Nancy Cohen: Hackensack Dreaming by NEW JERSEY CITY UNIVERSITY

NANCY COHEN Hackensack Dreaming

Nancy Cohen Hackensack Dreaming Published by New Jersey City University Galleries, 2039 Kennedy Blvd. Jersey City, NJ 07305. http://njcu.edu/Art_Galleries.aspx Copyright © 2015 by New Jersey City University Galleries, Jersey City, New Jersey. Essays and photographs copyright © 2015 by individual authors. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-4951-7075-1 All works of art by Nancy Cohen. Copyright © 2015 Nancy Cohen. Photography: Edward Fausty All images were shot in the studio of Nancy Cohen. Page 22-23 image was shot in the gallery of NJCU. Catalog Design: Shantal Henry Curator: Midori Yoshimoto, Director, New Jersey City University Galleries Front and back cover image: Nancy Cohen, Hackensack Dreaming, 2014 Glass, handmade paper, rubber, wire, and monofilament. Installaion approximately 20’ x 30’ x 11’ Image courtesy of the artist and Accola Griefen. This catalog was made possible through generous support from Judith Targan and ISE Cultural Foundation.

ISE CULTURAL FOUNDATION 2

NANCY COHEN Hackensack Dreaming V I S U A L A R T S G A L L E RY NEW JERSEY CIT Y UNIVERSIT Y J E R S E Y C I T Y, N E W J E R S E Y S E P T E M B E R 8 – O C T O B E R 21 , 2 0 15

SCHUYKILL CENTER FOR E N V I R O N M E N TA L E D U C AT I O N P H I L A D E L P H I A , P E N N S Y LVA N I A N O V E M B E R 5 – D E C E M B E R 19 , 2 0 15

P O W E R P L A N T G A L L E RY DUKE UNIVERSIT Y DUR HAM , NORTH C AROLINA J A N U A RY 2 2 – M A R C H 5 , 2 0 16

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 3 M I D O R I YO S H I M O T O

FOREWORD 5 C A I T L I N M A R G A R E T K E L LY

EXPLORING NOVEL ECOLOGIES THROUGH HACKENSACK DREAMING

C H R I S T I N A C ATA N E S E

ARTIST STATEMENT ON HACKENSACK DREAMING

NANCY COHEN

MEMORIES OF A FOREST

M I D O R I YO S H I M O T O

GEOPOLITICS AND THE BEAUTIFUL

A N N E S WA RT Z

NJCU INSTALL ATION

AN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTIST’S VIEW OF THE HACKENSACK MEADOWL ANDS

B E T H R AV I T

NANCY COHEN RESUME

M I D O R I YO S H I M O T O

This ambitious exhibition and catalog preparation began about a year ago when I saw the initial installation of Hackensack Dreaming in Nancy Cohen’s studio in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was utterly breathtaking, and immediately made me feel the need to share it with a larger audience. On the spot, I asked Nancy to consider reinstalling it at NJCU in the near future.

generously co-organized by Dr. Nurdan Duzgoren-Aydin, Professor and Chair of Geoscience and Geography Department at NJCU, on October 19. We thank Dr. Aydin for her enthusiasm and collaborative spirit. We are also indebted for the excellent editorial work done by my husband, Gus Tsekenis, and Dr. Joy A. J. Howard, Assistant Professor of English at NJCU.

First, I would like to express my utmost gratitude to Nancy Cohen, for creating this extraordinary artwork and agreeing to premier it locally at NJCU. I would also like to thank the NJCU Gallery Committee members– Winifred McNeill, Hugo Bastidas, Brian Gustafson, and Deborah Jack for their support in choosing the exhibition. NJCU Galleries staff—Daniel Gomez, Victoria and Cecilia Rozario—were indispensable in installing the exhibition and finessing the details.

In addition, we are excited to have this exhibition travel to the Schuykill Center for Environmental Education in Philadelphia and the Power Plant Gallery at Duke University, in Durham. At these respective institutions, we are honored to work with the Director of Environmental Art, Christina Catanese, and the Public Programs Director, Caitlin Margaret Kelly. In this effort of traveling the exhibition and publicizing it, we received invaluable support and advice from Kristen Accola and Kat Griefen of Accola Griefen which has represented the artist.

Once we decided to produce a catalog, we received generous financial support from ISE Cultural Foundation in New York, and the artist and collector, Judith Targan. This beautiful catalog would not be possible without their generosity. Shantal Henry, a senior graphic design student, produced a beautiful design for the catalog and all publicity materials. The photographer, Edward Fausty, who has worked with the artist over the years, has provided stunning images for the catalog. The art historian, Dr. Anne Swartz, Professor of Art History at the Savannah College of Art and Design offered a sizable essay for the catalog, helping to contextualize Cohen’s work from various perspectives. The environmental scientist, Dr. Beth Ravit, contributed a concise and informative essay on the history of The Meadowlands. She is also participating in the roundtable discussion on the “Geology/Ecology and Art of the Meadowlands,”

AC K NOWLE DG M E NTS M I DORI YOS H I MOTO

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

On behalf of Nancy Cohen, we would like to thank Emilia De Rossi for assisting her in her day to day studio production. Dieu Donné, a renowned paper mill in Manhattan collaborated with Cohen to produce paper for this installation, and Amy Jacobs, Education Manager and Studio Collaborator at Dieu Donné was particularly instrumental in making Cohen’s work possible. She is also grateful to the landscape architect and Rutgers professor, Holly Grace Nelson, for introducing us to the environmental scientist, Dr. Beth Ravit who contributed to this catalog. M I D O R I YO S H I M OTO , P H . D. G A L L E RY D I R E C TO R /A S S O C I AT E P RO F E S S O R O F A RT H I S TO RY NEW JERSEY CITY UNIVERSITY

