Christina Ramberg Drawings

The drawings of Chicago imagist Christina Ramberg center around overtly female themes. On notebook pages and the backs of used index cards, Ramberg repeated images in pencil and ink and catalogued drawn variations of female hands, garments, heads, hairstyles, injuries, bindings, weeping figures, quilts and household objects as inventories of aesthetic possibilities. Critical to the book’s design concept is a paper stock that can both conceal and reveal. The translucency of the paper also provides opportunity to demonstrate the complexity of Ramberg’s methodology, in which drawings were often traced and retraced to explore nuance of emotion in the exact pose of a figure or rendering of a garment. The drawings are produced at actual size along with examples of source materials. The inexpensive and lightweight materials of the catalogue are designed to evoke the qualities of a sketchbook and invite the reader to experience Ramberg’s rich imagination and complex creative process.