Dress c. 1937

Nancy Crimi sketched this dress with watercolor and graphite. I love the idea of making a dress like this – thinking about its construction, how it would hang, how people would see it. The roses and foliage repeat, swirling around the ivory surface, with a second sketch of the design sketched in outline. The artist uses delicate marks and shading to bring to life the texture of the fabric, its folds and contours. I can imagine her carefully building up the pattern and ornament, thinking through the relationship between the dress and the body it would adorn. This piece is like a conversation between design, representation, and the sheer joy of mark-making.