C A I T L I N M A R G A R E T K E L LY

Exploring Nancy Cohen’s large-scale installation Hackensack Dreaming is to enter a world constructed by the human hand through manipulation of raw materials, a parallel not unlike the reality of the Mill Creek Marsh from which Cohen derives her inspiration. In a subtle self-referential manner, the organic ingredients that constitute the hand-made paper and glass – the major components in the installation – are documents of the natural world. “This installation is in no way meant to reproduce the landscape,” Cohen writes in her artist statement. The work is not a documentary of the Mill Creek Marsh, Hackensack River or The Meadowlands. A photograph, film or landscape painting would be more readily accepted as such. However, Hackensack Dreaming is rife with referential essence: translucent glass objects hint at a cedar forest, poking up through the water on an icy New Jersey day, and liquid rubber poured on the paper, suggests, interchangeably, a wet or toxic surface. The installation, instead, serves as a document to the soul of the marsh and its own constructed reality. Both human and non-human forces created the Mill Creek Marsh. Just as Cohen’s installation of blue rectangular paper, made from plant based fibers, evokes a human-made object, similarly in the marsh “upland tree species sit almost side by side with low marsh cord grass,” Beth Ravit writes in her essay found in this catalog, “not an ecological topography that would have formed naturally, but enclosed by concrete, a green oasis none the less.” “I want the viewer to move through Hackensack Dreaming discovering and finding connections – compelled by the beauty and strangeness,” Cohen says. Discovering, likewise, the fragility and strength found in both the installation and natural world by means of physical experience. Through conscious levels of manipulation of materials, Cohen “makes literal the delicate, ephemeral balance” of the marsh. The audience is invited to walk among the work, either by the narrow path at the center of the installation, or by delicately placing one’s feet among the glass sculptures and maneuvering one’s body through the realities of Hackensack Dreaming. As the essays in this catalog explore, Cohen’s installation, birthed through repeated observations of the marsh over two years, bears further witness to the ineffable relationships between document and object, body and experience, meaning and audience, art and author.

FORE WARD CAITLI N MAR AGARET K E LLY

FOREWORD

C A I T L I N M A RG A R E T K E L LY, M FA P U B L I C P RO G R A M S D I R E C TO R P OW E R P L A N T G A L L E RY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y D U R H A M , N O RT H C A RO L I N A

C H R I S T I N A C ATA N E S E In an era of great and systemic environmental change, the idea of the *novel ecosystem is of much discussion among land restoration managers at nature centers like the Schuykill Center for Environmental Education. The concept asserts that a new ecological paradigm is emerging where unique assemblages of biota and environmental conditions arise as the result of human action, intended or not. As essentially new niches given rise by the Anthropocene, novel ecosystems lack natural analogs or predecessors, and, it is argued, are set on a new ecosystem trajectory. The novel ecosystem challenges traditional restoration assumptions and goals of restoring a historical ecosystem, and compels us to broaden our frame of reference to consider the opportunities presented by these new systems. The idea of a novel ecology–a new way to understand the relationships of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings– provides a useful framework for understanding some of the surprising new places we find today in both built and wild environments. Nancy Cohen’s Hackensack Dreaming captures one of these hybrid systems: a meeting of human and natural forces that gives rise to something wholly new, and not necessarily problematic.

Cohen explores what nature means in an urban context and in a changing global environment, using a quiet, nearly forgotten marsh as inspiration and reference point. Tucked between a Walmart, outlet malls, and a wastewater treatment plant, and within view of the New York City skyline, the wetlands of the Hackensack River spoke to Cohen as an “isolated puddle of the organic in a deluge of the human-made” according to the artist’s statement found in this catalog. Remnant stumps of an ancient cedar forest emerge from the water as a reminder of the past life and trajectory of this ecosystem, but the hum of the greater metropolitan area forms a new backdrop. Yet, nature has adapted and carried on despite this disturbance, with plants and birds making unlikely homes and building a new future in this space full of contradictions. Made of glass, handmade paper, rubber, and other materials, Hackensack Dreaming explores fragility, perseverance, and the new realities produced by the human and natural colliding in unexpected ways. In a similar way, the Schuykill Center–founded in 1965 as the nation’s first urban environmental education center–sits on 340-acres of fields and forests in Northwest Philadelphia. Bordered by train tracks adjacent to the Schuykill River, ballfields, reservoirs and water towers, and residences, we serve as a living laboratory to foster appreciation, deepen understanding, and encourage stewardship of the environment. But even in these lush grounds where one can often forget the fact of being within the city limits, human influence is evident.

A stone old wall emerges from the landscape, from the days when our property was farmland; the distant whir of the Schuykill Expressway blends with bird calls and the wind through the trees; invasive plants, recently arrived from faraway places, compete with plants that have evolved in Pennsylvania over thousands of years. Our own unique layering of the wild and the human provides a rich context for artists to explore through our environmental art program. Presenting Cohen’s work in our gallery invites an intriguing dialogue between these two novel places, both caught between paradigms, neither wholly human nor natural. Our world is giving rise to more and more of these novel ecologies, providing opportunities for artists like Cohen to explore contemporary meanings of nature, and transport viewers to a wholly new space and way of thinking. When I first saw Cohen’s work, I was struck by how she was able to creatively convey scientific information through intricate constructed forms. Her work opens the door to a much more intuitive understanding of ecosystem processes, revealing connections that might go unseen. Artists like Cohen present novel ways to ask questions, and help spur our thinking about how we can more cooperatively work with these natural forces for a sustainable future. * Perring Michael P., Rachel J. Standish, Richard J. Hobbs. “Incorporatin novelty and novel ecosystems into restoration planning and practice in the 21st century.” Ecological Processes, 2013, Volume 2, Number 1.

C H R I S T I N A C ATA N E S E

E XPLORI NG NOVE L ECOLOG I E S TH ROUG H HAC K E N SAC K DRE AM I NG C H RI STI NA CATAN E S E

E XPLORING NOVEL ECOLOGIES THROUGH HACKENSACK DRE AMING

D I R E C TO R O F E N V I RO N M E N TA L A RT SCHUYKILL CENTER FOR E N V I RO N M E N TA L E D U C AT I O N

NANCY COHEN

I’ve spent time this last decade following the waterways of New York and New Jersey, finding the contradictions of “nature” in my urban environment endlessly interesting. Getting to the Mill Creek Marsh in the Meadowlands of Secaucus, NJ, I drive through the most congested, confusing and ugliest parts of my state. My friend, the photographer Robin Michals, going on these river journeys with me for her own study of sea level rise, calls this area “the spaghetti.” We park next to Bob’s Discount Furniture warehouse amidst Secaucus’s outlet malls. From the marshes we look out in one direction to a water treatment plant, in another toward Walmart. We can hear the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. Beyond the worst of some mash-up of urban suburbia we can see the Empire State Building. The malls, the highway and the skyline of New York form the background for experiencing this isolated puddle of the organic in a deluge of the human-made. The landscape is quiet and deserted. We found this place by accident several years ago at the end of a sunny winter day when we repeatedly tried (and frustratingly rarely managed) to gain access to the Hackensack River.

We saw the water from the highway and followed it. A few steps from the shopping center parking lot we entered a quiet space where pools of flat still water gave way to the tops of wooden tree stumps that seemed to break free from thin sheets of ice while simultaneously appearing to encapsulate them as they ruptured the surface of the pale blue water. The stump forms are inexplicable, magical, sculptural. They seem to embody fragility, perseverance and a caught moment. Conceptual ideas I have been moving around in my work for years were suddenly presented to me beside the New Jersey Turnpike. Through repeated visits over different seasons I find these enigmatic forms and their isolated landscape equally compelling. During low tide more complex and elongated remnants of trees become evident, obviously densely close together as more of their former life is revealed. We learn this used to be a cedar forest – intentionally destroyed hundreds of years ago. The Meadowlands themselves have been ravaged by the development surrounding this part of New York and New Jersey. The marshes made the location resistant to actual construction and instead became a seemingly endless absorption tank for every kind of refuse. The land’s uninhabitability destroyed its natural habitat and yet in some perverse way seemed to preserve it.

I find this site of unending interest as the stumps seemingly emerging from the water – surreal, beautiful, majestic in their survival and sad. In reality the water has overtaken them but they remain, monumental and as monuments to their history. In the summer, plants somehow sprout on them and at dusk they are carpeted with birds. Nature has re-habituated itself to the dead trees, adapted and endures. There is a moment on a summer twilight visit when as the neon sign for Walmart turns on and so do the lights on the Empire State Building, the sound of the birds drowns out the traffic. The remnants of the cedar forest stand firm and as witness to it all.

ON HAC K E N SAC K DRE AM I NG NANCY COH E N

ON HACKENSACK DREAMING

This installation is in no way meant to reproduce the landscape, my inspiration and reference point. I want the viewer to move through Hackensack Dreaming discovering and finding connections – compelled by the beauty and the strangeness. Thinking simultaneously of the made and found worlds – of nature (whatever that might be in an artist’s studio in 2014 in urban New Jersey) – a viewer might hopefully become temporarily lost in the contradictions and visual experience.

M I D O R I YO S H I M O T O Upon stepping into Nancy Cohen’s Hackensack Dreaming in her studio for the first time, I was struck by its sweeping scale and physicality. Two large sections of the installation are divided by a narrow passage in the middle which is interspersed by many glass and multimedia objects lying on the floor or hung from the ceiling. Viewers have to be extra cautious of their surroundings not to step on them or bump their heads into floating ones, which adds to the immediacy of the piece and has the effect of focusing people’s perception. There is so much going on in this work that being in the middle of this installation, one might get a claustrophobic feeling. Furthermore, the work, in its complexity, seems to take on an appearance of living organisms which breathe and pulsate, or an entire ecosystem. Without knowing its reference to the Meadowlands, the ethereal and serene quality of the installation reminded me of the post-apocalyptic underworld depicted in Hayao Miyazaki’s anime epic, Naucicaä of The Valley of the Wind (1984). The story is set at a dystopian future when humans had destroyed most of the natural habitats on the earth and the pollution accumulating underground subsequently gave rise to gigantic poison-resistant plants and insects, reminiscent of prehistoric ones. The protagonist, Naucicaä is an adolescent

Dark stumps which cast beautiful shadows in the Mill Creek marshes are sad relics of the cedar forest which existed hundreds of years ago and were consumed by colonizers to build ships, train tracks, and buildings. Cohen became fascinated by the history of the site and how those stumps withstood numerous destructions and environmental changes. Those old cedar stumps have become the protagonists of Cohen’s installation. For her, they embody resilience and survival rather than just being the victim. In her statement found in this catalog, Cohen has described them as “surreal, beautiful, majestic” as well as “monuments to their history.” Over centuries, nature has adapted and reclaimed the land after every man-made and natural destruction. They harbor microorganisms and water fowl that have thrived in this environment. In winter they form layers of ice around them as if they are wearing winter coats. Many of Cohen’s flower-like glass sculptures were inspired by these ice forms. The motifs of stumps or ice seem prominent throughout the installation. Nonetheless, the artist has never directly represented them.

She was able to successfully distill the magical beauty of this unique site by combining multimedia–glass, wire, rubber, and handmade paper. Her arduous process of creating numerous small parts transformed this installation into a sort of inner landscape, reflecting her thoughts about the site. Stumps and all other creatures in the marshes became reborn as new beings through the artist’s hands. Although it takes the name of “Hackensack,” the work has transcended the geographical specificity and offers a space for visitors to contemplate on nature and its inextricable relationship with humans. The strong abstract quality of the backdrop, made up of differently colored and textured paper, enhances the dream-like atmosphere of the installation. While some of the elements include raised, rubber-fashioned shapes, these can be read as stumps rising from the water, jellyfish in the sea, or parachutes falling from the sky. This seems to crystallize the “surreal” impression the artist originally received from the site. Like the concept of “borrowed scenery” in traditional Japanese gardens, viewers are invited to fill in the gaps in this poetic landscape by integrating a distant vista of their environment or personal scenery tucked away in their memory or subconscious. Through physical immersion in Hackensack Dreaming, one will be able to make a mental journey to somewhere unexpected and special.

M E MORI E S OF A FORE ST M I DORI YOS H I MOTO

MEMORIES OF A FOREST

princess of the valley of the wind who is the only one who can calm these creatures whenever they become outraged by human aggressions. After learning how the artist found inspirations in the particular section of the Meadowlands, Mills Creek marshes, and seeing her photographs of the site, my dystopian association of the work was reconfirmed.

M I D O R I YO S H I M OTO , P H . D. G A L L E RY D I R E C TO R , NEW JERSEY CITY UNIVERSITY N OT E : Q U OT E S I N T H I S E S S AY D E R I V E F RO M N A N C Y C O H E N ’ S S TAT E M E N T.

