What do we love most about Austin? Thats a hard one, yeah we love the parties and the night life. We love the parks and bike lanes too. We love rock climbing on the greenbelt and swimming at Barton springs. But the reason we love all these things are because of the people we share them with, our friends and our families. This city is full of families and not just the atomic kind. Often its not the families we were born with but the ones we choose in life that inspire us, rescue us, and remind us where home is. These are families we spend our time or should spend our time trying our hardest to give back to. Jessica Rue Wilson aka Stitch is the newest member of one those families, and Stitch Productions is how she plans to give back to it.
Stitch comes to us from her home town of Jackson, MS but she spent her more formative years living with musicians and attending UW-Milwaukee were she earned a Bachelors in creative writing. Stitch, a self professed Audiophile, became a regular fixture at Atomic Records in Milwaukee were she is “…pretty sure a student loan or two was attributed to that stores survival.”
Stitch loved Milwaukee, but a flooded job market kept her from being able to find meaningful employment and just 5 months after graduation she was forced to return to Jackson, MS. ”As soon as I moved back I began to suffer from panic attacks and severe migraines.” ”I was miserable most of the time.” Stitch fell in with a creative crowd in Jackson’s Fondren neighborhood and was beginning a career as a Communications and Marketing Coordinator. ”I was moving up in the company fairly quickly, but it was still a constant battle to stay interested in my work.”
A friend from Milwaukee had been urging stitch to Move to Austin. ”I’d been to Austin before and loved the city and people, but wasn’t convinced it was wise to leave my budding career in MS so soon.” A couple of friends from Austin, Steve Paris and Chris Lundberg aka Kinetic Monkey kept working on her, trying to convince her to move to Austin. Were guessing that Chris knew the nail in the Austin coffin would be getting Stitch to attend the Texas Regional Burning Man event; Burning Flipside. He bought her Ticket and paid her camp dues [which she repaid].
Stitch spent the next 3 months driving back and forth from Jackson to Austin a 10+ our journey. She quit her job, sold her furniture and moved in with her new family. She managed to stretch 3k in savings through five months of unemployment, none of which would have been possible without the generosity of her friends. Stitch was inspired by the community and began creating, she found she had a real talent for making costumes (which were guessing is where the nickname came from). “I wanted to show my excitement and enthusiasm for what the burners were inspiring in me.”
With that level of energy and enthusiasm it didnt take long for Stitch to ingrain herself into her new community. It was then she started thinking about effecting change and how she could give back on a larger level. What Stitch said she noticed about the Burn community was how “off the grid” it was, or out of the mainstream. Burn events are often relegated to remote areas far outside of the major city limits, and the smaller events that occur within are usually house parties lovingly thrown together by fellow burners. Stitch hopes to bring these events into the mainstream venues. ”This will hopefully draw out never heard from DJs and fashion designers who will finally have the proper environment to freely express their creativity while doing so in a higher standard of production than I’ve seen at most venues. ” In addition to high production expectations
The premiere show coming up this Friday the 12th and hosted by Prague will be a Clockwork Orange/Moloko Milk Bar theme. The Moloko was the psychadelic milk bar featured in the opening scene of the film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCFeMg26_wk&feature=related
Stitch loves the fashion in this film and felt that A Clockwork Orange theme was a good starting point or example of what it means to be Sub Glamorous.
This event is a variation of what will be a regularly produced event by Stitch Productions called Sub Glamour. ”Sub Glamour will be a convergence of original and rarely heard electronic music and burner fashion. I will hold a quarterly fashion show in place of the middle DJ set wherein local fashion designers can show their wares and bring their art to a wider audience. The idea behind being sub glamourous comes from my experiences in Fondren where my friends and I continually challenged the standard of beauty and what being beautiful and glamourous really looked like.”
“I love this project! And I want it to always be a positive thing in the burn community. Even if it stresses me out to take care of some of the more difficult aspects of event planning, I’m still much happier and feel more successful”
We love projects too, its the reason we started this little website and Jessica’s story inspires us. We hope to keep looking for ways we can give back to our community, to the people who make Austin our home. One way we can all do that is by showing our support for our families projects, attend their shows, buy their art or just encourage them to do what they do, and be who they are. It all sounds pretty corny, I know, but there are people amongst us with big ideas, dreams and aspirations who just need the right environment to be successful. It gives us a great sense of pride to be a part of a community that can provide that environment. Welcome Home Stitch Productions.
Party Info:
A brief interview with DJ Frank Vida.
Read the Full Jessica Rue Wilson Interview Here.
