Nancy Cohen

Nancy Cohen "Rose Lines" 2024 paper pulp, kozo fiber and handmade paper

2024

Line is the operative formal element in the work shown here, but there are many other lines in play. Pieces walk a line between drawings that might be tapestries or sculptures or pa...

Nancy Cohen Barrier, 2023 paper pulp and handmade paper 54.5 x 38 in. (coh120)

Nancy Genn, American (b. 1929) Marshfield 25 (1977) Handmade paper collage Hand signed verso Dimensions: 20 1/8 x 22 inches Utilizing what is now known as the 'Genn Method,' Nancy Genn created three-dimensional abstract works of handmade paper, gaining international recognition in the 1970s Nancy Genn is an American artist living and working in Berkeley, California known for works in a variety of media, including paintings, bronze sculpture, printmaking, and handmade paper rooted in the Japanese washi paper making tradition. Her work explores geometric abstraction, non-objective form, and calligraphic mark making, and features light, landscape, water, and architecture motifs. She is influenced by her extensive travels, and Asian craft, aesthetics and spiritual traditions. Nancy Genn was born in 1929 in San Francisco, California. She recognized early that she would pursue a career as an artist. Her mother, Ruth Wetmore Thompson Whitehouse, was a painter and UC Berkeley alumna who played a leadership role in the San Francisco Women Artists organization. Genn studied at San Francisco Art Institute (then California School of Fine Arts) with painter Hassel Smith, and at the Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley (1948–49) with Professors Margaret Peterson and John Haley, and fellow students Sam Francis and Sonya Rapoport. In 1949 she married Vernon “Tom” Genn, an engineer raised in Japan, with whom she had three children. Career Genn's first noted solo exhibition was in 1955 at Gump's Gallery in San Francisco. She received international recognition through her inclusion in French art critic Michel Tapié’s seminal text Morphologie Autre (1960), which cited her as one of the most important exponents of post-war informal art. In 1961, Genn began creating bronze sculptures using the lost-wax casting method. Influenced by noted sculptor and family friend Claire Falkenstein, who used open-formed structures in her work, Genn cast forms woven from long grape vine cuttings, and produced vessels, fountains, fire screens, a menorah, a lectern, and, notably, the Cowell Fountain (1966) at UC Santa Cruz. In 1963 her sculptural work was exhibited with Berkeley artists Peter Voulkos and Harold Paris in the influential exhibition Creative Casting curated by Paul J. Smith at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York. Genn was one of the first American artists to express herself through handmade paper, first receiving wide recognition via exhibitions at Susan Caldwell Gallery, New York, beginning in 1977, and in traveling exhibitions with Robert Rauschenberg and Sam Francis. In 1978-1979, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and Japan Creative Arts Fellowship, she studied papermaking in Japan, visiting local paper craftspeople, working in Shikenjo studio in Saitama Prefecture, and exhibiting her work in Tokyo. She also learned techniques from Donald Farnsworth...

Japanese Botany, Original Contemporary Abstract Mixed Media Textile Wall Hanging Artist Commentary: INSPIRED IN JAPANESE AESTHETICS Keywords: Abstract, Nature, patterns, circles, ovals, white Artist Biography: My artwork is engaged to nature and its recurrent patterns and rhythms. I use them as a base in order to create my compositions. I´m attracted to repetitive sequences, combining separate elements to form a cohesive group. It isn’t a strict conceptual idea of repetition on itself; my work doesn’t seek to impose an order or structure, but rather to enjoy the rhythm of repetition. Silk and paper have the softness and malleability that I need in order to create my desired forms, shapes and even shadows. The process to carry out my work is thorough and methodical. I choose as materials small and simple elements; such as feathers made out of paper and silk and then organized in a precise order. This allows me to build a group of entities that end up being the final artwork. My goal is to create projects that inspire, connect and touch people emotionally, taking the viewer on a journey through different ethereal, botanical and peaceful landscapes. I was Born in Santiago, Chile in 1973. I grew up surrounded by Chilean...