AMAZING BLACKFOOT ART BY NANCY JOSEPHINE CLARK

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.