SHAPING THE FEMALE FORM
Recently exhibited in New York City's Garment District (October 2023 - January 2024) 

A series in graphite, acrylic, oil and pastel on a historical range of women's dress, primarily undergarments.  Women championed certain styles or wore them because the times and society demanded it.  Some garments were designed for comfort and freedom, some for enhancing or exaggerating the body to appeal to the male gaze.  I find beauty in the structure and design even as I am repelled by some of it; it was just as often women's work to produce these objects as to wear them.  I began with the shirtwaists, in homage to the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: the women who perished were producing garments for modern life.  From there I moved back and forth in time, riffing on the exaggerated panniers of the 1700s and bustles that followed, through to the pointy brassieres and boned girdles of the 1950s.