NANCY KIEFER
Bio--Statement--Exhibitions--
Publications
This is a picture of me at Woolworth’s photo booth, Rock Island, Illinois.
I lived 8 blocks from the Mississippi River. I rode a Schwinn everywhere and hung upside down from a trapeze my dad made.
The most exciting thing in my life was the Royal American Shows Carnival. It came every June, pitching tents and setting up the rides on the Davenport, Iowa Levee. I was introduced to some of the greatest sideshows on Midwest earth. I saw a giantess on a chaise lounge with her tiny husband as attendant. Once, when I was thirteen, a famous carnival performer named Popeye actually popped his eyes out at me. He said, “This is for you, girlie.”
Maybe I grew a kind of compassion from this that shows up in the paintings.
(http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/550278935cjuzEa)
Mrs. Walters
At Lincoln Elementary School, we had Mrs. Walters. She was the art and music teacher. She was bigger than the school, more important than the world. When she bellowed out a song, the shades in the classroom rolled up. She always said “Make art big, bold and uneven.” She is how I discovered myself.
The Hauberg Civic Center was the cultural mecca of my kid-hood. I loved playing in the woods and acting in the theater. I was in Two Merchants of Venice when I was ten. Perhaps I was one of the merchants, I can’t remember — But I wore banana curls and got to be in a sword fight.
There were houses in Illinois that hid slaves during the years of the Underground Railroad. I loved drawing Honest Abe’s stove-pipe hat year after year after year.
The Rock Island County Library had marble floors that went click click click when you walked on them. That is where I discovered poetry.
When I was a teen-ager all I cared about was soul music. I loved anything from Memphis, Atlanta, Philly, or Detroit. I pretended I could sing like Aretha Franklin using a hairbrush as a microphone.
All this stuff comes out in the paintings in some form.
Exhibitions
If you want to read and see the 2007 Tarpaulin Sky issue with the likes of Rebecca Brown, Chris Abani, John Yau, Douglas A. Martin, Brian Evenson, Joanna Howard, Amy Halloran, Laird Hunt, Frances McCue, Camille Dungy, Selah Saterstrom, Suzanne Oliver, and Lucy Corrin, go to www.tarpaulinsky.com/Spring07/index.html It is an interactive site, so just click on each image or name.
EXHIBITIONS
The World Through Story
Group Exhibit 2011
Ida Culver House
Seattle, WA
10 x 10 x 10
Mighty Tieton Exhibition
2010
Centro de las Artes San Augustin, Etla, Oaxaco
10 anos Del Taller Arte Papel Oaxaca: Exposicion de Papalotes (Ten Year Celebration of the Art Paper Workshop of St. Augustin, Etla Oaxaca)
Group exhibiton invitation Francisco Toledo
October 2008
Artist and Kite-Maker: Nancy Kiefer and Greg Kono
Traveling Exhibition of Kites through the Drachen Foundation — Montana; Maui; Oaxaca, Mexico — 2008-2009
What Does Compassion Look Like? (group show)
Friesen Gallery — Seattle, WA — 2008
Permanent collection, Seattle University Religious Studies Program
Artist-in-Residence Centrum Writer’s Workshop (with Suzanne Lamon)
Fort Worden, WA — 2007
Stream: New Paintings
Gallery 110 — Seattle — 2005
Woman in Ill-Fitting Wig exhibit and book launch
Richard Hugo House — Seattle — 2005
Body Politics (juried exhibition)
Gallery 110 — Seattle — 2004
Prayers to Take the Husk Off Light
Gallery 110 — Seattle — 2003
Group Show
Gallery 110 — Seattle — 2003
The Convenience Show Group invitational
Pound Gallery — Seattle — 2002
To Danceland and Back Again
Curated by Susan Platt
Pioneer Square Gallery — Seattle — 2001
Story in Search of an Audience
Curated by Greg Bell
Kittredge Gallery, UPS — Tacoma — 2000
Recent Work by Nancy Kiefer
Hot Flash of America — Spokane — 1998
This is not a Book: Art of the Book (group show)
Seattle — 1997
Artist-in-Residence Group Show
The Children’s Museum — Seattle — 1996
Dreams and Visions
Seattle Art Museum Rental/Sales Gallery — 1995
Agents of Change: New Views by Northwest Women
Seattle Trade Center — 1995
Kirkland Annual
Kirkland Fine Arts Center — Kirkland, WA — 1994
Artist-in-Residence Exhibit
Pratt Fine Arts Center — Seattle — 1994
Nancy Kiefer and Liza Von Rofensteil
Spokane Falls Community College — 1993
Celebrations
Seattle Art Museum Rental/Sales Gallery — 1993
About Face
Tacoma Art Museum — 1993
Carnival Art
Seattle Art Museum Rental/Sales Gallery — 1992
Ceremonies and Celebrations
