Nancy Crandall Phillips, born in Washington, D.C. spent most of her childhood in the D.C. area. She lived for several years in Lima, Peru where her father was with the Foreign Service and family vacations were spent exploring pre-Columbian ruins. Upon returning to the U.S., she was most often found in her high school’s ceramics studio, she then studied fiber and fabric design while an undergraduate at the University of Maryland. All these experiences clearly inform her current work. She continued to study ceramics, drawing and printmaking while working in the interior design business, and in 1987 moved to southern California to pursue her art career. She studied painting and drawing at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and earned a Masters degree from California State University, Northridge in 1992. Since then her work has appeared in a variety of galleries and juried exhibitions across the country including the Art Rental and Sales Gallery at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Circle Gallery in Annapolis, Maryland and Cortile Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She and her husband James Crandall (also an artist) moved to the Sierra foothills in 2006.
My work has always been about the interaction of process and materials over time, perhaps influenced by my exposure to ruins and ancient artifacts in South America. Part painting, part assemblage, layers of translucent tissue, paint, foil and fabric are woven together on a plasterlike surface, leaving hints of the process of its creation. More recently I’ve begun adding encaustic (hot pigmented wax) to my work. It’s both translucent and fluid, like moving water that both obscures and reveals what’s underneath. As in archaeology, the notion that the history of an object can be read upon careful inspection of its surface has always been an underlying theme in my work.
Exhibitions:
2019 Women Painters West, New Beginnings, Topanga Canyon Gallery, Topanga, California.
2018 “Artistic Impressionism & Expressive Texture”, Cortile Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts.
2018 Crocker Art Museum’s 40th Annual Art Auction, Sacramento, California.
2018 Crocker Art Museum’s Big Names Small Art Auction, Sacramento, California.
2018 Sierra Wax Artists, Cross Pollination, Upstairs at the Arthouse Gallery, Sacramento, California.
2018 Women Painters West, Back to the Ebell, the Ebell of Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California.
2017 Crocker Art Museum’s Big Names Small Art Auction, Sacramento, California.
2017 Women Painters West, Love in Deed, Topanga Canyon Gallery, Topanga, California.
2016 2016 Tour of America: Artist Invitational, Cortile Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts.
2016 Crocker Art Museum’s 38th Annual Art Auction, Sacramento, California.
2016 Crocker Art Museum’s Big Names Small Art auction, Sacramento, California.
2016 Women Painters West, Lamperouge Gallery in the Brewery Art Complex, Los Angeles, California.
2015 Sierra Wax Artists, Poetic Form and Disorder, Sacramento Poetry Center, Sacramento, California.
2015 Crocker Art Museum’s 37th Annual Art Auction, Sacramento, California.
2015 Crocker Art Museum’s Big Names Small Art auction, Sacramento, California.
2015 Women Painters West, Inventions and Visions, San Fernando Valley Arts Alliance, Tarzana, California.
2015 Collage Artists of America, A Material World, City of Burbank Creative Arts Center Gallery.
2015 Women Painters West, Winter Exhibition, Arena 1 Gallery, Santa Monica, California. (Third Place)
2014 Membership Medley, Blue Line Arts, Roseville, California.
2014 Installation at Paramount Equity Mortgage, Roseville, California.
2014 Collage Artists of America, Layered, California State University Northridge, West Gallery, Northridge, California.
2013 Collage Artists of America, Swept Away, Malibu Lumber Yard Gallery, Malibu, California.
2012 Collage Artists of America, Ripped, Gallery 800, North Hollywood, California. (Honorable Mention)
2012 Maryland Federation of Art, Strokes of Genius 2012, Circle Gallery, Annapolis, Maryland.
2012 Collage Artists of America, Transformation, Creative Arts Center, Burbank, California.
2009 On the Cutting Edge Collage & Assemblage Exhibition, Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay, Oregon.
2004 Collage Artists of America, Spring Show at Finegood Art Gallery, West Hills, California.
2003 Collage Artists of America, Fall Show at SoHo, Studio City, California.
2003 Collage Artists of America Open ‘03, Brand Library & Art Center, Glendale, California.
2002 Holiday Salon, Tirage Fine Art Gallery, Pasadena, California.
1996 Exhibitions 7, Art Rental and Sales Gallery, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California.
1995 Black & White, Long Beach Arts, Long Beach, California.
1995 Annual Exhibition, Riviera Fine Arts Center, Santa Barbara, California.
1994 15th Annual Paper in Particular National Juried Exhibition, Columbia College, Columbia, Missouri.
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Selected Private Collections:
Mr. James A. Zapp; Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, Santa Monica, California
Mr. William Huston, Portland, Maine
Mr. Sheldon Odland, Alexandria, Virginia
Mr. and Mrs. T. Michael Tracy, Pasadena, California
Dr. Donna E. Cassell, Roanoke, Virginia
Dr. William E. Hitselberger, Los Angeles, California
Dr. Samuel Eldersveld, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Hey, Los Angeles, California
City of Pasadena, California
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Membership:
Collage Artists of America
Women Painters West
Sierra Wax Artists
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Representation:
Sekula Fine Arts and Antiques, Sacramento, California