Sampler (Coat)

While she currently spends more time with collage, assemblage, and painting, Barbara Brandel began her artistic career working with textiles and art to wear. Sampler (Coat) echoes different twentieth-century cultural and social conversations involving women. The reference to samplers responds to the history of needlework and its associations with women—a sampler emphasized a needleworker’s skills—while the text corresponds to legal and political conversations which continue to this day.