Nancy Cohen, Hackensack Dreaming Wall Drawing, 2015, handmade paper, rubber, and resin, 112â&#x20AC;? x 90â&#x20AC;?

G EOPOLITIC S AN D TH E BE AUTI FU L AN N E SWART Z

GEOPOLITICS AND THE BE AUTIFUL A N N E S WA R T Z Nancy Cohen achieves a delicate balance between celebration and critique in her large installation Hackensack Dreaming of 2013-15. She revels in natural beauty and fecundity as she also comments on reckless environmental disregard. With this amalgamation, Cohen fills the gallery space with numerous images and forms recalling Mill Creek Marsh, a wetlands section of the Hackensack River. The topic of Cohen’s installation is an area of New Jersey that is over-built. Principally, it is an environment of interlacing highways with massive big box stores offset by the Manhattan skyline in the distance. This portion of the New Jersey Meadowlands is lowlands, situated between the Palisades cliffs and the Watchung Mountains. Cohen’s work recalls these specific surrounds while considering the environment and our relationship with it. The installation’s unifying blue palette dominates the viewer’s experience with the composite profusion of manipulated paper and crafted objects. The hue has the effect of beautifying a fantasy of nature. The charming blues belie the complexities in this section of the Hackensack River. The polluted ecosphere sits astride the estuary with remnants of its life as a cedar forest.

commands the viewer’s attention upon entering the gallery. The drawing complements the aggregated sections and extends Cohen’s exploration of transformed nature. Beyond its alluring appearance, the installation critiques the encircling metropolis pressing in on this persistent, but transformed, natural site. She focuses on the dissonance between the built environment and the constancy of nature. The waterways and the meadowlands endure even as the city continues to bloat.

A large drawing accompanies the two-part sculpted multimedia domain. Located at the center of the installation, the drawing

Each side of Hackensack Dreaming is a multimedia burst of glass, handmade paper, rubber, and monofilament. The components synthesize

into a dramatic, cacophony. The two large side portions parenthetically surround the viewer who ambulates through the center. The sides are similar in scope, but not exact duplicates in elements or size. And they vary in shape based upon the requirements of each exhibition space. The single large drawing measures ten feet by eight feet. For the opposing north and south walls of the gallery, Cohen situates interlacing pastiched sheets of textured handmade paper onto which she incorporates natural river forms and adds sculpted flora and fauna.

...the whole installation is a critique of the encircling metropolis pressing in on this persistent but transformed natural site. The installation sides range in tints and shades of predominant blue. Some pieces lean towards pale blue while others are more robustly saturated. While blue can tend towards the darker end of the color value scale, which typically possesses visual gravity, here the blues are more visually lightweight. Cohen accomplishes this quality by focusing on the gentle beryl to azure end of the spectrum instead of the comparatively demanding indigo to cobalt section. Intensely saturated blue water only occurs occasionally in nature because bacteria usually makes water less blue. Perhaps one of the strongest examples of the blue intensity of sterile water is seen at the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park, where the super-heat of the 16

water’s center eliminates any bacteria. As the water cools towards the edges, the bacteria create brilliant colors like a rainbow (thus its name). Cohen visually contrasts the beauty of this fragile yet durable water ecosystem with the incorporation of a red rectangular billboard form and circular shapes the artist explains are contiguous images of the nearby water treatment plants. Further, Cohen’s installation functions metaphorically for our shared experience with the Hackensack River, a place of local import, or as the artist describes “think Jimmy Hoffa, not the Adirondacks.” There is no central focal point in the composition of each of the walls. The rectilinear sheets extend both vertically and horizontally. The line created where the wall and floor meet has the impact of a horizon line. That actual line becomes a seen form, anchoring the whole

array of objects and renderings. Extending out from the wall are occasional and intermittent sculptural elements which echo river fauna and flora. Together, the skeletal molded forms and the dense matter read like fossils. More sculptural elements hang from the ceiling, similarly arranged in asymmetrical compositions. The overall impression is quite airy because of the transparency and translucency of Cohen’s materials, the suspended sculpted pieces and the arranged ones on the floor. On the floor, a thin layer of blue paper pulp swirls to look like dust. Cohen poured and painted it on the floor. She allows interruptions and gaps where the floor is evident through the spread—a way she coalesces an to this elaborate accumulation without regularizing and binding the overall appearance. The chasms in the swirls and curves of the sand-like pulp sit on a few sheets of

Cohen’s use of nature is an extension of her earlier explorations into lived experience, its complexities, and its simultaneous fragility and endurance. handmade paper trailing back to the wall to which they are connected. Natural sculptural elements diversely populate the pulp and handmade paper. Even though the paper is thickly textured and heavily worked in areas, the light weight of the paper actually defies the suggestion of bulk. The large drawing perpendicular to the installations reads like diagrams for the two-dimensional and low-relief paper images and the sculpted units in the larger installation sections. The lines connecting the natural renderings link the individual parts into the greater whole, much as the human organs are connected by the veins and arteries, tethered by the musculature. The translucency of the paper recalls the partially transparent surfaces in the sculptured elements of the installation. A dialogue is created between them, even though the scale is markedly different between the two. The images in the wall drawing appear small in comparison to the overall installation. The subjects in the drawing evoke less of an appealing, sweeping panorama because they read as almost monochromatic with the major color schemes veering towards blander earth tones. Within her oeuvre, Cohen explores abstracted notions of the body and nature, while always investigating humanity’s impact on nature and our relationship with it. The idea of creating an alluring vista recalls the art of French Impressionist Claude Monet who exhaustively returned to the same pond in Giverny, in his extensive and immersive series of Water Lilies, begun in 1897 and continued until 1917. In contrast to Monet’s heavy-handed approach to his compositions— he planned and planted a scheme for his water gardens to realize exactly the image in his mind’s

Cohen’s use of nature extends her earlier explorations into lived experience, its complexities, and its simultaneous fragility and endurance.1 Ever since her childhood in Queens and Westchester to her present life in Jersey City, Cohen has been mesmerized by the interplay between people and the environment. She says: “I have a very intuitive connection to the water and water-related forms but it has been the past twenty years in Jersey City—living in such an industrial mess surrounded by rivers has had me thinking about the connections between our local waterways, the environmental and industrial history of our area and our day to day lives.”

