Noyes Museum Unveils 50-Foot Sculpture by Nancy Cohen

Thursday, 09 August 2007 22:52

OCEANVILLE, N.J. – Inspired by the Mullica River, the Great Bay Estuary and coastal wetlands of southern New Jersey, sculptor Nancy Cohen merges art and the natural world in the exhibition Water Ways: Interpretations by Nancy Cohen at The Noyes Museum of Art in Oceanville, N.J. Water Ways features a 50-foot sculpture entitled Estuary: Moods and Modes created specifically for the exhibition. The exhibition, which opens September 4, 2007 and continues through January 6, 2008, also presents an additional 13 pieces by the artist that evoke the beauty, movement and evolution of our natural landscape.

In her work, Cohen has always explored the fragility of life and the human condition. In this exhibition, she focuses on the vulnerability of the ecosystem and its commonalities with human life. Estuary: Moods and Modes is constructed of hundreds of translucent handmade papers and marsh grasses shaped over a meandering, large-wire armature. The full structure is so large that visitors will be able to walk through a portion of it, echoing the movement of the water through the environment. The sculpture’s gradual color changes, from tans to blues, and the addition of natural marsh elements in the paper all create a sculpture that visitors can experience rather than just view.

“In coming to know the Pine Barrens, I have begun to feel the ecosystem as a fragile presence in itself. As in our own lives, elements hang in the balance, each one is necessary, vulnerable, beautiful, and above all, interdependent, stated Cohen. The waterways are in slow and constant evolution, much as we are.”

Cohen’s vast research for this exhibition led her to The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey’s Marine Field Station at Nacote Creek and the Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge where she gathered samples, explored the waters and spent time in the research laboratory learning about the Mullica River’s ecosystem from marine biologists, and other experts in the field. Studying the waters and the environment, Cohen began to appreciate how undeniably the water ways and humans were connected. “A man-made world impinges and is impinged upon. But the necessity of evolution, of impact and especially of inescapable but perilous interaction – this is what each of us confronts in every moment of our lives. In its moods and modes, I have found the ways of the water very human,” says Cohen.

Cohen has received a Pollack Krasner grant and several sculpture grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her work is in the permanent collections of the New Jersey State Museum, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum, Montclair Art Museum, Yale University and Jersey City Museum, among others. She has completed large scale installations and site specific installations at the Staten Island Botanical Garden, and at the Quark Park Sculpture Garden in Princeton. Cohen lives and works in Jersey City. She teaches courses at Queens College and holds a MFA from Columbia University in New York City. More information on the artist can be found at www.nancymcohen.com .

The Noyes Museum of Art was founded in 1983 to collect, preserve and exhibit American fine art, crafts and folk art with an emphasis on New Jersey artists and folk art forms, reflecting the area's long traditions, history, landscape and culture. General funding for The Noyes Museum of Art is provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Arts; the Mr. and Mrs. Fred Winslow Noyes Foundation; the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; the Odessa F. and Henry D. Kahrs Charitable Trust and the Shop Rite LPGA Classic. The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday,10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Sunday, noon to 5:00 p.m. and closed on Mondays and major holidays. The Noyes Museum of Art is located one and a half miles south of Historic Smithville Village, off Route 9, on Lily Lake Road in Oceanville, New Jersey. Admission fees are $4 for adults and $3 for seniors and students. For more information, please call (609) 652-8848 or visit www.noyesmuseum.org . The Noyes Museum is a member of the South Jersey Cultural Alliance (SJCA).