Lucine Kaplan Discusses Her Unique Pantyhose Portraits

Interview by Miles McKeller-Smith
Photography by Chakhie Snaps
July 18, 2024

Lucine Kaplan moves to the beat of her own drum.  After fate landed her in a rigorous AP Art class, she had the chance to experiment with pantyhose as an art medium. Now, Lucine has her own, unique style; using pantyhose to create incredible portraits that have left audiences around the world in awe. We had the chance to speak with Lucine about her beginnings, how she started making portraits with pantyhose, and her upcoming solo exhibit, Sheer Joy

Let’s start with a general introduction for our audience.

My name is Lucine. I am based just north of Philadelphia, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, as far east of Pennsylvania as you could possibly be. So not the Lancaster side, the other side.  I moved around quite a bit and actually moved back to Bucks County about two years ago. Since I moved back home, I have actually been finding a lot of success, which has been cool. For so many years of my life, just being from Denver, Australia, LA, and wherever it feels really nice to actually be able to say I’m from Bucks County.

Now I’m here back in Bucks County. I’m a pantyhose artist; I draw with pantyhose. As far as I know, I’m the only artist in the world who draws it with this medium in this particular way. My work is two-dimensional mixed media. I’ve won a bunch of awards since I founded the medium. I founded this medium in 2013 and I’ve been in over 100 exhibitions over the past decade or so.

Being selected to exhibit over 100 times is incredible. Why did you decide to move back to Buck County?

Originally, I moved home for an emergency. And then my artwork started clicking. I even moved back in with my parents, and I realized how nice it is to be with my family. When I was 18, I left as soon as I possibly could. I was like, “Get me out of here; I need to be outside of this bubble of the suburbs.” And then when I moved back, it was like, “I like this bubble now.” A gallery opened up in the town, which is walkable from my parents’ house. So I became an artist of residence there.

It’s just an amazing community that’s being fostered over there in the arts, and what the owner and curators are working on is really special to be a part of. I’m over there a couple times a week doing my own work, helping out with the gallery there, and doing what I can for the larger arts community here. Once that particularly fell into place with ARTWRKD Gallery, I was like, “I don’t need to go anywhere.” I picked my stuff back up from LA in the storage unit, and I brought it all back home. And it’s been great.

I love when people do that. Everyone’s story is different, but I think a lot of artists find inspiration when they return to their hometown.

Thank you. It’s been big. I had a solo show last year. It’s easy for me to go into New York if I want to, and I was able to have a residency there. When I moved back to Philadelphia, it was right here too. So it’s like, there are things that are accessible, but the most success that I found was right here in my hometown.

For the first time, I think I realized, as an artist, you don’t have to go to the big cities; I don’t have to go anywhere. I also realized that there was a certain point in my career when I was actually leaving Denver to move to LA, and I’m like, I was able to really conquer Denver. I know everyone in Denver that I’ve utilized everything, all the tools that I have. Knowing everybody, I’ve leveraged everything that I can for my career. So if I can do that here, then my thought was, well, then I’ll do that in LA. I actually had a business when I was moving out there at the time. But once, I realized, like, if I am actually able to intentionally conquer one space at a time. Instead of spreading myself too thin, that’s where I’ll find success.

So as I was actually realizing this within myself, I saw an interview by some choreographer who’s been doing really well. She said, you have to be able to go back to your hometown as a creative and conquer your hometown. Creatively speaking, if you can’t do that, you can’t do that anywhere. That actually gave me a lot of motivation to connect those dots and realize that I know I can do that in bigger cities. If I can do it here in my hometown, then I really know I can do it anywhere. 

Talk to us a bit about how you came across the pantyhose medium.

I was in high school, right up the street from where I am now at Council Rock High School North. And I was in the AP Art class; I had to actually push myself into that class. I’m so glad that I did because the teacher who I had there gave us these materials, and basically told us to figure it out. She gave us some nylon, some velcro, some bases, some pins, and all kinds of things. And she’s like, “Figure it out.” So that was our assignment. I was the only one who nailed it, so I stuck with it. Since then, my technique has definitely changed to maintain the longevity and durability of the medium itself. But that’s where it came from.

How did you feel the first time you finished one of those pieces?

For context, I had to push myself into this class. I knew I was going to be an artist eventually, but even in high school, I had taken so many different kinds of classes that I wasn’t on track to be in this AP Art class. It took a lot of convincing, and I had to really prove my skills to be able to get into that class. When I was in class, I felt like the outsider because I was a senior at this point, but everyone else had been in these classes together all four years leading up to this one class. Some people were able to take the class twice.

People were amazing; I was blown away. I remember the assignment before this one; a lot completely flopped. And it was so embarrassing. And I had the most to say about impostor syndrome. I was like, I’m really not supposed to be here. I don’t even have enough artwork to put in a portfolio to go to art school; that’s what the class was; essentially, it was about building a portfolio. And I couldn’t get myself together because I was so scattered. And my skills were like, I couldn’t focus on something. So then on that Tuesday, this happened, and I could see in everyone’s eyes, they were like, “She got it.”

So it was a moment I proved myself. Immediately after that there was a due date that my teacher asked me to abide by for a juried art show. And she could have chosen anybody in the class, but she chose me. That was an interesting thing to go through. To be like, “Me, are you sure? You don’t want to do anything with that person over there?” And I won “Best in Show;” I won the first show, and then we did that a couple more times, and I kept winning. It was just major imposter syndrome. So I had to really push through and prove to myself that I really deserved this.

Read the full interview in Issue 4 of crEATe Magazine