Guelph Mercury Friday March 26, 2004 Sculptor Nancy Farrell experiments with quirky and mythic art themes Nancy Farrell’s shocking pink bathroom, with its pink kitsch accessories gathers from friends and dollar stores far and wide, would be great art installation. The Zavitz Hall art students would revel in it. Farrell’s decision to “go with” the pink legacy of her home’s former residents has given her zany streak full rein upon this pink canvas. Who’d have guessed, what with the down to earth, laid-back nature of this sculptress and painter who, in her 50s took her art degree part-time over nine years at the University of Guelph. She had “only dabbled” before that, mainly in pottery, during her 30-year career as a speech pathologist. When her daughters were grown, she followed her passion. In the hall, a framed drawing of their garage contents celebrates one of her first assignments. Her day job wound down five years ago, and now she makes art full-time. “I cook as little as possible and clean as little as possible,” she boasts, with a clear sense of her daily priority. She sculpts in the basement of their home just outside Guelph, and sells and paints out of Williams Mill, a former mill in Glenn Williams, renovated 10 years ago by Doug and Mary Lou Brock to provide a public studio and selling space for 30 artists. Figurative sculpture in clay is Farrell’s first love. She experiments widely with surfaces, using glaze, gold leaf, paint or smoke fire. Her pieces vary from small to life-size. As we peruse her portfolio in the spacious basement studio, I’m struck by the sheer quantity and variety of her work. Though all are naturalistic and incorporate a narrative element, some are distinguished by a quirky feature or mythic theme. “Actaeon Saved” bears antlers aloft his head. Another figure incorporates text in the form of an actuarial formula, used by insurance actuaries to predict such things as when someone is likely to die. Her daughter, an actuary, contributed the formula. Then there is the maternal figure cradling a gnarled web of root material, honouring processes of growth and death, and the enigmatic young woman with hair shooting straight upward in a flaming bouquet. She finds more buyers in Toronto. “People here don’t seem to know what to do with sculptures!” Her paintings reflect a narrative interest in the surrounding landscape, particularly in the invasions of technology and pollution. She is currently working on an exhibit with Scott Abbott and Kathleen Schmaltz, called Grand Views: Nature, Culture, Intrusion. This will open June 7 at Guelph Civic Museum. Farrell is painting the “intrusion” aspect, using specific sites along the Grand River Watershed, such as the St. Jacobs and Breslau. The project has spurred personal explorations in her painting, expanding on her images of monolithic tree forms from recent years. She is blending in intrusive elements, like hydro wires, until they and the trees are inseparable. Each image becomes more abstract as the distorted colors and crisscross pattern take over. In one, the wires have literally cut through the tree branches. “I have to see where this theme takes me. It’s the experimentation that is fun.” She also envisions moving away from realism in her sculptures. She has exhibited prolifically for 15 years, and teaches drawing and sculpture at Delhi Street Recreation Center, classes started several years ago by sculptor Hannah Boos. In 2005, she will take part in a show at Wellington County Museum on the theme of graveyards, a subject she finds inspiring. Whether through the whimsy of pink porcelain or the majesty of her storied sculptures, this artist is surely going with her creative flow. We should watch with interest.