Nancy Legge: Finding the Figure
Nancy Legge: Finding the Figure
Nancy Legge: Finding The Figure Exhibition: January 27 - February 28, 2018 Reception for the Artist: Saturday, February 3, 5:30 - 7:30 pm Front Cover: Magna (Norse - Strong), 2018, 18 x 4 x 4 in, porcelain (detail) Back Cover: Erik (English - Brave Ruler), 2015, 11 x 2 x 1.5 in, porcelain (detail) Essay Š 2018 Donna Seager Photo Credit: Charles Kennard Base Fabrication: Michael Leach Glass Fabrication: Audrey Wilson Stones of Callanish Photograph: Margie Adam, 2005 Catalog Design: Donna Seager, Seager Gray Gallery Direct all inquiries to: Seager Gray Gallery 108 Throckmorton Ave. Mill Valley, CA 94941 All rights reserved.
Nancy Legge: Finding The Figure
I. Many ideas come to my mind while I am working...I think of myself as being led by unexpected forces. If it isn’t a surprise there is something wrong...sometimes I don’t even know what I am doing...it is approaching the Zen term, Satori. You become aware...I discover art. I don’t create it.” - Isamu Noguchi Listening to Stone
Three years after her last one person exhibition at Seager Gray Gallery, Nancy Legge returns, ever true to her vision and inspiration, but with an increased artistic vocabulary, both in materials and scale. Finding the Figure refers to Legge’s fluid method of working, primarily in porcelain. She considers the clay a collaborator in the process and the creative process a dance where artist and material receive clues from one another and work in concert. “In the porcelain pieces in particular,” she says, “fired or unfired, porcelain is seductive. It has an energy all its own. When rolled paper thin, it is as delicate as silk, ethereal. It has its own voice, its own effortless movement. As long as you ‘listen’ and don’t get in its way. When Jean Arp said that, ‘the essence of a sculpture must enter on tip-toe, as light as animal footprints on snow,’ he could have been talking about porcelain.” The Stones of Callanish, those monolithic ancient stones from the Outer Hebrides in Scotland have been and remain Legge’s primary inspiration and continue to inform her exquisite navigation in that space between abstraction and figuration. From the beginning, she saw the circled monoliths as elusively figurative and she imagined the power and mystery possible by transforming varied rock-like shapes into a suggestion of the human form. The forms are archetypal and primal, clearly related to the earth, and in their materials, both durable and fragile.
The Stones of Callanish Callanish, Isle of Lewis Outer Hebrides Islands, Scotland
In speaking of this new body of work, Legge refers to the “spirit” of each piece and how it shifts as she moves from porcelain to bronze to glass – from the fragility of porcelain to the solidity of bronze and the elusive quality of light available
II. I get down to the very basic forms that I really love...and they are still giving me information.
- Peter Voulkos
in the glass works. In the beautiful clay work, Mio (Japanese, Strong), for instance, Legge delights in the raw purity, “the whiteness� of unglazed porcelain. She plays with the surface of what appears to be a simple garment. That spirit differs from the unpredictable pale and orange tones created by Shino glazes mixed with bone ash as in Taki (Japanese, Waterfall) and Thora (Norse,Thunderous) or in the taller dramatic forms, Cay (Irish, Courageous) and Magna (Norse, Strong). The earthy orange tones mixed with dark charcoal appear primordial - weathered and enduring. From the high fired celadon blue glazes in Cace (Irish, Courageous), Kei (Japanese, Reverent), Nilda (Norse, Fierce Battle Maiden) and Oceana, (Greek, Ocean-loving) to the low fired Japanese raku works – Olev (Old Norse, Ancestor) and