NICK MAUSS

I'm returning refreshed after a spring break from blogging. After a few weeks spent working on some other projects, traveling, and looking at art, I'm full of ideas and inspiration.

I came across this dress while vintage shopping in Atlanta, and it ended up being the perfect piece to reflect the work of Nick Mauss.

Mauss (b. 1980) is a New York-based artist whose work I first admired at the Compass in Hand exhibition at the MoMA last year.

Each work encompasses multiple elements, including watercolor, acrylic, pastel, and carbon prints, resulting in multilayered collages.

Discussing these works in Art in America, Steve Pulimood wrote, "Colors explode and dissolve free of the restraint of form, flourishing with Kandinsky-like exuberance."

Incorporating images of well-known 19th-century dandies atop marbleized paper and paint, this body of work represents youthful vitality and frivolity.

I've long admired Mauss' subjects--such Victorian dandies as Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire--and their respective influences on art and fashion.

Mauss' current work encompasses an even broader set of media, including video installation, and is represented by 303 Gallery in New York.

I found the marbled print of the dress to be wonderfully reminiscent of the swirling elements of Mauss' works on paper.

I'm wearing a vintage dress from the Clothing Warehouse in Atlanta, Michael Kors wood and lucite platforms, leather Lauren Merkin clutch, and a metal stud cuff from the Met Store.

[Mauss images from moma.org.]