About Daniel Blue

Daniel Blue was born and raised in the mountains of Colorado. Surrounded by forest and rich, red earth, his imagination blossomed as he created entire worlds of his own in which to play. When his family moved to the Northwest at the age of 12, he brought with him all he had created, and simply traded the high desert for the lush green reaches of the Washington rainforest. Continually inspired by nature, and in love with the characters and narratives he created when wrapped by leaves and clouds, Daniel became vastly unsatisfied with others’ ideas of reality; to him, the very concept of calling the natural world “outdoors,” seemed backwards.

A huge paradigm shift occurred for Daniel while in a thrift store in rural Washington at the age of twenty-three. Desiring a comfortable woolen hooded sweatshirt, Daniel found two matching blue wool sweaters and imagined creating a garment from the pieces of the two. It dawned on him that there were hundreds of unused sweaters in this small thrift store alone, and an interesting question began to pick at the reaches of his mind: “What if I were to create my worlds ‘inside’ their world, using what they have already created and are now throwing away?”

The “constructed” and mundane world that he so detested was suddenly revealed to house his worlds, to be an extension of his natural playground, and to be a product of others’ attempts to create their own characters and narratives. The constructs of human society began to intrigue him on a very deep level. He decided to see cities like coral reefs, and highways like spiders’ webs; everything that humans did mimicked the surrounding natural world, and everywhere around him were signs of the personal worlds of other people.

Initially inspired by fashion, Daniel explored the worlds that people created for themselves when they put on clothing. He saw fashion as a way of helping people create their own story and characters, and perhaps deliberately, he saw the idea of a “fashion show” as an opportunity to expose others to the created worlds of his childhood. Using human beings as canvas, Daniel’s elaborate shows combined music, set design, and often modern dance, creating characters and contexts that went far beyond a catwalk into the realm of what can only be described as performance art. Daniel himself calls it simply, “story telling.”

Daniel’s first showing was in Seattle in 2003, shortly after he started making sweaters. He didn’t like how he was perceived, however, and didn’t show again for several years. During this phase, Daniel moved to downtown Tacoma, Washington, and found himself wrapped up into a true story of renewal and the reconsideration of a place that was once discarded. This story is precisely what Daniel was creating by recycling sweaters and he decided that Tacoma was telling his story. He began to explore many different kinds of expression during this time; poetry, dance, painting, theater, and songwriting found themselves woven into what Daniel considers “fashionable” as he collaborated in as many ways as possible with his fellow Tacoma artists.