Pia (Latin, Devout) the exhibition showcases a lifetime of working in clay and an intimate knowledge of its possibilities. In earlier years, Legge preferred to work on a smaller scale, but she also recognized that many of her forms might translate well on a larger scale. She began to experiment with scaling up smaller work, first in bronze and more recently, kiln cast glass. First, a 3-D scan is made of the smaller figure and a decision is made about the size of the larger piece. A 3D print in plaster is then generated from the scan. The plaster is used to make moulds for her editions of larger pieces. Using the lost wax method, either molten bronze or glass billets are used to fill the moulds. Inspired by Swedish glass artist, Bertil Vallien, Legge has been dreaming of casting her figures in glass for many years. She went to the Washington Glass School near Washington, D.C. and met glass artist Audrey Wilson. An exciting collaboration began as she helped Legge realize that dream. Plaster moulds
III. The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity. - Alberto Giacometti
are filled with chunks of glass called billets along with other materials compatible with glass. Legge particularly likes copper because of the unpredictability of the red flashing that can happen, as in Thyra III. The filled mold is kiln fired and then cooled (annealed) for many hours -- very carefully reducing the temperature to ensure the long term stability of the piece. Considerable cold working, polishing etc. is then required depending on decisions around final surface and desired look of the piece -- but the efforts are well worth the result as in the dramatic and stately Muir III and Muir IV, Legge’s largest glass castings to date. Central to all the work -- clay, bronze and glass -- is fire. Her materials are all elements that can withstand and indeed are formed by exposure to prolonged and intense heat -- a kind of heat that would annihilate other substances. Legge’s compelling and mysterious forms come into being much like her inspiration -- the ancient Precambrian metamorphic rock that formed the Stones of Callanish, their source dating back anywhere from 4.6 billion to 541 million years ago in the hot center of the earth. - Donna Seager, January 2018
Thora (Norse - Thunderous) 2017 13 x 4 x 2 in porcelain
Cay (Irish - Courageous) 2017 20 x 4.5 x 1.5 in porcelain
Eda (Anglo-Saxon - Noble) 2014 20 x 4 x 2 in porcelain
Magna (Norse - Strong)
2018 18 x 4 x 4 in porcelain
Mariko (Japanese - Circle) 2015 20 x 4 x 4 in porcelain
Minn (German - Resolute Protector) 2018 17 x 3.5 x 3.5 in porcelain
Nilda (Norse - Fierce Battle Maiden) 2018 23 x 4.5 x 4 in porcelain
Nori (Japanese - Tradition) 2016 13 x 3 x 3in porcelain
Pilar (Spanish - Pillar) 2018 18 x 5 x 3.5 in porcelain
Oceana (Greek - Ocean Loving)
2018 15 x 6 x 4.5 in porcelain
Olev (Old Norse - Ancestor) 2018 19.5 x 7.5 x 4 in raku-fired porcelain
Pia (Latin - Devout)
2014 17 x 7 x 4 in raku-fired porcelain
Taki (Japanese - Waterfall) 2018 19 x 10 x 5 in porcelain and found iron
Tara II (Gaelic - Rocky Hill)
2017 12.5 x 2.5 x 1.5 in porcelain
Erik (English - Brave Ruler) 2015 11 x 2 x 1.5 in porcelain
Mio (Japanese - Strong) 2017 10.5 x 1.25 x 1.25 in porcelain
Rune (Norse - Secret Lore) 2017 8.5 x 1.75 x 1.25 in porcelain
Gar (Anglo-Saxon - Spear)
2017 9 x 6 x 2 in porcelain, found glass, iron
Mika (Hebrew - Prophet) 2017 9.5 x 3.5 x 3.5 in porcelain, found iron
Cace (Greek - Clarity) 2017 7 x 1 x 1.5 in porcelain
Kei (Japanese - Reverent) 2016 8 x 2 x 2.5 in porcelain, found steel
Bronze and Glass
Petra (Scottish - Moor Dweller) 2017 31 x 10 x 4 in bronze
Muir II (Scottish - Moor Dweller) 2015 28 x 6 x 6 in bronze
Muir III (Scottish - Moor Dweller) 2015 26 x 5 x 2 in kiln cast glass
