Poem by Nancy Willard; seven drypoint etchings by Michele Burgess on Whatman and Rives papers. Housed in a painting fragment. Silk enclosure with bone clasps. 10 1/8” x 7 5/8”. Edition of 20. 2001. $2,400. (Out of print.)

Veerle Thielemans, Curator, Museé d’ Art Américain: “Michele Burgess draws vulnerable bodies. Their awkward and introverted poses deliberately run counter to the traditional representation of the human body, which is ruled by a canonical ideal of Beauty. In Swimming Lessons, she presents us with the body of a clumsy child who calls into question the realism of the supreme bathers represented by the American painter Thomas Eakins at the end of the nineteenth century.”