April 28 - May 25, 2022

VOTIVES: Sculptures by Nancy Azara

Carter Burden Gallery presents Votives: Sculptures by Nancy Azara. The exhibition runs from April 28 – May 25, 2022, at 548 West 28th Street in New York City. The reception will be on Thursday, April 28 from 6-8pm; masks are required. The gallery hours are Tuesday - Friday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Please join us for a book signing and dance performances on Friday, May 20th from 6-8pm.

Download the Exhibition List

Press:

Nancy Azara: The Shaman is a Feminist Artist
4W - FEMINIST NEWS, by Phyllis Chesler
Published: May 2022

Whitehot Recommends: VOTIVES: Sculptures by Nancy Azara at Carter Burden Gallery
WhiteHot Magazine,Noah Becker: Editor-in-Chief
Published: May 2022

Dawn/Light, 2009
carved and painted wood with aluminum leaf and encaustic
10’ x 6’ x 2’

Jacket from the Silk Road, 2012
carved and painted wood with aluminum leaf
10’ x 9’ x 1.5’

Cradle, 2020
painted and gilded wood, steel
86” x 84” x 16.5”

Hand/Palm, 2018
carved and painted wood with aluminum leaf
18” x 17” x 5”

Blue Iris, 2014
carved and painted wood with aluminum and gold leaf
12 x 5 x 2.5”

Twins, 2016
gessoed vine
8” x 20.5” x 6.5”

Twins, 2010
carved and painted wood with aluminum leaf
12” x 5” x 3” (each)
$9,000

Black Leaf with Two Red Leaves, 2021
oil pastel on mylar
25.5” x 18”

Dark Leaf with Red Leaf, 2021
oil pastel on mylar
18” x 15”

Black Leaf #1, 2021
oil pastel on mylar
25” x 18.25”

Mind’s Eye, 2019
painted and gilded vine
10’ long x 6’

Sweet Pea, 2016
gessoed tree
60” x 24” x 29”

Crow and Sandal 7, 2019
mixed media with mylar and paper
22” x 30”

Crow and Sandal 8, 2019
mixed media with mylar and paper
22” x 30”

Crow and Sandal 10, 2018
mixed media with mylar and paper
22” x 30”

Crow and Sandal 2, 2019
mixed media with mylar and paper
22” x 30”

Crow Banner 1, 2019
Kodak UV curable display film
67.75” x 48.75”

Crow Banner 2, 2019
Kodak UV curable display film
67.75” x 48.90”

Crow Banner 3, 2019
Kodak UV curable display film
67.75” x 50.96”

Nancy Azara is a sculptor, a feminist artist, working primarily in wood, mixed media collage and prints. Her sculpture is made of carved, gilded, assembled wood; while her collages are composed of mylar, paper, paint and the occasional found wood object. Azara’s densely layered art engages with memory, personal history, and the cyclical nature of time.

Azara’s work has been shown extensively, most recently in a solo show The Meeting of the Birds at Kaaterskill Gallery, Hunter Village, NY; Ink: New Prints at Site: Brooklyn Gallery, Curated by Laura G. Einstein; and Labyrinths of the Mind at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild in Woodstock, NY. Her solo show at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY in 2021 featured a series of crows including a wall hanging. She is the author of Spirit Taking Form: Making a Spiritual Practice of Making Art available through Red Wheel/Weiser. Her work has been written about and reviewed by such publications as Art in America, New York Times, Art Forum, ArtNet Magazine, Woodstock Times, among many more. She teaches workshops and classes in art making and meditation.

In Votives: Sculptures by Nancy Azara, the artist presents carved and painted sculptures from 2010 to the present that record a journey of ideas and memories around the unseen and the unknown, reflecting on time and mortality through facets of her personal history. Azara’s use of real tree limbs and vines alongside arboreal imagery act as stand-ins for her own presence and as expressions of the dogged persistence of life. Processes of pressing and rubbing, cutting, and pasting, scraping and gouging are evident throughout the finished images and objects. Azara states, “I often balance instinctive marks against more considered decisions, arriving at a dynamic interplay between the deliberate manipulation of materials and the operation of chance.” Along with her sculptural work, the exhibition features a heraldic crow banner hung in our public installation space On the Wall, depicting birds’ plumage, which can be exhibited indoors or outdoors.