Security Pacific Gallery — Seattle — 1992
Artist Trust Grant Recipient Exhibition
Traveling Exhibit — 1992-1994
Self Portrait
Bumbershoot — Seattle — 1991
In and Out of the Palouse
Pritchard Gallery, University of Idaho — Moscow, ID — 1991
The History of Cheerleading
Washington State University Gallery — Pullman, WA — 1990
100 Years of Washington Art: New Perspectives
Tacoma Art Museum — Tacoma, WA — 1989
Us Trying to Pray
Oregon Art Institute, Pacific Northwest College of Art — Portland, OR — 1987
Northwest Juried Art
Cheney Cowles Memorial Museum — Spokane, WA — 1986
Selected Publications
Books
Paintings by Nancy Kiefer, text by Rebecca Brown
Book published through Brenamen Jaech Foundation Grant in conjunction with Richard Hugo House — 2005
Book Citation: Modernism and Beyond: Women Artists of the Pacific Northwest, p. 157
Edited by Laura Brunsman and Ruth Askey — Midmarch Arts Press — 1993
Magazines & Newspapers
DRACHENAUSSTELLUNG Fall 2009
Kite Magazine
www.sport-und-design-drachen.de
Vergessene Welt
Drachenbaukunst
in Oaxaca, Mexiko
German
Photos and Text by Rainier Hoffman
“New Work in Response to Images by Nancy Kiefer”
Tarpaulin Sky — Spring/Summer 2007 — Guest Edited by Rebecca Brown and Juliana Spallholz
http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Spring07/index.html
“Interview with Nancy Kiefer and Rebecca Brown”
Tarpaulin Sky — April/May 2005 — Excerpts from Woman in Ill-Fitting Wig by Nancy Kiefer and Rebecca Brown
“Brush and Pen: Area author’s new work offers lyrical replies to airy imager”
The Metro Times (Detroit, MI) — March 27, 2005 — Lynn Crawford
“Hot Ticket” (for Woman in Ill-Fitting Wig book launch and exhibit at Hugo House)
Seattle Times — March 3, 2005
“Drawn in the Dark”
The Stranger — March 3, 2005 — Nate Lippens
“Excerpts from Woman in Ill-Fitting Wig”
Cranky Literary Journal — Issue #4, January 2005
"Artist's Out-of-Sync Portraits are Unnerving"
The Seattle Times — June 13, 2003 — Sheila Farr
Seattle Weekly — June 4, 2003 — David Stoesz
“Women’s Art: Between Selling and Changing”
Reflex Magazine — February/March 1995 — C. Gillis
“Agents of Change”
The Stranger — January/February 1995 — G. Burkman
“100 Years of Washington Art”
Northwest Gallery Art Magazine — March/April 1990 — Keneta D. Anderson
EDUCATION
M.F.A
Painting and drawing
Washington State University
B.A. Liberal Arts (Creative Writing and Art)
Washington State University WSU
STATEMENT
I Iove the immediacy in painting. Energy is transmitted from the hand and wrist. Imagine it! Life, electricity, DNA pouring out of humans onto a surface.
I thought I was going to be a poet early on but I started drawing pictures during poetry workshops instead. In that curious way life turns around on itself, after some twenty years of painting, I find myself writing while I am in my studio. It is interesting to see what kind of collusion these two endeavors create.
I began seriously dreaming in color about 30 years ago. Maybe it was the California hills near Berkeley, the misty greens of Portland, or the wheat colors and undulating hills of the Palouse that lead me to oil paint. In Eastern Washington the landscape seemed eerily lunar, yet erotic, and it called me to create figures just so they could wander in a background of those hills which were so large and curving, resembling the hips of women.
Since moving to Seattle, I’ve become intrigued with washes and the variations of tones. I like to use India ink on the delicate yet strong Japanese papers. In contrast, I’ve noticed that saturated color stands out boldly in misty places. The rain and the dark have certain secrets I want to know. Darkness like a garden at night but also darkness like a blood-red tulip rising from the wet dirt.
My work is not necessarily biographical or narrative. I use color and line to express emotion and gesture, spiritual view, world view, myopic view, politics, love, strife. Sometimes I am just walking backwards from a formal investigation on canvas. Other days there IS a story in there, but half of it is obscured by color. Viewers are intelligent enough to draw their own conclusions. Consider it an invitation.
When I paint, images emerge that are strange, tender, fantastical, coy, beautiful, cute, or idiotic. If they work formally, they start to live in the art piece.
I think it was Dante who might have written, “Art is the grandchild of God.” I can dig that. Yes, I believe.
Nancy Kiefer
Diva Creativa