Muir IV (Scottish - Moor Dweller) 2015 26.5 x 5 x 2 in kiln cast glass
Thyra III (Greek - One Who Carries a Shield) 2015 13 x 2.5 x 2 in kiln cast glass
Thyra IV (Greek - One Who Carries a Shield) 2015 13 x 2.5 x 2 in kiln cast glass
Thyra (Greek - One Who Carries a Shield) 2015 15 x 3 x 3 bronze
NANCY LEGGE
EDUCATION Pratt Institute, New York, NY The Studio School, New York, NY The National Academy of Design, New York, NY Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, WA, (Kirstie Rea) Mendocino Art Center, CA (Stephen De Staebler; John Toki) SELECTED SOLO AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2018
Seager Gray Gallery, Finding the Figure, Mill Valley, CA
2017
Seager Gray Gallery, Material Matters, Mill Valley, CA Seager Gray Gallery, Powder & Smoke, Mill Valley, CA
2015 Seager Gray Gallery, Personae, Mill Valley, CA Seager Gray Gallery, Art Market, San Francisco, CA Seager Gray Gallery, All in the Family, Mill Valley, CA 2014 2013
Waterfront Artists Coalition, Figuratively Speaking, Brooklyn, NY Susan Street Fine Art, Sculpture Spotlight: Nancy Legge and Carl Dahl, Solano Beach, CA Seager Gray Gallery, Women’s Work, Mill Valley, CA Seager Gray Gallery, Summer Salon, Mill Valley, CA
2012
Seager Gray Gallery, Figures in Abstract, Mill Valley, CA
2011
Pryor Fine Art, Fall Salon, Atlanta, GA Pryor Fine Art, Introductions, Atlanta, GA Donna Seager Gallery, New Work by Gallery Artists, San Rafael, CA Susan Street Fine Art, Forever and Floating, Solano Beach, CA
2010
L.H. Horton Jr. Gallery, San Joaquin Delta College, Visions in Clay, Stockton, CA Donna Seager Gallery, San Francisco Fine Art Fair, San Francisco, CA
2008 2007
Lincoln Arts and Cultural Foundation, Feats of Clay XXI, Lincoln, CA Kellogg University Art Gallery, California State Polytechnic University, Ink and Clay 34, Pomona, CA Kellogg University Art Gallery, California State Polytechnic University, Ink and Clay 33, Pomona, CA
2006
Donna Seager Gallery, Finding the Figure, Waldemar Mitrowski and Nancy Legge, San Rafael, CA
2005 The Branson School Gallery, From Callanish to California, solo exhibition, Ross, CA CFA Gallery, San Francisco International Art Exposition, San Anselmo, CA 2004 PRO ARTS Gallery, New Visions: Introductions ’04, juried by Rene di Rosa and Jack Rasmussen, Oakland, CA CFA Gallery, The Figure in Art: New Explorations of Bay Area Tradition, San Anselmo, CA Sebastopol Center for the Arts, White on White: New Figurative Sculpture, solo exhibition, Sebastopol, CA Sanchez Art Center, elements: 2 painters and a sculptor, Pacifica, CA 2003
Tierra Solida, Clearly Black & White, Santa Barbara, CA Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Annual Juried Exhibition, Juror’s Award, Sebastopol, CA Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sculpture, curated by Manuel Neri, Sebastopol, CA
2002 Falkirk Cultural Center, Memorias: El Dia de los Muertos, San Rafael, CA Marin County Civic Center, It Figures: Figurative Work by Eighteen Marin County Artists, San Rafael, CA Falkirk Cultural Center, Falkirk 2002 Marin Artists Exhibition, curated by Claire Carlevaro, San Rafael, CA PUBLICATIONS
Marin Independent Journal, July 6, 2006, The Mystery of Stone and Human Form, Working Artist Profile by Christine Brenneman.
500 Figures in Clay: Ceramic Artists Celebrate the Human Form, Lark Books, 2004.
Artweek, November, 2004, Review of New Visions: Introductions ’04, Juried Exhibition of California Artists.
Ceramics Monthly, Work featured in Upfront, February, 2003.
Glass is associated with both chaos and form, randomness and precision, spirit and matter.
- The Book of Symbols Reflections on Archetypal Images
Thyra III (Greek - One Who Carries a Shield) 2015 (detail) 13 x 2.5 x 2 in kiln cast glass