Santa Barbara Seasons Magazine Winter 2019 Issue

Montecito. “I came here on a wave in 2008,” Gifford recalls. “Within a year of my arrival I connected with all these like-minded women, very much focused on contemporary art: Gwen Stauffer at Lotusland, Julie Joyce, the contemporary curator at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Judy Larsen had just arrived at Westmont, Elise Gonzalez at UCSB, and Sarah Cunningham at Atkinson Gallery. It was a beautiful opportunity,” says Gifford. “I decided to dive in and roll up my sleeves and get involved. It got me out of the studio.”

Though extensively involved with various projects outside the studio, Gifford continued to create new works in her “crazy art house” for local and international exhibitions. She describes her art as primarily narrative. “I use a lot of text in my work,” she says, adding that the narrative derives from her own history, literature, poetry and world cultures.

Soon after Gifford moved to Montecito she curated her first show for Art from Scrap.

Since then she has curated or co-curated numerous exhibitions. At the Arts Fund Santa Barbara, she started the Community Gallery Program and initiated the Funk Zone Art Walk. She serves on various boards and volunteers for many nonprofit programs.

She also curates all three major art exhibitions at Lotusland, working closely with chief executive officer Gwen Stauffer.

Regarding Gifford’s impact on the local arts community, Stauffer says, “There isn’t a single person in Santa Barbara’s art community who has not been touched, in some way or another, by Nancy.” She adds, “Artists often find inspiration in nature, and Nancy’s own artful expressions are rooted in the simple beauty of the grid pattern of crops growing around the home of her youth in rural Ohio.

Nancy instinctively recognized Lotusland as art, with living plants as the principal media arranged in exuberant and dynamic beauty.

Lotusland actively conserves endangered plant species. We wanted to generate more public awareness of what the earth stands to lose, and Nancy understood that. Through our collaborative efforts with Nancy as curator of the art exhibition and Lotusland as curator of the accompanying messages, we were able create a stimulating and powerful, sometimes fun and sometimes sobering experience, and link that to a compelling call for citizen action.”

In Gifford’s view, “The decade has really been a fortunate expansion and growth of contemporary art. It’s been very rewarding in that respect.”