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 cataloged drawn variations of female hands, garments, heads, hairstyles, injuries, bindings, weeping figures, quilts, and household objects as inventories of aesthetic possibilities.
Made public for the ï¬rst time in the Gallery 400 exhibition and catalog, are source materials, lists, and drawings that offer a rare opportunity to appreciate Ramberg’s exuberant powers of association and the morphological processes central to her art.
Critical to the concept for the catalog design is a paper stock that can both conceal and reveal (as do the layers of garments in the artist’s drawings). The translucency of the paper also provides opportunity to demonstrate the complexity of Ramberg’s methodology where 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 that include comic book imagery, advertisements, scientific diagrams and medical illustrations along with the artist’s photographs of mannequins, shoes, knots, hairdos, wigs, quilts, puppets, neon signs, and circus posters. The inexpensive and lightweight materials of the catalog are designed to evoke the qualities of a sketchbook and invite the reader to experience Ramberg’s rich imagination and complex creative process.
The design of Christina Ramberg Drawings was awarded by ACD 100, AIGA 50 Books, Art Directors Club, Chicago Book Clinic, Communication Arts, Print Magazine, STEP 100, and the Type Directors Club.
