Washington DC–based Betsy Packard earned an MFA in painting from Tulane University on a full fellowship in 1978. While at Tulane she spent a year in Italy where ideas of history, re-use, conservation, and record-keeping began to shape her work. ‘Often, in more than 4 decades of art making,” Packard says of her work “I have returned to subjects of history and journaling through the re-use and transformation of everyday, easily available physical material.”

Clothes is made from the clothing that Packard wore during her year in Italy. The fabric was rolled up and then dipped in acrylic medium to harden, then cross-sectioned, resembling a food-item. Packard often uses clothing in her sculpture to emphasize her recurring theme of the saved object. “I like to use [clothes],” she writes, “because thriftiness is a women’s work tradition, because conservation is good, and because there are embodied history within clothes owned and worn.”

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

• Metamorphoses: Highlights from the Permanent Collection , 7/25/2022 - 12/19/2022

• overall, each Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 5 in. (203.2 x 127 x 127 mm)

This object is a member of the following portfolios: