Nancy McHone

I am a sculptor who makes armatures from wire, foam-core board, canvas and found wood, and then lays a skin of paper and glue over them. While most of my work is wall-hung, this recent series (called “Rural Weave”) had many freestanding pieces. A basket-like nexus of warp and weft creates an interdependence of parts that are then painted with the spirit of wood as textures, leaves and stems interwoven. These artworks are containers of this spirit and an associative memory of my rural lifestyle.

As part of a group of artist I call Mendocino County Ruralist — mostly urban people whose art chronicles their relocation to Northern California in the 1970’s as part of the back-to-the-land movement I helped support a family and rural homestead through private and public art making, community arts organizing and teaching. For me art is therapeutic and this intention is the source of its value. An ethical purpose makes it visually engaging, and that is why my artwork recalls the multiple strands of my life as a Ruralist. My “extroverted” art (masks, figurative and still life) reflects commitment to home and community, and my “introverted” art (non-objective based on natural forms) patterns a personal response to the world of nature that surrounds me. Each piece is a reminder of the moment that created it, but all are linked through their shaped and layered surfaces which parallel the layers of my life. Early experiences with theater design taught me to make forms that were held together with glue soaked cloth called Celastic. This translated into a personal art medium that has always involved sculpting base shapes and covering them with my version of papier mache — materials that are sometimes devalued in the art world but accessible, cheap and plentiful for me.

My artwork is real in itself rather than a representation of reality. Painted outlines reverify the constructed shapes; surface texture and brushstrokes, and value added with glazes and transparent and opaque color all emphasizing the 3D of real and invented shadows. I create variety in a more physical, satisfying way by bending forms to an internal feeling for the shape of things rather than would come from observing the real variety of nature and humans. I am making art to restore health — metaphors for an increasingly unpredictable world as “topographies” exploring asymmetrical balance. These are surfaces on with I can have some impact in the world in which I have trouble trying to do so.