ART
The Shapes We’re In
COURTESY OF BERRY CAMPBELL GALLERY
ABOVE: The exhibition Shape Shifting at New York City’s Berry Campbell Gallery. LEFT: Nanette Carter, Destabilizing #1, 2021, oil on Mylar, 72 x 67 inches. OBERLIN ALUMNI MAGAZINE 2022 SUMMER
New York City artist Nanette Carter ’76 works with her hands, her soul, her heart, oil paints— and mylar. She paints on, scratches off, roughs up, and otherwise treats the translucent stretched polyester film, which she then assembles (“choreographs,” she says) into largescale abstract collages that are affixed directly onto walls—frameless, and thus unbound. Carter was first exposed to the material in the 1990s at a show of architectural drawings at Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City created by
students of Frank Lloyd Wright. “The drawings were beautiful on the mylar,” she told the podcast Cerebral Women. “The pencil drawings appeared to be like poured, black butter.” Carter, an avid reader of the daily New York Times, builds her work around particular themes that ignite her energy and that are often informed by the prevailing issues of the time in which the art is created. Since the turn of the century, her work has reflected concerns around social media, technology, and economic
struggle, and the attempts— and need—to find balance. Not that she expects that her work, which eschews figures in favor of shapes, color, mark-making, and texture, would necessarily mean the same to the viewer as it does to her. “As an abstract artist, I don’t mind if the viewer sees something totally different. If their imagination enters into the piece, I love it. If they see something totally different, that’s fine with me. But,” she adds, “I need that theme when I’m in the studio.” For more on Carter, including upcoming exhibitions, visit nanettecarter.com. 9