G EOPOLITIC S AN D TH E BE AUTI FU L AN N E SWART Z

eye. In contrast, Cohen does not alter or interact with the natural organization of this place of her inspiration. The focus on the environment has been au courant since the mid-1960s when Americans artists became increasingly disenchanted with the gallery scene and moved out into natural spaces, such as Mary Miss, or brought it into art world interiors, like Robert Smithson, or engaged with sustainability, as Agnes Denes.

While Cohen’s reverence for this locale of the Hackensack recalls the many artists fascinated by waterways who persistently return to study sections of a single river, she is neither rendering 17

“I have a very intuitive connection to the water and water-related forms but it has been the past twenty years in Jersey City—living in such an industrial mess surrounded by rivers has had me thinking about the connections between our local waterways, the environmental and industrial history of our area and our day to day lives.” a carefully observed marsh nor detailing a recording of a waterway. Instead, Cohen meditates on the collision between geopolitics and the biosphere through her representation of rivers and water and phenomena. She has termed these juxtapositions “wacky.” Her interest is in using the so-called “rhetoric of 18

the landscape,” as labeled by sociologist James S. Duncan, or its cultural signification. 2 She recognizes that humans have manipulated this site into a shadow of its former self. She’s using her study of this site as a way to delve into the web of social, political, and economic relations, as Duncan recounts as critical to understanding landscape as a site of signification and conceptualizing an interpretative frame for it. 3 In her statement and remarks about this installation and the drawing, Cohen focuses on the ardent fascination she has developed over the past three years in looking at the banal area of the Hackensack River near Secaucus, New Jersey.4

The surviving traces like the stumps dramatically reference our moment alongside the environment in the Anthropocene, the contemporary age characterized by human- induced changes in the environment. In Hackensack Dreaming and in the related drawings, Cohen gives form for what French architect François Roche described as: “[n]ow nature is just a world garden, a domesticated garden.” Cohen includes referents to the social and political practices shaping the landscape with the inclusion of the billboard as a referent to the consumerism located near this physical site and to the water treatment plant which addresses the refuse that has made the river toxic, or what Cohen calls “the stand-in for the non-organic ‘real’ New Jersey.” Cohen acknowledges the ultimately reckless human impact on the Hackensack.

G EOPOLITIC S AN D TH E BE AUTI FU L AN N E SWART Z

She describes the area of the river she studies as an “isolated puddle of the organic in a deluge of the human-made,” bracketed by the metropolitan visual discordance mixed with the excessive aural noise from the highways and its dense human overpopulation. In this locale, Cohen realized the jutting forms dotting the river’s surface are stumps, remnants of a cedar forest destroyed by settler colonists centuries ago. About the stumps, she wrote: “The stump forms are inexplicable, magical, sculptural. They seem to embody fragility, perseverance, and a caught moment. Conceptual ideas I have been moving around in my work for years were suddenly presented to me beside the New Jersey Turnpike.” These fragments interest and engage Cohen the most.

1. “Interview / Nancy Cohen,” International Foundation for Women Artists BLOG, January 27, 2014, accessed March 27, 2015, https:// ifwartistsblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/interview-nancy-cohen/. 2. James S. Duncan, The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 16-18. 3. Ibid. 4. All remarks are taken from my conversations with the artist.(Interview with the Artist, Artist’s Studio, Jersey City, New Jersey, October 2, 2014 and E-mail to the author, February 15, 2015). The artist’s statement is available on the artist’s website. (“Hackensack Dreaming [Artist’s Statement],”,accessed February 12, 2015, http://www.nancymcohen.com/pages/installations/95.html.) 5. “Matters of Fabulation: On the Construction of Realities in the Anthropocene (François Roche in Conversation with Etienne Turpin)” in Architecture in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Design, Deep Time, Science and Philosophy, edited by Etienne Turpin, Series: Critical Climate Change (Ann Arbor, MI: OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS, Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2013), accessed April 2, 2015, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/12527215.0001.001.

AN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTIST’S VIEW OF THE HACKENSACK ME ADOWL ANDS B E T H R AV I T Shaped by centuries of human intervention, the Mill Creek Marsh found within the Hackensack Meadowlands, exemplifies this non-natural ecosystem. The Meadowlands is a beautifully gritty place that continues to evolve and heal in strange and unique ways. In this installation Nancy Cohen has captured historical elements (the ghostly white cedar stumps visible at low tide) and the ephemeral seasonal beauty of constantly changing natural elements – water and ice, colors of spring and fall. The beauty in this installation also embodies a glimpse of the future, when the Marsh will once more be clean and safe for the hundreds of species – including humans - who need it for sustenance, both physical and spiritual. The Hackensack Meadowlands are geologically young, formed less than 10,000 years ago. When the Earth warmed at the end of the last ice age the Wisconsin glacier melted and began retreating. As the glacier melted the boulders carried by the ice sheet were left in place, closing off the southern portion of what is now the Hackensack River/Newark Bay complex. The boulders, the Palisades, and the Watchung Mountains created a bowl that enclosed the freshwater glacial Lake Hackensack. The planet continued to warm and sea level rose, finally breaching the boulders, draining the glacial lake, 24

Nancy Cohen, photograph of Mill Creek Marsh, 2014

and allowing the Hackensack River to resume its southward flow into Newark Bay. The swampy Meadowlands marshes began to form. Evolution of the Meadowlands marshes began when the Hackensack River flowed with fresh water. Eastern White Cedar (Thuja Occidentalis) forests developed and the remnant stumps of this indestructible wood remain visible today in the Mill Creek Marsh. The cedar wood was prized for its durability and resistance to rot, especially when exposed to water, and so the forests were harvested for many uses – ship building, laying of colonial era “corduroy” plank

roads, and construction of human settlements. Eventually the cedar forests were destroyed by harvest and evolving environmental conditions, which ultimately converted the freshwater swamps to a saltwater estuary. Sea levels continued to rise, the human population continued to expand, and infrastructure and commercial development of the growing New York City region changed the ecology of Meadowlands marshes forever. The Hackensack River was used as an important transportation corridor as well as a public waste disposal system. To facilitate human uses swamps were drained, initially to create

The cumulative anthropogenic assaults eventually exacted an incredibly high toll and many people gave the lower estuarine Hackensack River ecosystem, now overrun with the common reed (Phragmites Australis) and landfills burning underground, up for dead. Birds and fish were absent in any significant number and visible species surviving were characterized by a small number of pollution tolerant organisms.

Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission (HMDC) was created by the New Jersey Legislature in 1969, with mandates to clean up the garbage and to develop the 32-acre Meadowlands District. A third objective was environmental stewardship to support the development activities – no one would want to build a business or homes where contamination was still visible. Shortly after creation of the HMDC, the first Federal environmental laws and regulations were enacted in the early 1970s. The State of New Jersey also enacted regulations, which during the early days of the environmental movement were more stringent than Federal statutes. The landfill closure activities of the HMDC, combined with State and Federal regulations and pressure from local environmental advocate NGOs, resulted in waters of the Hackensack River becoming progressively cleaner. As the water quality improved, fish began returning, and as the fish returned, the water fowl also began to return. A tide gate, built to keep salt water out of Saw Mill Creek, was destroyed during a hurricane. As salty water flowed into the marsh, a successional restoration began that over the last five decades naturally replaced the common reed with cord grass (Spartina Alternaflora), a plant native to estuarine marshes of the U.S. east coast.

wetland habitat that supports waterfowl. In Mill Creek marsh, upland tree species stand almost side by side with low marsh cord grass – not an ecological topography that would have formed naturally, but enclosed by concrete, a green oasis none the less. This non-natural marsh, surrounded by major transportation infrastructure and intense development, looks eastward to the New York City skyline as thousands of cars traverse adjacent highways daily. Within this urban reality, the beauty reflected in this installation is not necessarily visible to most marsh visitors of today. Upon seeing Nancy’s interpretation of Mill Creek Marsh, I was stuck by the thought that she has perceived what the marshes will be in the future. As the sea continues to rise and the coastline encroaches further inland, the infrastructure surrounding the marshes will eventually change or be drowned and contaminated sediments will one day be buried. Then the marshes will once more be in contact with the river and bay as they were 10,000 year ago, beginning a new chapter in their ongoing evolution. Cohen’s art has captured historic degradation, and the gritty urban present, but also points the way to the hope and beauty of future regeneration. B E T H R AV I T, P H D C O - D I R E C TO R , C E N T E R F O R U R B A N

A solution, favored by many state and local officials, was to fill the remaining degraded marshes to capitalize, through intense development, on the real estate value of these lands so close to New York City. The

Natural forces and human intervention created the Mill Creek Marsh where Cohen drew her inspiration for this installation. This “restoration” was designed by Ducks Unlimited, an organization dedicated to providing

E N V I RO N M E N TA L S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y (C U E S ) D E PA RT M E N T O F E N V I RO N M E N TA L S C I E N C E S C H O O L O F E N V I RO N M E N TA L & B I O LO G I C A L S C I E N C E S R U TG E R S U N I V E R S I T Y

AN E NVI RON M E NTAL SC I E NTI ST’ S VI E W OF TH E HAC K E N SAC K M E ADOWL AN DS BETH R AVIT

farmland and then subsequently filled for urban development; industrial, human, and animal wastes were discharged into the river and its remaining marshes. A dam was constructed in 1922 on the upper reaches of the Hackensack River, followed by construction of a series of four reservoirs. These impoundments restricted flows of freshwater, which in conjunction with still rising seas and land subsidence after the glacier’s retreat, allowed salt water to intrude further upriver. The freshwater vegetation was transformed to species able to tolerate salt levels characteristic of an estuarine ecosystem. The saltmarshes now served as a repository for legal and illegal disposal of municipal, industrial, and solid waste, creating small mountains of earth piled over the original freshwater marshes. And the river became a bi-furcated system with clean freshwater behind the reservoirs and polluted salty waters below the Oradell Dam.

S E L E C T E D S O LO E X H I B I T I O N S 2013 A Condition of Light, Accola Griefen Gallery, New York, NY

1992 A Community of Shelter, Thomas Paine Park, New York, NY

2013 Beyond the Surface, Garrison Art Center, Garrison, NY

1986 Taking Form, Windows on White Street, New York, NY

2012 By Feel, Accola Griefen Gallery, New York, NY (catalog) 2012 Precarious Exchange, Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton, NJ (catalog) 2010 Permeable Matter, Kean University, Union, NJ (catalog) 2007 Water Ways, The Noyes Museum, Oceanville, NJ (brochure) 2006 Unbroken, Heidi Cho Gallery, New York, NY (catalog) 2004 Ephemeral Balance, Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ (brochure) 2004 Kouros Gallery New York, NY

NANCY COHEN nancy@nancymcohen.com nancymcohen.com

2001 Objects and Intentions, Douglass College, New Brunswick, NJ (catalog) 1999 Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton, NJ 1998 Kouros Gallery New York, NY 1996 New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ 1993 Trans Hudson Gallery, Jersey City, NJ 1990 Susan Schreiber Gallery, New York, NY 1989 Schreiber/Cutler Gallery, New York, NY 1988 Robeson Center Gallery, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ (catalog) 1985 Jing An Cultural Center, Shanghai, China C O M M I S S I O N S A N D L A RG E S C A L E I N S TA L L AT I O N S 2013 Between Seeing & Knowing Collaboration with Anna Boothe, Accola Griefen Gallery New York, NY (brochure) 2011 Estuary: Moods & Modes IV, The Louis Stokes Health Sciences Library Howard University, Washington DC 2011 Perspectives on Salinity 2011, Richard Stockton College of NJ, Pomona, NJ 2010 Looking Forward/Looking Back, Park HaGalil Karmiel, Israel 2009 Perspectives on Salinity: River from Within, Katonah Museum, Katonah, NY (brochure) 2008 Elements of a General Theory of Hydrodynamics, CODA Museum, Appeldoorn, NL 2007 Estuary: Moods & Modes, The Noyes Museum, Oceanville, NJ 2006 Sensation: Interior View, Quark Park Sculpture Garden, Collaboration with Shirley Tilghman and Jim Sturm, Princeton, NJ 2004 Going Places: Skyway to Wow!, Ross Woodward School, Percent for Art Program, New Haven, CT 2003 Inside-Out (Adentro/Afuera), Mountain Development Corp,

