NANCY KIEFER Bio
www.tarpaulinsky.com/Spring07/Editors_Notes.html
Diva Creativa
A picture of me at the Woolworth 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 me.
The most exciting thing in my life in those days was the Royal American Shows Carnival. (http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/550278935cjuzEa)
It came every June and pitched its tents on the Davenport Iowa Levee. I was introduced to some of the greatest sideshows on Iowa earth. I met a giantess and a woman without a head. I grew a kind of compassion from meeting them after a lot of gawking.
At Lincoln School, I had an amazing art and music teacher. Her name was Mrs. Walters. 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.” That’s how she sang.
The Hauberg Civic Center was the cultural mecca of my kid hood. I loved playing in the woods there and I acted in the play Two Merchants of Venice when I was ten. Perhaps I was one of the merchants, I can’t remember — only that 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.
The Rock Island County Library was the most beautiful building on earth. 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, Philly or Detroit I pretended I could sing like Aretha Franklin using a hairbrush as a microphone.
So who is DIVA CREATIVA? She’s the spiritual cousin of TIA CREATIVA who is the auntie of VIA CREATIVA. We are all cousins in the spiritual sense. Art is the grandchild of God, I’ve heard from Dante. I believe.
All this comes out in the paintings in some form.
Nancy Kiefer
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.
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
Statement:
Art is the grandchild of God
I love the immediacy in painting and drawing — energy transmitted through strokes coming from the hand and wrist. Imagine it! — Life, electricity, DNA pouring out of humans onto a surface. What a joy!
I’ve been making art for a long time now. I began with writing poetry (my first love) and even then enjoyed drawing pictures during poetry workshops. I primarily paint but now I’ve returned to writing poems as well. A book of poems for children, CAKE UNDER MOONLIGHT is due out in 2010.
I began seriously dreaming in color in the late 1970’s while living in Berkeley. After moving to Pullman, Washington, the ochres and greens of the Palouse area and the simple yet dramatic landscape moved me. I wanted to create figures for that landscape. After a year of abysmally musky looking paintings, I sort of blossomed into oils and began to take on the saturated palette I use now.
Since moving to Seattle I’ve been intrigued with the use of Indian Ink and brush — particularly washes on Japanese paper. The rain and dark has certain secrets I want to get near. Dark like the garden at midnight but also the mystery of tulips rising. Certain photographers move me this way as well — particularly Brasaii, Bruce Davidson, Bellocq and Nicholas Nixon.
I’ve had incredible luck collaborating with writers — particularly author Rebecca Brown. We worked together on the book Woman in Ill-Fitting Wig and through Tarpaulin Sky. Check out the collaborations. Currently working with Ali Fujino and Greg Kono on kites has been a high-flying joy if you get my drift.
My work it is not necessarily biographical or even narrative. I use color and/or line to express emotion and energy. Sometimes there is a story in there, sometimes not. Images come to the surface that are fantastical, bizarre, beautiful or even idiotic. If they formally work and the gesture feels honest, so be it.