Bag c. 1936

This watercolor of a beaded bag was made by Roberta Elvis, who lived from 1855 to 1995. It's all about close looking. The little pearls and stitched patterns become these fields of marks, a surface of concentrated attention. I love how the beads are all a little different. The artist isn’t trying to trick us into thinking it's the real thing, she is embracing the handmade quality of the artwork by keeping the individual shapes and colors of the beads very distinct from one another. If you look closely at the central rose, you can see the individual beads that make up each petal, and they all seem to have slightly different dimensions. The way Elvis rendered this bag reminds me of some of the paintings of Gustav Klimt, who used flattened space to create an overall decorative effect. But it is also interesting to compare it to the work of contemporary artists who are exploring craft and materiality. It's all connected.