, and their impact, may be revealed over time.

The main audience for Month of Uniforms are any persons who might see me on any level of regularity, who might notice that I’m wearing something other than the typical T-shirt and jeans. The secondary audiences are those people who pick up the subtle and less than subtle differences between the clothes I have made, and clothes that are mass-produced and popular. Art that sits in a gallery or museum is readily viewable, but is only viewable by those who seek it out. The same applies to my public art practices. My artwork does not call out to people to look at it and be engaged, it is there to engage those already looking. I need to only be half exhibitionist and the viewer only needs to be half voyeur for my artwork to exist.

My work is more conceptual in nature, so it is not critical that the viewer be immediately tuned to the presence of the art activity going on. What is important is that the viewer observes an incongruity with what I am doing with what they perceive I should be doing. Then maybe over time they might question the intent or meaning behind what I’m doing, and then after more thought conclude whether or not they should be a participant in this activity. Will they engage me, and ask what I’m doing and why? Will they judge me as not worth their time? Will they go out and perform the same actions? Life is full of first impressions that rely on our pre-existing prejudices and biases to steer our judgment. I cannot expect that my art will be identified as such or processed on the first sitting. I must be diligent in being actively perceived by others until we have developed an understanding of each other’s presence and purpose.

My art practice focuses not so much on me sculpting a thing, but how I am sculpted by the things in my immediate environment. I hope that my activities of exploration might inspire onlookers to explore their own relationship to their current parameters.

— Andrew Thompson, Month of Uniforms 2003

Month of Uniforms Reworn — Friday: At Sam’s Club 02/04/04

I decided to re-wear the clothes from the Month of Uniforms project a year later on the corresponding days. Could the brain tap into memories from a single wearing of a year ago? I had kept all of the scraps and negative cuttings from the original making of the clothes and employed them in the making of coats, hats, and gloves, because Michigan is colder than Missouri. This different methodology of making clothes led to considerably more unique designs than my original series of clothing. This new design approach made the clothes stand-out more to the casual observer.

Clothing is one of the ways that people choose to appear in front of others. There is tension between how we want to see others and how people want to be seen that intrigues me. An individual conscious of the flanuer’s gaze places themselves in the position of an exhibitionist. When these roles are played out, is it true then that “…first impressions are often correct.” [David Byrne, Seen and Not Seen, 1980]

— Excerpt from master’s thesis on re-wearing the clothes a year later

Month of Uniforms Reworn — Saturday: Doing Laundry 12/03/04