Artist Reception: Nancy Childs Exhibition

Artifacts presents a solo exhibition of the works of Nancy Childs, a long-time…and beloved… Lincoln artist and educator. Her prints on handmade paper are textured and layered with rich color and patterns allowing for the “miracles….mystery…. surprises” she discovers in the process. She is intrigued by complexity, and how to bring order out of chaos.

She also pays significant attention to finding little-valued items that are discarded on the streets, parking lots, roadsides, and leftovers from her studio activities. These found items and fragments then affirm interrelated values when she combines and arrangements them into collage formats. The “Artifact” series provokes questions on what is lost and discarded, our “use and discard” culture, and the artist’s own open-ended aesthetic decisions that are not “pre-visioned”.

Through these works Childs offers to viewers the opportunity for reflection, as she herself also needs and values the time to create, to respond, to evolve through the contemplation that elicits questions and her sense of mystery. We can enjoy this journey initiated by the artist’s creative process and determination to express her visual discoveries and implied meanings of value.

Childs holds an MA in Curriculum and Instruction, and her BFA in Art, both from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and she has studied in Rome and Florence Italy. Childs was a leader for art teachers and our community as the Curriculum Specialist for Visual Arts for the Lincoln Public Schools from 1995-2013. She was an “Artist in the Schools/Communities” for the Nebraska Arts Council, teaching her specialty of handmade paper across the state. She has exhibited in solo and invitational shows including “Picture What Women Do”, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; “Cut, Formed, Folded, Pressed: Paper,” Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney.