Where Fashion Meets It's Artistic Match

Something more consequential seems to be happening in Mara Held’s paintings, which also invoke the way garments are made. The artist draws the patterns for sleeves and bodices, or basic units of clothing design, on linen, which she then covers with layers of encaustic — pigment mixed with melted wax. Here again the sum of fashion and art is greater than its individual parts, for we sense something unfathomable beyond what we see.