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September 10, 2004

Nan Martin 10/20-11/17

IR Gallery: Nan Martin is exPosed pArts

Dallas, Texas – Dallas sculptor, Nan Martin, has a solo exhibition entitled ‘500 Pounds of Clay’ at IR Gallery, located at 830 Exposition Avenue, suite 103. The opening reception is Saturday, October 23 from 7:00-9:00 PM and the show will hang through November 17, 2004. Admission is free to the reception and art is available for viewing during regular gallery hours, which are Saturdays from 1-5 PM or by appointment.

Nan Martin boasts a colorful and artistic past, even at an early age. Speaking only French until entering school, Nan was raised in 1950’s Hollywood by her domineering, Parisian grandmother who gave Nan her first artistic influence: designing and making intricate dresses for Zsa Zsa Gabor and other starlets on the treadle-foot sewing machine brought from Casablanca, Morocco. Nan recalls watching her grandmother’s nimble fingers dodging the jaws of the dancing needle while listening to vivid stories of Nazi resistance in German-occupied North Africa.

In the 1960’s, Nan moved with her family to Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco. Her mother and grandmother loved the arts and associated with an odd assortment of foreign bohemian characters, and were active in the Sausalito Art Association. Nan attended meetings and art shows displaying her mother’s self-taught oil and acrylic paintings that depicted her French, Moroccan, and Corsican heritage.

During a three-year stint on a houseboat in the San Francisco Bay, Nan dove into the psychedelic and mind-altering subculture of the free-thinking waterfront community.

For years after, Nan spent her time and energy sculpting the lives of her children. It was through the tragic death of her youngest son at the age of 16 that Nan sought therapy and refuge in her creative and cultural heritage in an attempt to ease her grief. She took a ceramics class at a local community college and used her extreme emotions of joy, tragedy, and pain to release the emotions of her soul into the clay with which she worked. Nan has been featured in her studio for HGTV’s Modern Masters series and has shown in numerous venues across North Texas.

Nan says this of her own work: “I have always been amazed by how life’s twists and turns shape us. It is through these twists and turns that I find not only pain and solace, but also the inspiration for my clay pieces. The human form is the vessel that carries the embattled soul through its earthly visit. That vessel carries with it our feelings of sensitive beauty, agonizing pain, and delicate frailty. Each smile adds to the lines of our face, and each hardship adds to the callous of our hands. I endeavor to capture these subtleties in my work with clay. My hands in the clay work to expose the deepest and most private feelings of my soul, which is why I never use molds or models, and each piece is one-of-a-kind. The ceramic forms in this exhibit consist of 500 pounds of clay, capturing contemplative moments in the human experience.”

Please contact curator Sarah Jane Semrad for further information.

See more of her work at www.exposedparts.com

Posted by Sarah Jane at September 10, 2004 11:58 AM