Kari Love

Practice & background

Brooklyn-based Kari Setsuko Love works across costumes, puppetry, sculpture and technical fabrication. How bodies move, and how objects support that movement, connects her collaborative projects.

At Final Frontier Design, her work included spacesuit patternmaking, fabrication and aerospace prototypes. Her portfolio documents the FFD 3G spacesuit alongside gloves, shoulder-and-arm structures and other wearables developed through NASA research contracts.

She co-authored Make: Soft Robotics, introducing the field through hands-on projects with accompanying digital files. Robots Wearing Clothes extends this thinking into interaction design, considering how clothing changes robots’ uses, adaptability and interactions with people.

Her stage and screen work includes Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Sesame Street and puppetry. Her Spider-Man costume entered the Smithsonian collection. Fitting, stitching and shaping materials connect these theatrical experiences to engineering contexts.

In her conversation with Celine, Kari describes her changing career as a series of responses to interesting problems. She discusses wearable projection made with a team led by Andrea Lauer for an opera at the Met Cloisters, synthesizers using electronic waste, and workshops as part of an artistic practice. Her account expands the artist’s work beyond objects sold through galleries to include teaching and collaborative making.

Looking at the work

Look for how patternmaking, stitching and shaping change with context: stage clothing supports performance, wearables respond to a body, and spacesuits face unusual environments. Softness can be a functional property rather than a limitation.