BIOGRAPHY

“I was born and raised in the Chicago area and escaped what I anticipated would be a confining future to the vast open space of Colorado”. Following studies at The University of Illinois - Champaign/Urbana in ceramics, Nancy Lovendahl has expanded to making work for both inside and outside environments in ceramic, stone, metal and mixed media exploring issues of gender, social division and perception. Her artwork can be found in private & public collections and museums such as The Smithsonian Institution in Wash., DC, The Keramikmuseum, in Westerwald, Germany and The National Gallery in Tbilisi, Georgia. She has won numerous monumental Art in Public Places awards nationally in cities such as Dallas and Denver. Nancy teaches and lectures in institutions such as The Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, China, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass Village,CO and Nebraska Wesleyan University. She exhibits internationally and nationally with recent solo exhibitions at The Red Gate Gallery Residency in Beijing, The Colorado Springs Fine Art Center and Michael Warren Contemporary, Denver.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work comes out of and is wrought from the earth.  The land is not an inspiration, but a mentor.  These sculptures are of this time and place yet steeped in the sediment of history.  This sense of place in my work, firmly rooted but also fluid and transient, resonates with a multitude of ideas.  Illusions of stability and instability, safety and danger, stasis and catalyst and above all, transformation, all come into play.  Like the contours of the natural landscape, that in the shifting light of dawn or dusk seem to take on... dissolve into or morph into primal forms, so do the latent metaphors elicited by the stone of my sculptures.  Their abstract imagery dissolves and coalesces into a samovar, an ancient trail marker or other anthropomorphic forms.  We enter into the landscape environments and discover that our assumptions of what we think we see or know, are tenuous, or fleeting, or not at all what they seem. 

Instagram: @nancylovendahl