The terms “multimedia” and “multifaceted” are worn thin from being applied to a multitude of artists. But Nancy Jean Carrigan of Warrenville earns every syllable of both descriptives, plus a lot more.
Her fields of successful endeavor are painting, printmaking, sculpture in a variety of materials (ceramic, metal and wood, often life-size), dance (including costume and prop design), video writing and directing, poetry, fiction and children’s stories, illustrated by Carrigan, of course.
Her work can be seen in a visual arts exhibition at the second-floor gallery at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia.
“It’s another show by the Millennial Myths Group,” said Carrigan. “The theme is the solar system. Each artist was assigned a planet as the subject of a large square canvas. Mine is Mars.”
Personified as the god of war, Carrigan’s Mars is painted in dramatic reds and blacks. Venus is a prominent figure in the composition.
Carrigan, at 5-foot-2, often is dwarfed by her work, such as the free-standing painted plywood sculpture of Adam and Eve holding a see-through globe containing computer parts. That piece appears in the Fermilab show along with a witty rendition of a bespectacled Egyptian pharaoh wearing computer chips as jewelry. Circuit boards adorn his throne and a whimsical mouse replaces the traditional serpent on his headdress.
The Millennial Myths Group is composed of Carrigan and six other artists: James Mesple of Chicago, Lois Coren of Evanston, Christine O’Connor of Chicago, Steve Sherrell of Oswego, Andrea Rountree of Chicago and the group’s founder, Robert Kameczura of Chicago. They share a love of legend and employ symbolism and metaphor in varied styles.
Since the group’s inception in 1994, members have shown their work at Excalibur in Chicago, Artemesia in Chicago and Joliet Junior College. Most recently they were invited to hang a small show at Builders Bank in Old Town in Chicago.
One of Carrigan’s recurring themes is Adam and Eve, sometimes Eve alone, and how they continue to relate to human affairs. In one of her Eden sculptures, the bitten-open apple reveals an arsenal of modern weapons inside.
“My work is usually narrative,” Carrigan said, “and it’s easy to get caught up in the story, but the art must come first. I let a piece grow, not too much detail. My sculpture professor at University of Illinois (at Urbana-Champaign) used to say, `Simplify, simplify.’ That’s why I stretch my own canvas, to stay in touch with the material. For really large wood sculptures, though, I have to have a cabinetmaker saw the parts.”
She credits another professor, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, with inspiring her curvilinear style of shapes within shapes, each strengthening the whole, each adding texture and depth.
Carrigan, a native of Champaign, has lived and worked in her Warrenville home studio for 26 years. She admits being frustrated by having to decide on which of her many pursuits to concentrate. “I once read that someone told Leonardo (da Vinci) that if he’d just stick to one thing he might amount to something. I’d like to be three people so I could paint more, write for children more and write more poetry.”
She would also like to write more science-fiction. Co-authored with her husband, Richard Carrigan, their two novels, “Minotaur in a Mushroom Maze” and “The Siren Stars,” were published in the ’70s. Both were serialized by Analog magazine.
The Carrigans met at the U. of I. in their late teens and married in 1954, the year Nancy graduated. They have two grown children, Caroline and Stephen. Nancy, who also has a degree in journalism, describes her spouse, Dick, a newly retired Fermilab physicist, as the scientific source for their stories, and also a very good writer.
“We may collaborate again now that he has more time,” she said with a laugh.
Besides publishing poetry in a number of magazines, her children’s book about a rabbit at Ravinia, “Rabbinia Hopinska’s Magic Music,” and a companion poster book for coloring, were sold at Ravinia’s gift shop and are now in several area bookstores. (“Rabbinia” alone is $8, both for $14. They can also be ordered directly from Carrigan by calling 630-393-1361.)
“Nancy has the technique of an engraver. The rabbit is cute for the kids, but look at the precision with which she draws the musical instruments,” said Kameczura, formerly a designer for Chicago’s Repertory Dance Ensemble, now an independent artist and photographer. “Everything she does incorporates that fabulous technique and her rich imagination. She puts ideas on a wide screen. You can find anything in life in her work. It’s fun, it’s serious, it’s paradoxical. It should be (exhibited) at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art.”
Other professionals agree. Eileen Broido, director of College of DuPage’s gallery, said she knows of no one else working in so many media. “And she handles them all so well. We’ve shown her theater sets, drawings, prints and paintings.”
Teresa Parker, curator at the Elmhurst Art Museum, who also has a Chicago printmaking studio known as Parker Press, admires the way Carrigan “pushes the media” she’s working in. “She’s very experimental, has a lively spirit, curiosity, optimism. But she’s a methodical researcher. She wants to read and to know. Her social commentary on mankind’s survival is full of hope,” Parker said.
Paul Waggoner, founder-director of the International Arts Club in Chicago, describes Carrigan’s work as “a full exercise in contemporary art. I’ve followed her for five or six years, beginning when I curated a show at the Second Presbyterian Church (on Michigan South Avenue in Chicago) and she submitted her drawings. She uses her literary sense in her work, which is stimulating and enduring. It’s a quality that goes beyond the image. Her enthusiasm for life is reflected in her art.”
In addition to being shown in many Chicago, suburban and out-of-state galleries and being part of private collections, Carrigan’s work was in the 1996 traveling art show that went to the Beijing Conference on Women, to Moscow and to the Women’s Museum in Washington. Last year she was the featured artist in the May-June issue of Christianity and the Arts.
An art video she wrote, designed sets for and directed, “Shakespeare in a Stein,” was shown at the Milwaukee Festival of the Arts in 1987. She also worked with former Chicago choreographer Jackie Radis on several dance productions, and even performed in one.
Asked how she found time to become involved in dance, Carrigan said: “Actually, I backed into that. When I began searching for a new subject, I realized that dancing was the ultimate abstract art because dancers use their bodies in abstract ways. I kept asking a friend who danced with Ruth Page, the famous Chicago choreographer, where the hands should be in certain poses, or the feet or the head. I wanted to do big sculptures of ballerinas. And finally my friend said, `Look, you’re going to have to take lessons.’ So I did. Most of the students were little kids. I remember wanting that pink tutu when I was a child. It’s never too late, even if I was the oldest in the class to pass the exam and get my certificate.”
That was 1981. In 1983 in Aspen, where the Carrigans vacation, she studied tap, jazz and modern dance with John Travolta’s teacher. After the lessons, she produced a series of sculptures using choreographers as a metaphor for fate. Later she designed a large pair of penguins on wheels with movable wings, eyes and a platform so their partners could ride on or dance with them. They were featured in “Pinball Wedding,” a dance production choreographed by Radis. The video is in the dance collection of the Harold Washington Public Library.
And what will she do next? One of Carrigan’s favorite remarks comes from baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
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Carrigan’s work is on display at the second-floor gallery at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia through February. The gallery is open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. There is no admission charge.
