Dress c. 1938

Nancy Crimi made this image of a dress with what looks like watercolor on paper. It’s all soft tones, creams, and grays, with these teeny, tiny lines making up the fabric’s pattern. I imagine Nancy hunched over this, carefully building up the image, color by color, line by line. Did she make this to show off the dress, or did the dress give her a chance to work through something else? Look how the skirt flares out, almost like a bell. All those meticulous lines create a sense of volume, but they also flatten the image. It’s like she’s playing with depth and surface at the same time, almost daring you to see the dress not just as a dress but also as a pattern of shapes and lines. There’s something almost meditative about the process. It makes me think about other artists like Agnes Martin, for instance, who also used repetition to find some kind of harmony. It reminds us that art-making is a way of thinking, feeling, and being in the world, and that the exchange of ideas can carry across time.