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| Nancy Clark & her artwork at Seattle University Law School |
Nancy Josephine Clark looks at her artwork that is exhibited at the Seattle University Law School. Her “Respect, Unity and Justice” archival print from an original pen and ink drawing is the first in a trilogy of prints designed to convey the culture and stories of Native Americans.
Nancy Josephine Clark’s involvement in Native
American culture and art came naturally. Nancy is an enrolled member of the
Blackfeet Indian Nation in Montana. She was born in Spokane. Her father Russell
Tharp grew up in Montana on the Flathead Indian reservation before moving to
Spokane to seek a better life. Nancy’s father was named after the famed Western
artist Charlie Russell who was a good friend and drinking buddy of Nancy’s
grandfather Fredrick Tharp. Nancy Josephine Clark was named after Nancy
Russell, Charlie Russell’s wife, and Josephine Wright, Nancy’s grandmother who
was Charlie Russell’s Blackfoot model for his paintings.
Nancy
received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Design and a Teaching Certificate
from the University of Washington. To finance Nancy’s college education, her
father sold his only Charlie Russell artworks.
Nancy has worked
in a variety of art mediums, combining natural forms with lots of patterns.
Early in her art career she concentrated on painted fabrics, including quilts,
wall hangings and wearable fabrics. Later, she worked in printmaking, gouache
and mosaic.
An
artist who likes to work large, Nancy was commissioned to produce a series of
wall hangings and banners for the Wailea Beach Hotel in Maui, Hawaii. While she
lived in Columbia, South Carolina she decorated a nine-foot tall steel palmetto
tree with Native American art, which was purchased by the renowned Southern Gullah
artist Jonathan Green.
Nancy’s
numerous exhibitions include those at the McColl Center for Visual Arts in
Charlotte, NC; State Capitol Museum in Olympia; Northwest Arts and Crafts
Center (two-person exhibition) at the Seattle Center, and the Henry Gallery in
Seattle. Images of her work have been featured in publications including:
Sunset magazine; American Craft; Seattle Times; The State (Columbia, SC
newspaper), and the Spokesman Review.
Nancy married and
raised three sons and has four grandchildren. In addition to her art career, Nancy
was a teacher of art and language art at both the elementary and secondary
school levels. For her outstanding work teaching art at a school for dyslexic
children, Robert Rauschenberg, representing the Rauschenberg Foundation,
presented her with the “The Power of Art: Education of Students with Learning
Disabilities” award at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
