Kristen Martincic earned her BFA from Bowling Green State University and her MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The artist, who currently lives and works in Columbia, Missouri, grew up swimming in the Great Lakes and public pools of the Cleveland area, and remains fascinated with imagery surrounding water, which now dominates her artistic oeuvre. In this series, swimwear is a surrogate for the female body. Paper bathing suits–each a cross between swimwear and underdress–represent both skin and clothing, presence and absence, protection and exposure. Notions of bodily perception are quite powerful, especially for girls and young women, and for the artist these suits touch on the perception of one’s own body as well as what one perceives from others.