100 Hamilton Plaza, Paterson, NJ

1996 Only Connect, Staten Island Botanical Garden, Staten Island, NY

S E L E C T E D G RO U P E X H I B I T I O N S 2015 Works x Women, VanDeb Editions, Long Island City, NY Legends of the Pines, The Noyes Museum of Art, Oceanville, NJ (catalog) 2014 Water & Earth: A Call to Protect Fragile Ecosystems, MCLA Gallery 51, North Adams, MA Jerseyscapes, New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ (brochure) Jersey Women Artists Now: Contemporary Visions, George Segal Gallery, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ (catalog) Emerald City, The Gateway Project, Newark, NJ In-Site: The Creative Process in Plain View, Robeson Center Gallery, Rutgers University Newark, NJ Paper Cuts, Gaia Gallery, Brooklyn, NY Pulp Culture: Paper is the Medium, The Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ 2013 Shattered: Contemporary Sculpture in Glass, Frederik Meijer Garden & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI The Land Before and After Time, Accola Griefen Gallery New York, NY Structure and Flow: An Exploration of Contrasts in Abstraction, Paul Robeson Center for the Arts Princeton, NJ (catalog) 2012 Paper in Space, Haggerty Gallery, University of Dallas Irving, TX 50 Years of Studio Glass, Kentucky Museum of Art & Craft, Lexington, KY Possible Realities: Proposals for the Karl Stirner Arts Trail, Grossman Gallery, Lafayette College, Easton, PA 2011 Ground Water: Out of Sight/Site Out of Mind, The Sculpture Center, Cleveland, OH Green: The Color & the Cause, The Textile Museum, Washington, DC Kamikaze, POST Gallery, Los Angeles, CA An Uncommon Thread Front Room, Gallery Brooklyn, NY 2010 As You Like It, Heidi Cho Gallery, New York, NY 2009 Mark of the Hand, Spanierman Modern, New York, NY Yarn Theory, PS122 Gallery, New York, NY Global Warning: Artists and Climate Change Zilkha Gallery Wesleyan University Middletown, CT

1995 In Making it Actual, Wheeler Gallery, Providence, RI Workspace Program: 5 Years, Dieu Donne Papermill,

Holland Paper Biennale 2008, Museum Rijswijk, Rijswijk, NL & CODA Museum Apeldoorn, NL (catalog) 2007 Per Square Foot, The Gallery at Dieu Donne, New York, NY The Outdoor Gallery: 40 Years of Public Art in New York City Parks, The Arsenal Gallery, New York, NY (catalog) 2006 Out There, New Jersey Arts Annual, The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ (catalog) 2004 Material Witness, Heidi Cho Gallery New York, NY 2003 Correspondences: Poetry and Contemporary Art, Hunterdon Museum of Art Clinton, NJ (catalog) 2002 500 Drawings, Gary Snyder Fine Art, New York, NY 100 New Jersey Artists Make Prints: 15 Years of the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ, Travels to The Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ & The Noyes Museum of Art, Oceanville, NJ (catalog) Material Passage, JP Morgan Chase Project Space Jersey City, NJ Magnitude An Exhibition of Poet/Artist Collaborations The Educational Alliance, New York, NY (brochure) 2001 Rags to Riches: 25 Years of Paper Art from Dieu Donne Papermill, Kresge Art Museum Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. Traveled to: Maryland Institute College of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI, Fort Wayne Museum of Art Fort Wayne, IN (book) Nancy Cohen & Robert Gutierrez, PS122 Gallery New York, NY 2000 The End: An Independent Vision of Contemporary Culture, Exit Art, New York, NY 1999 A Common Thread, New Art Center, Newton, MA (catalog) Three Artists – Three Stories, NJ Center for Visual Arts, Summit, NJ (catalog) 1998 Wild, Exit Art New York, NY Memory & Transformation, Painted Bride Art Center, Philadelphia, PA

New York, NY (catalog) 1994 Fabricated Nature, Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID (catalog) Traveled to University of Wyoming Art Museum, Virginia Beach Center for the Arts Small Works, The Sculpture Center, New York, NY Biomorphosis, Miami-Dade Community College, Miami, FL (catalog) Rough Cuts, Henry Street Settlement, New York, NY Passages in Sculpture: Six Sculptors, Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ 1993 93NY50, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY Object Lessons, Police Building, New York, NY 1991 Six East Coast Sculptors, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT Disjunctive, Valencia Community College, Orlando, FL (catalog) 1990 Sculptors’ Drawings, East Hampton Center For Contemporary Art, East Hampton, NY (catalog) 1988 Sculpture 1988, White Columns, New York, NY 1987 Three Sculptors, A.I.R. Gallery, New York, NY Biomorphic Sculpture, Art In General, New York, NY 1986 The Figure Abstracted: Intimated Presences, Robeson Center Gallery, Rutgers University Newark, NJ (catalog)

1997 Balancing Act, Room, New York, NY Objects & Delusion, Smack Mellon Studios, Brooklyn, NY Associated Media, Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ (catalog) 1996 Innovations & Explorations in Handmade Paper, Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, NY (catalog) Contemporary Sculpture at Chesterwood, Chesterwood, MA (catalog)

Magazine, Fall 2012 E. Crawford, “By Feel at Accola Griefen Gallery,” On-Verge, June 15, 2012 D. Bischoff, “Odds and Ends,” The Star-Ledger, June 16, 2012 J. Koplos, “The Meaning of Green,” American Craft Magazine, September 2011 S. Stamberg, “Celebrating Green: As Concept, As Color, As Cause,” NPR, 4/20/2011

NANCY COH E N RE SU M E

2008 Inner World of the Outerworld of the Innerworld, Von Lintel Gallery, New York, NY

SELECTED BIBLIOGR APHY T. Kinsella, “Pine Barrens: Life and Legends,” South Jersey Culture and History Center, 2015 V. Watson, “Between Seeing & Knowing, A. Boothe & N. Cohen” GLASS Quarterly, Winter 2013 E. Crawford, “Between Seeing & Knowing, A. Boothe & N. Cohen” N.Y. Arts Magazine, September 2013 Bascove, “The Land Before and After Time,” N. Y. Arts Magazine, July 24, 2013 Corning Museum of Glass, New Glass Review 34, Corning, NY 2013 C. Lieberman, “The Edge of Eros,” Art Experience New York Visual Arts

