VALHALLA, New York — Among recent works in a 30-year survey of Nancy Bowen’s sculptures and collages at the Westchester Community College Art Gallery is a group of 20 tombstones (2020). Made of gray-toned pulp encrusted with tiny shells and pebbles, and veined with black pigment, each bears a ceramic plaque with the name of a woman or man killed during the Salem witch trials, an event Presided over by one of the artist’s ancestors, Samuel Sewall, who eventually repented and atoned. Bowen took care to individualize each tombstone, topped with a set of ceramic wings and a skull pointing in one direction, and anchored by ceramic shoes protruding from the bottom. The head and wings motif is derived from early American funerary art and symbolizes both mortality and resurrection; the shoes make it look like these whimsical little characters – because that’s what they are – could transcend their horrific fates simply by picking up and walking away.
In some ways, the installation is an anomaly: it doesn’t look much like the other works in the exhibition. Yet he embodies two strains long explored by this under-the-radar artist: on the one hand, experimenting with artisanal mediums such as ceramics and glass to depict a haptic experience of the (mostly female) body in vessel-like forms ; and on the other hand, to affirm its links with a personal history of New England via glued materials. Her late father left behind a wealth of old almanacs, maps and charts which she scans and cuts out, interspersing the pieces (as she does in her many collages) with gouache, charcoal, ink and/or metallic sheet. They are elegant images that cross time and space, from chakras and coastlines to astrological signs and defunct alphabets.
Sometimes a body ain’t just a body includes sculptures in which materials are uncomfortable with each other: curvaceous blown glass forms on or next to ceramics and found objects such as giant conch shells, hair and, in a case, a turtle shell (recovered, again, from his father’s effects). “Teraton Necklace” (2003), referencing a grotesque hair-growing tumor, is an unsightly long chain of pink and red visceral blown glass; white ceramic balls with wavy surfaces, reminiscent of a molecule or a sea creature; and samples of gray hair. The whole is connected by steel links and rests loosely on a low plinth. Other pieces are more contained, forming vertical constructions from which long braids appear to grow. During the first decade of the 2000s, Bowen produced open structures that appear to be in a fantasy garden. “Exalt” (2007) is particularly charming, a Gaudi-like pedestal dotted with mirrors that grows vine-flowering resin frills. Bowen demonstrates a penchant for bright colors, with a particular fondness for pink, evoking both blood and feminine finery.
Bowen is currently collaborating with writer Elizabeth Willis on a book. Willis is, improbably, the descendant of one of the witches pursued by Sewall, and her long poem “The Witch” describes all the fanciful things a witch could do. The mock-up of the book, with illustrations by Bowen, is included in his investigation. With lines like “The happiness of a whole house may be ruined by witch’s hair touching a metal cross,” the poem suggests more than a striking coincidence of inheritance. Bowen is an alchemical mix of sensual and arcane, and it’s more than a little arcane.
Nancy Bowen: Sometimes a body isn’t just a body continues at the Westchester Community College Art Gallery (Hankin Academic Arts Building, 3rd Floor, 75 Grasslands Road, Valhalla, New York) through April 12. The exhibition was curated by Joe Morris.
