Jeffrey Wirsing has been working in the arts all of his career, with dance costuming, with art conservation in Italy, hand printed fabrics, and for the past ten years found a niche for his talents in ...Show More
Jeffrey Wirsing has been working in the arts all of his career, with dance costuming, with art conservation in Italy, hand printed fabrics, and for the past ten years found a niche for his talents in costume aging and dying for film and television. Mr. Wirsing began working in New York was an assistant to the designer Halston, working on costumes for Martha Graham's interpretation of The Rite of Springin 1984, which began a collaboration with the Graham company for over twenty years.Over the past twenty five years he has worked with such choreographers and designers as Robert Wilson, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Ann Reinking, Martha Clarke, Susan Stroman, Donna Karen, Calvin Klein, and Oscar de la Renta. He collaborated with the Noguchi Foundation in Queens , New York, recreating the original carved Noguchi body jewelry for such works as Night Journey, Pheadra, and El Penitente for their 2004 exhibition 'Noguchi/Graham.'Having studied art conservation in Florence, Italy in 1990-91 Mr. Wirsing worked on the restoration of historic furniture and historic villa interiors in Florence and Palermo. In 2000, he was awarded the Eleanor Lambert Fellowship in Objects Conservation, offered by Save Venice, Inc., and spent nine months in Venice working with Venetian restorers on such projects as the restoration of the high altar of San Francesco della Vigna. In 2003, he received a Fulbright Fellowship to return to Venice to study conservation techniques of Venetian decorative stucco.' He has lovingly been restoring and recently completed a wonderful house in the south of France in the historic city of Beaucaire, which he rents in the summers.He has done many special projects for the New York City Opera including working with the designer Frannie Lee, the original designer of the Broadway version of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, to distress and paint costumes for the NYCO revival in 2004. It was the success of this experience and the encouragement of the designer and friends in film, that led him to pursue a career as a textile artist in film. His comprehensive arts background and aesthetic sensibilities have been appreciated and commented upon by such designers as Michael Kaplan, John Dunn, Marina Draghici, Frannie Lee and many others.From 2009 to the present, he has been working for the 1920s hit HBO series Boardwalk Empire, where he found the perfect use of his divers background and skills, in aging and painting the period reproduction costumes, restoring the actual period 1920s costumes and accessories, using his highly developed color sense for dying fabrics, hand printing fabrics, as well as crafting decoration for specialty costumes for the show. Hide
