NANCY HARDIN BRORBY: BIOGRAPHY

Early Life

  • Nancy Ann Hardin was born March 9th, 1929 in Detroit, Michigan to Gladys and Gene Hardin.
  • Philadelphia High School for Girls.
  • Randolph Macon Woman’s College, Lynchburg, Virginia.
  • Studied Modern dance with Elinor Strupa who danced with Martha Graham.
  • Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts coordinated with the University of Pennsylvania
  • Chester Springs summer program
  • Met Harry Brorby, artist from Chicago recently graduated from Harvard. Married Harry Brorby Dec 21,1950.
  • University of Iowa, studied painting and printmaking with Mauricio Lasansky. Earned Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and teacher’s certificate.

Michigan

  • Raised two children in Holland, Michigan while continuing to paint and exhibiting including one woman show at Kalamazoo Art Center.
  • Founded and taught at the Ottawa Fine Arts Workshop School in Holland Michigan with Harry Brorby.

Arizona

  • After years of travel out west in New Mexico and Arizona settled in Tucson from 1971 to 2017.
  • While in Arizona continued taking classes in Ballet with Jose Valenzuela.
  • Continued painting and entering local shows. Worked at Tucson Museum of Art school in ceramics designing pieces at home and using the museum’s kilns and facilities.
  • Passed away in Tucson Arizona July 23, 2017, surrounded by a lifetime of work by Harry and Nancy as well as a primitive art collection of Americana, New Guinea, Peruvian, New Mexican, and Pre-Columbian art.

EXHIBITION HISTORY

1952

Des Moines Art Center, 4th Annual Iowa Artists Show 

Bradley University National Exhibition Of Prints

Midwest Biennial Exhibition, Joslyn Museum, Omaha Nebraska

The Print Club  Philadelphia.

San Francisco Museum of Art 16th Annual Print Show

Printmakers of Southern California National Show

1953

University of Illinois, Iowa Print Group Show

University of Wichita, Iowa Print Group

Society of Washington D.C., Printmakers National Show

1954

Des Moines Art Center

Cat Pin, Fish Pendant, Jewelry

Midwest Annual, Joslyn Museum, Omaha Nebraska.

Insects, and Animals, Animals in the Orchard, Etchings

Brooklyn Museum Traveling Show National Print Annual

Animals in the Orchard, Etching, Purchased for permanent collection

Exhibition Momentum, Chicago

Springfield Art Museum

Animals in the Orchard, Etching, Purchased for collection

Stevens Foss Gallery Show

The Library of Congress Annual Print Exhibition

UCLA Third Annual National Print Show

Dallas Texas National Prize Print Exhibit

Bradley University

1955

Chicago Art Institute

1957

Chicago Navy Pier Show

Bay Printmakers Society, Oakland Ca.

1958

Bay Printmakers Society, Oakland Ca.

Grand Rapids Museum

Animals in the Orchard, Etching, Honorable mention

1966?

One man show Kalamazoo Institute of Arts

2014

Cavin Morris Gallery, NY, NY, November 1 – December 13, 2014
Elementals: Women Sculpting Animism

 Cavin-Morris is pleased to present an exhibition of living women artists working with ancient concepts and materials in a completely contemporary way.

This exhibition expands on the idea of these artworks being part of a language that expresses the animist essence of life.  Animism is a belief in the souls of non-human entities. It is spiritual rather than religious, intuitive rather than empirical.  There is a wide range of work in the exhibition from the intellectual intricacies of Phyllis Sullivan’s force webs to the stark almost Neolithic but intensely worked roughness of Sarah Purvey’s urns.  Many of the more vessel-like pieces consciously charge the spaces they contain, animating them by concealing them in shadow or stippling them with surface light.

All pieces are in conversation with the Elementals of fire, water, earth and air.  It is claimed by some archaeologists that women invented pottery and the weaving of plant materials into textiles and baskets.  The mainstream is hesitant about stepping into non-empirical spaces but that is precisely what this exhibition is about; those original forms and processes that have been here forever yet continue to change and mutate into absolutely contemporary statements.  

Perhaps this unseen but assumed connection is expressed best in this quote from a Ngarindjeri woman from Australia, Doreen Kartinyeri, explaining the seen and unseen references in her basketry: “…all about the same way…the way we do everything in a circle…a circle that’s tying us all together.  It’s binding us together. The tightness of the stitches is like the closeness of the family…when you finish and you’re on the last strand of the rush, that is the filling, and when we do it that way, you can’t see where it ends. And that is the miwi because there is no end to the miwi…to the lifeline.” Miwi is the indigenous word for intangible intuitions, survival and morality and balance in life that is not non-material.

The following artists will have work in this exhibition:  Charissa Brock, Chizu Sekiguchi, Polly Adams Sutton, Dawn Walden, Judith Duff, Simcha Even-Chen, Melanie Ferguson, Deirdre Hawthorne, Mami Kato, Touri Maruyama, Sarah Purvey, Jane Wheeler, Monique Rutherford, Phyllis Sullivan, Lisa Hammond, Mieko Kawase, Sally Anderson, Susan Margin, Margaret Yuko Kimura, Nancy Brorby and others.