Title: adDRESSING Women’s Lives  
Artform: Mixed-media dress painting  
Intergenerational or adult workshops 

Goals/Objectives 

To use a dress form in a mixed-media painting to capture the character and personality of the person being celebrated. To focus on a theme or story gleaned from the interview and find creative ways to work with the dress form symbolically. 

Studio Work 

Participants choose and interview a person for their project, aided by JWA resources. (See Artful Disclosure Toolkit Part I.) 

Before working on canvas, students sketch out ideas on scrap paper. Brainstorm different ways to focus in on the personality, character, accomplishments of their subjects and generate ideas for symbolic storytelling. Participants choose an appropriate dress form after showing many examples of dresses and how the “dress” has changed over the decades.  

Materials 

• Large canvasses 24 in x 48 in x 1/4 in profile (N.B., we’ve had success with large canvases, but available wall space may inform the size of the canvases) 
• Assortment of handmade paper, tissue paper, corrugated cardboard, dressmaker paper, patterns, buttons, lace, costume jewelry, fabric samples, gift wrapping paper 
• Items from nature—branches, silk flowers, leaves, images of gardens or landscape 
• Participants collect personal artifacts—copies of photos (black and white), personal documents, any materials that can enhance the theme of the dress form 

Inspiration  

McCall’s dress patterns over the decades can generate ideas on for selecting a dress form to fit the character of the woman. 

Isabelle de Borchgrave’s book Fashioning Art from Paper. 

Kathleen Holmes ceramic dresses  

Cynthia Tom’s paintings  

Dress designers Alexander McQueen and Jean Paul Gautier 

Sheila Myer Miller and Barbara Ellison Rosenblit, Pentimento: Revealing Women’s Stories 

Exhibition 

Participants reflect on their creative process and their finished works and write an artist statement, which should be mounted next to the artwork. Each artist statement should include a title, the names of the subject and the artist, and the artist’s reflection on the process and decisions that inform the work.  

A panel discussion of the honorees is a wonderful opening event for the exhibition, spotlighting otherwise unheralded community members.