Alumna Nancy Cohen '84 Featured in Solo Show

Alumna Nancy Cohen '84 is featured in a show at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts. Walking a Line, which marks her third solo exhibition at the gallery, will remain on view until March 26, 2022. 

In this show, the artist explores two mediums: organic sculptural forms created from pieces of glass and drawings on hand-made paper using pigmented paper pulp. These two methods of working are closely related. According to the press release, “both the paper pulp and the sculpted glass function as the substrate for drawing lines and both mediums are the physical embodiment of the essential thread that unites all of Cohen’s work–the relation between fragility and strength.”  

Both the sculptures and the two-dimensional works in the exhibition foreground the line. Evoking waterways and the more metaphorical idea of the line between existence and lack thereof, the geometric quality of the work points to a number of contemporary crises, from the COVID-19 pandemic to climate catastrophe. 

Nancy Cohen has been awarded a Pollack Krasner Grant, residencies at The Millay Colony and Yaddo, and multiple Fellowships in Sculpture and Works on Paper from the NJ State Council on the Arts. Cohen’s work is in the permanent collections of the NJ State Museum, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum, Montclair Art Museum, & Yale University Art Museum among others. Recent exhibits include a solo show at the Hunterdon Art Museum, NJ; a permanent installation at the Health Sciences Library, Howard University, Washington DC, and inclusion in Shattered: Contemporary Sculpture in Glass at Frederik Meijer Sculpture Garden, Grand Rapids, MI in 2013. Cohen was born in Queens, NY and lives in Jersey City, NJ.