Our final artist in residence for 2018 was Nancy Blum. Nancy was at the IEA for two-week residency and it was a delightful end to the 2018 experimental projects residency program. Nancy arrived with an ambitious program for experiments that might help in shaping her next major bodies of work. The residency started with Nancy working with her assistant Amanda Nedham on digitally assembling and altering some of her drawings. Another highlight from the first week was IEA co-director Joseph Scheer, giving Nancy and Amanda a tour of his printshop and review of the IEA Xuan papers/project. Nancy expressed an interest in seeing her drawings at a different scale, the IEA composited and scaled up one of Nancy’s WIP drawings and projected it wall scale, with Nancy then developing the form with the assist of the video projection. The IEA had numerous visits from John Gill (Professor Ceramics) where he and Nancy discussed this work in progress. At the end of the first week the IEA hosted a great artist talk & luncheon with Nancy Blum and grad-students from the Electronic Integrated Arts (EIA) and Ceramics MFA programs, – Thank you Nancy for your generous and memorable presentation.

Then the second week was spent in preparation for large scale mono-prints and investigation of foregrounded shape and color as a possible pivot in Nancy’s practice. Nancy cut large rough forms out of cardboard to use in the mono-prints. Blum’s final Thursday of the residency was spent in the Expanded Media Printshop for a wonderful day of printing. Matt Metz, Linda Sikora, Isabel Metz, Aodi Liang, Joseph Scheer, Rebekkah Palov and John Gill all had a special day assisting and pulling new experimental Nancy Blum mono-prints.

Brooklyn-based artist Nancy Blum is well known for her public art commissions. For the new San Francisco General Hospital, she recently completed an installation of monumental glass windows that feature her robust botanical imagery. Previous projects include 50 hatch covers designed for the streets of Seattle and a sculptural installation for the city’s airport; a 40‐foot freestanding sculpture in Philadelphia; large-scale mosaics for New York City’s MTA Arts in Transit program; and artwork and architectural components for three light-rail stations in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Blum’s drawings and sculptures have been represented in numerous exhibitions at galleries and other venues across the US such as the Weatherspoon Art Museum, UNC Greensboro; the International Print Center, New York; and the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. Her most recent solo show, Wonderland, appeared at the Ricco Maresca Gallery in New York last year. Blum’s work is held in two dozen private and public collections, including the World Ceramic Exposition Foundation in Icheon, South Korea; the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; and the Boise Art Museum. Also among these projects is a permanent installation at the residence of the American Ambassador to Belgium.