Corning Museum of Glass, New Glass Review 32, Corning, NY 2011 K. Boyle, “Textile Museum Goes ‘Green’ with New Exhibition,”

“Postscript,” Sculpture Magazine, 9-10/93 (photo) G. Melrod, “Object Lessons,” Art News, 5/93

The Washington Post, 4/22/2011 E. Nathan, “Brooklyn Local,” Artnet, January 2011 C. Kessler, Leftbank Blog, May 2010 C. Nadelman, “The Mark of the Hand,” ARTnews, June 2009 Itinerary, “Katonah Museum of Art,” Sculpture Magazine, June 2009 G. Gouveia, “Art Plumbs Hudson’s Depths,” The Journal News, 5/10/08 A. Thomas, “Holland Paper Biennial 2008,” Hand Papermaking, Winter 2008 D. Nahas, “Nancy Cohen at Noyes Museum,” Sculpture Magazine, September 2008 M. Takahashi, “Noted Exhibitions,” Hand Papermaking, Winter 2006 J. Capuzzo, “Science Comes to Life in a Park Full of Surprises,” The New York Times, 10/22/06 J. J. Devoe, “Anatomy of a Princeton Park,” New Jersey Monthly, October 2006 K. MacPherson, “It’s a lot of Inspiration,” The Sunday Star-Ledger, 9/17/06 (photo) P. Somers, “Bristol-Meyers Squibb Sculpture Project,” Sculpture Magazine, 3/05 (photo) D. Cleveland, “Nancy Cohen at Kouros Gallery,” ARTnews, 11/04 (photo) Corning Museum of Glass, New Glass Review 25, Corning, NY 2004 D. Stein, “Rags to Riches: 25 Years of Paper Art…”, Dieu Donne Papermill, NY 2001 W. Zimmer, “Life Stories in an Artistic Framework” The New York Times, 12/26/99 (photo) M. Carlock, “A Common Thread in Newton Exhibit,” The Boston Globe, 3/7/99 R. Selekman, “Nancy Cohen at Kouros Gallery,” New Art Examiner, 10/98 (photo) K. Johnson, “Nancy Cohen,” New York Times, 7/10/98 E. Shales, “Wild, “Review, 2/15/98

V. Raynor, “Best Work Turns Out to be Three-Dimensional,” New York Times, 4/18/93 E. Broadrup, “Commissions,” Sculpture Magazine, 9-10/92 (photo) B. McAdam, “Other People’s Stuff,” Art News, 9/92 (photo) M. Kimmelman, “Sculpture, Sculpture Everywhere,” New York Times, 7/31/92 A. Raven, “The Great Outdoors,” Village Voice, 8/4/92 (photo) J. Sapers, “Goings On About Town,” New Yorker, 7/13/92 P. Broaff, “Sculptors’ Drawings Produce a Special Dynamic,” New York Times, 11/4/90 R. Slivka, “From the Studio,” East Hampton Star, 11/15/90 V. Raynor, “’Intimations’ of Figures at Robeson Center Gallery,” New York Times, 10/12/86 V. Raynor, “Sculptures that Test the Idea of Opposites,” New York Times, 10/1/89 V. Raynor, “Group Show with Side Dish,” New York Times, 11/6/88 E. Watkins, “Bergen Gallery Bears ‘Form, Substance’ of Work,” Newark Star Ledger, 10/12/86

A. Raven, “New York Story,” Sculpture Magazine, 1/98 (photo) New York Views, “Papermaking and Sculpture,” WABC-TV, 1/18/97 H. Cotter, “Sculpture that Basks in Summer,” New York Times, 8/9/96 Snug Harbor Cultural Center, “In Three Dimensions: Women Sculptors of the ‘90s” 1996 A. C. Faxon, “In Making it Actual,” Art New England, 8/95 H. Cotter, “In New Jersey,” New York Times, 7/8/94 M. Kimmelman, “Sculpture’s Season in the Sun,” New York Times, 5/6/93

S E L E C T E D AWA R D S A N D R E S I D E N C I E S

Citibank, New York, NY DHR International, Newark, NJ Dieu Donne, New York, NY Hillwood Art Museum, C. W. Post College, Brookville, NY (catalog) Howard University, Washington DC Hudson County Community College, Jersey City, NJ Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton, NJ Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, NJ Memorial Sloan Kettering Center, New York, NY Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ Newark Public Library, Newark, NJ New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Trenton, NJ New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ New York University, New York, NY Noyes Museum of Art, Oceanville, NJ Pilchuck Print Collection, Seattle, WA Richard Stockton College of NJ, Pomona, NJ The Brodsky Center for Print and Paper, New Brunswick, NJ TIAA/CREF, New York, NY Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, NC Westin Hotel, Jersey City, NJ William Paterson College, Wayne, NJ (catalog) Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum, New Brunswick, NJ

2015 2012 2011 2006 2004, 1993 1996 1993, 89, 86 1992 1991 1988 1986, 81 1982 1981

ISE Cultural Foundation Grant Collaborative Residency, The Studio at Corning, Corning, NY Artist in Residence, Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, WA New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Works on Paper Fellowship Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, Fellowship The Greenwall Foundation, award in support of “Only Connect” New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Sculpture Fellowship Dieu Donné Papermill, New York, NY, Workspace Artist Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY Pollack Krasner Foundation Grant The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH The Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT The Millay Colony, Austerlitz, NY

NANCY COH E N RE SU M E

SELECTED PUBLIC AND MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

E D U C AT I O N 1984 Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME 1982-84 Columbia University, New York, NY, MFA 1977-81 Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, BFA

Top Left: Nancy Cohen, Ice Drawing 1, 2014, glass, wire, 8” x 10” x 1” Top Right: Nancy Cohen, Double Flutter, 2014, glass, wire, handmade paper, metal, 20” x 18” x 8” Bottom Left: Nancy Cohen, Flutter Drawing, 2014, glass, wire, 12” x 20” x 5” Bottom Right: Nancy Cohen, Accumulation Study, 2014, glass, wire, 15” x 13” x 1”

NEW JERSEY CIT Y UNIVERSIT Y GALLERIES J E R S E Y C I T Y, N E W J E R S E Y W W W. N J C U . E D U / A R T_ G A L L E R I E S . A S P X