Spaghetti Western 
Calgary, Alberta
2024—01
Spaghetti Western Masterpiece
By The Andy & Lex Associations+

“They were seemingly enemies, but were actually taking their shot with each other”

Spaghetti Western was an experimental film and photoshoot collaboration with Andy Rubio. Music from “The Good, the bad, and the ugly” (1966) directed by Sergio Leone, music by Ennio Morricone. Track VII: Chase (Inseguimento). It was submitted to the Calgary Stampede casting call.

Spaghetti Western Masterpiece - FULL VIDEO HERE Short Film and Modeling Collaboration with Andy Rubio.

Gender Expression
Calgary, Alberta
2023—03
This is a compilation of photos taken in a photoshoot with Sean Dennie for the Calgary Animated Object Society. It exemplifies my work with clothing composition and costume.


Costume design and Modeling Collaboration

Roadrunner Vintage
Calgary, Alberta
2023—07
This was a 70s Western style photoshoot with Roadrunner Vintage, Calgary, AB. Photos by Shane T. Rex. These images exemplifies my work with clothing composition and costume.


Costume Design and Modeling Collaboration

Holding Permanence
Calgary, Alberta
2023—06
Holding Permanence explores my personal experience of being trans-non-binary and the ways in which aesthetics and adornment have impacted my experience of self on a day-to-day basis. Upon waking, I am introduced to myself again and again, transformed and requiring a new relationship to be built with myself that is unique to that day. Some days masculine, some days feminine, some days totally disconnected and disembodied, and others totally embodied and euphoric. This experience is transient, it is ever-changing, and the expectations to stay static and in one form feel like a million tiles, permanent and yielding to change. Seen here is a ceramic, chain-linked garment; each tile is uniquely made with fingerprints embossing their surfaces. The tiles are stitched together with copper chain links which support the piece when draped over the shoulders and clasped at the sides. Like armour that conceals and protects, it lays heavy on my shoulders unforgiving. The ceramic holds a permanence, an artifact of time, but here, the hard unforgiving material is made malleable, wrapping around, and remaining in dialogue with the body to which it was made for.

Holding Permanence - FULL VIDEO HERE
Mixed Media, Performance, Film

Thought & Memory
Calgary, Alberta
2023—03

Thought & Memory started as a curiosity; the curiosity of what it means to be a collector, what objects we collect and why, and how these objects contribute to our identity. Considering crows: they are creatures that collect objects, scavenge for food, and witness the world from varying vantage points. They are keen listeners and remember deeply; they can form long-lasting memories and bonds from a single experience. Much like the crow, I took to collecting as an embodied practice, exploring the resemblances between my ways and that of the black-coated being.

Ordinarily, we find ourselves in relation to objects and orient ourselves accordingly. They carry stories, have captivating aesthetic qualities, and bring charm or necessary functions to our daily lives; they maintain a sentimentality only known to us and us alone.

Contemplating this, I imagined how crows act as messengers, carrying objects with a sense of curiosity. I created a costume from my collected items to resemble all aspects of the crow. This process brought forth a natural mimicry – an association of the objects to the stories behind them. In the process of assembling, the objects called upon the past inherent to them. The crow mask, seen in three iterations of paper mache, plaster and cloth, and ceramic, recall the aesthetics of masks used during the 17th-century bubonic plague and the first and second World Wars. Further research explored these masks as symbols of death, resonating with my own personal mythologies found in my family of origin; that is, my grandparents' role in supporting death within the Jewish community.


A glint of fine light

The curious collector

Takes its perch then dives


Thought & Memory - FULL VIDEO HERE
Repurposed Leather, Ceramic

Lex Hilderman
Calgary, Alberta