Story Dresses includes a selection of works from Hamoy’s “Welcome to America” series. Initiated in 1994, this project focuses on women émigrés who are relatively unknown outside their circle of family and friends, but whose bravery in the face of adversity deserves memorialization. Hamoy fabricates dresses for each of these women, piecing together threadbare wedding gowns, skirts, and various undergarments, all of which are stained to imitate an antique patina. Gold lettering on each garment spells out the woman’s first name, her arrival date in the United States, her place of origin, and a brief statement capturing her essence.

In addition, selections from Hamoy’s “Portraits of the Artists as Young Girls” series feature life-sized children’s dresses, each with a sepia-toned photograph of a woman artist taken at age five or six printed on both the front and back. A new installation of dresses, “The Invisible Part of the Children of Israel”, seeks to identify and personify many of the anonymous women in the Bible; women such as “Lot’s wife” are, as Hamoy notes, “given their rightful place in history.”

Carol Hamoy’s recent exhibitions include the Mitzel Museum in Denver, the Futernick Gallery in Miami, the Skirball Museum in Cincinnati, and the Tenement Museum in New York. Collections holding her work include the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the National Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., the Wimberley Library in Boca Raton, Florida, and the FrauenMuseum in Bonn, Germany.