NANCY AZARA

Artist Statement

My work is carved, assembled and painted wood often gilded with gold and silver leaf and encaustic as well as mixed media collages. The mixed media collages, mylar, paper, paint and sometimes wood chips, are about time in relation to memory and personal history. Curator, critic Leonie Bradbury describes them as mixed media collage drawings seamlessly combining a contemporary printmaker’s aesthetic with organic mark making.

I have been carving sculpture in wood for a long time. It has felt like a good “fit” for me as I have always admired trees and I often, even as a child, felt that they held a metaphor for my experience of life. Most recently my work has been about the cycle of time, about the death of my mother, about the birth of my granddaughter, and my own aging.

Solo Exhibitions: VOTIVES: Sculptures, Nancy Azara, Carter Burden Gallery, New York, NY (2022); High Chair and Other Works, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2021); Group: A Legacy of Making: 21 Contemporary Italian American Artists, curated by Joanne Mattera and Joseph Sciorra, Calandra Institute, New York, NY (2023); Sandstone Steps Project, travelling artist book exhibition, Scotland (2023); The Brodsky Center at Rutgers University: Three Decades, 1986-2017, Zimmerli Art Museum New Brunswick, NJ (2023); The Difference We’ve Made: Featuring New Work by Trailblazing Women Artists of the 70s, curated by Cynthia Mailman Vernita Nemec, Susan Grabel, Carter Burden Gallery, New York, NY (2022); A Sense of Place, curated by Doug I. Sheer, Kleinert/James Center for the Arts, Woodstock, NY (2022); Votives: Sculptures, Nancy Azara, a monograph of the work of contemporary sculptor and feminist artist Nancy Azara. The book includes three essays delving into the social, political, economic and feminist perspectives of Azara’s work. (Published 2022).

Earlier Notable Exhibitions: Of leaves and vines . . . A shifting braid of lines . . . at SACI Gallery in Florence, Italy (2016). How American Women Artists Invented Post-Modernism, traveling Rutgers’ University exhibition (2006) and NANCY AZARA featured sculptor at the SANYI Museum, exhibition in Taiwan (2008); Scripps College in Claremont, CA and Asya Geisberg Gallery in Chelsea, NY (2013).

www.nancyazara.com

CV

Past Solo Exhibitions:
High Chair and Other Works, 2021 Tuscan Spring, 2016
Spirit House Of The Mother, 1995

Past Group Exhibitions:
Wish You Were Here, 2016
Wish you were here, 2015 11 At A.I.R., 1996 Works on Paper, 1995