Dress c. 1938

Nancy Crimi made this watercolor, 'Dress', on paper. Imagine Crimi, hunched over this dress, meticulously marking each spot, each gather, each fold. It's almost reverential, how carefully she's rendered this garment. I can practically feel the give of the fabric, and the delicate way she models the subtle volume of the skirt. What does it mean to copy a dress so faithfully? To isolate it like this? She might've been thinking about the hands that made it, the body it adorned, the life it lived. It reminds me a bit of Fairfield Porter, with that same loving attention to the everyday, the domestic. And like a lot of folk art, there's a kind of quiet poetry here. I like to think of Crimi and Porter in conversation, across time, drawn to the humble beauty of the world around them. Maybe art isn't about grand statements, but about noticing, about honoring, about really seeing.