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Nancy Tobin Artist of the Year by Courtney Ramos
M
eet Nancy Tobin: Site-specific artist and local Arcata business owner of boutique Vintage Avenger. Her years of elaborate installation and performance art creates a unique narrative that transforms the experience of space and time. With back-to-back shows in 2022, The first was the vast installation Journey to the Center of Milks exhibit at the Morris Graves Museum, where you entered the surreal prehistoric garden. Greeted by a giant volcano, waterfall, and tortilla tent that were embedded in a carpet of six hundred pounds of corn kernels that took you on a dreamlike journey while giving the metaphorical gift of self-empowerment. Her following show, Outer Roominations, where “Toebin” Estates was a funny take on spiritualism and homesteading that included a foil-covered tent topped with a giant stuffed foot that sprayed water into a 20’ x 15’ pool made of tarps and straw wattles. It kept growing and ultimately incorporated the adjacent cabin and junked car. It lured you in with its lowbrow humor but really told the story of
“Three Little Pigs” 2020
18 | The Palette
Jesus’ washing of the feet, which symbolizes humbling oneself to serve others. In addition, she did performance art that will be in her documentary released in late 2023 or 2024, which captures her creative process by award-winning filmmaker Jonathon DeSoto. Her story begins: Nancy is no stranger to the paradoxes of life. Her narrative is honest and raw, transcending her life’s pain and adversity into bizarre and ephemeral interventions. Growing up as a military brat and later being a single mother. “I experienced two very difficult sides of life: a great deal of displacement and a lot of responsibility. But, on the flip side, I also experienced many different cultures, landscapes, and climates.” Dualities pull her in every kind of way. Which is apparent in her art. Nancy’s work is nomadic, ephemeral, and site-specific. She refers to them as either land art, interventions, sculpture, painting, and/or performance. They are flexible in nature, and their primary characteristic is their mutability.
