Born in New York City in 1955, I have spent much of my life mining whimsical, beautiful and often controversial subjects. As an artist, author and musician, I’ve been traversing the worlds of both spirit and mundane. As a visual artist using sequins, beads and found objects I try to fill empty space with beautiful expressions of these two worlds.
I adore materials, playing with them, making them work hard and showing me how far I can push before they push back. Building with color, pattern, form, and substrates, all while communing with spiritual energies and entities, keep me searching through my artistic celestial garden!
I started in music. I only wanted to do ‘real’ music - rootsy, soulful and elemental. I wanted to get to the core of what music is, in the way it lifts the spirit from the inside. Music took me on the road.
I went ‘off road’ to search for the ‘yard shows’ done by artists who would never think of themselves as ‘Artists’. The art was so much a part of them that they just couldn’t contain it. They WERE art, and they were everywhere; in roadside shrines commemorating a loved one’s passing, in hand painted signs that warned of our ultimate destination as Hell if we didn’t follow the rules, in the singular vision of a woman who knows how to make a pie that’ll make you weep.
Then I started using my hands instead of my voice. Visual art gave me a more solitary way to explore how to surround myself in physical beauty and meaning. Trial and Error was my alma mater. I played with all sorts of materials while creating shrines big and small. I ‘did’ cars (embellishing 9 over the years), cremation urns, taxidermy animal forms, etc.
For the last 24 years I have traveled to Haiti every year to study and work with artists and spiritual mentors. Much of the art work I was doing previous to my introduction to Haiti’s arts and culture had an extraordinary link to this challenging place. Once I made my first trip, I was overwhelmed with what I learned. So many thoughts about physical home, one’s spiritual ‘home’, how one ‘gets by’, what one must risk during the creative process, and what IS the creative process shifted.
To see more of Nancy's amazing work visit:
www.nancyjosephsonart.com
www.facebook.com/nancy.josephson.9
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