Eternal Life, Love, and Art
How a Late Artist’s Spouse Keeps Her Creative Legacy Alive
Written by Christopher Cudworth
As husband to a productive, diverse artist, Dick Carrigan lived life in company with ideas continually brought to life. Upon the passing of his wife Nancy two years ago, his new mission became one of sharing and representing her work.
In some respects this task seems easy enough. His wife’s prolific career in art and poetry provides plenty of source material. In other respects, the sting from the relatively recent loss of his wife still resonates. And as he talks about her work, familiar and new recollections sometimes mix. He is, in many respects, discovering his late wife’s work even as he shares what he already knows.
He’s clear about one thing. “She wanted to do everything,” he mused in a recent interview. “She was a stage actor in high school. She loved to write. She was active in her faith. And she wanted to be an artist.”
Reconciling all this creative energy was difficult for Nancy, he recalls. But her father was a pragmatic Presbyterian minister who urged her to go to journalism school and develop practical skills. That’s what the couple met, at the University of Illinois.
Nancy’s work circled around her spiritual upbringing. Familiar themes from the Bible appear in all her works, from poetry to sculpture to painting and prints. For example, the classic figures of Adam and Eve as derived in inspiration from the work of Albrecht Durer play symbolic roles in her commentaries on classic and modern life themes. In one piece she assembled Adam and Eve figures surrounded by discarded computer motherboards.
As her work progressed it also expanded in breadth and scale. Sometimes she experienced setbacks as well. Some of her work suffered a swift demise in the ceramics oven when the work of other artists exploded. “It also was not a facile medium,” Dick Carrigan observed. “You could not change things once they were at a certain point in development. And then the occasional accident would occur in the kiln.”
Carrigan did however develop some more commercial approaches to marketing her work. “She did some craft projects to ensure her studio was a moneymaker,” he smiles.
Then some events took place that sent Nancy Carrigan in new directions. Her longtime passion for dance brought her into a world where the inspirations were not so commercial, but the subject matter was rich. She even became involved in dance choreography and worked on stage sets. That early love of theater brought her joy through all of life.
As her work expanded, so did recognition. “I think she was most proud of the moment one of her larger horse sculptures was chosen as the top prize in a Chicago show,” Dick Carrigan recalls. “I remember her feeling particularly happy about that.”
The life of a working artist was an interesting dichotomy for Nancy Carrigan. “She wasn’t always comfortable being alone, working alone,” he recalls. “She came from that social environment as a journalist and an editor at several publications. She was used to that personal contact. She was almost lonely as an artist, isolated in a studio. She was a gregarious person…involved with people all the time. So she used to go out to lunch all the time. Be with people.”
It was these dichotomies and the lyrical nature of creation that so fascinated Nancy Carrigan. “One of the things that developed was that she had written this poem… a bit of interesting poetry about a flute the Chinese had excavated. It was 4000 years old, and Nancy tried to imagine what went through the mind of the artist playing this instrument.”
Perhaps that is the best scenario to share for those who choose to visit the upcoming show of Nancy Carrigan’s work at Water Street Studios Gallery. She was always imagining the impact of life and art and work on others. These included spiritual musings as well as playful ones.
Water Street Studios Gallery will be showing a collection of Nancy Carrigan’s paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures supplied by her husband Dick and curated by Steve Sherrell. The exhibit will open on Friday, May, 13 at 6:00 pm and continue until June 4, 2016.
Listen to an interview with Dick Carrigan as he discusses Nancy’s life and work. Produced by Jaime Gutierrez.
