By Leah Shapiro
From weaving on a loom to making beadwork, creative projects were an integral component of Nancy Darrell’s childhood. She says it was a reflection of the times. “Back in the ’50s, crafts were just part of your education.” Nancy credits her artistic abilities to her mother’s side of the family. “I don’t see any of that in my father’s family. They were more scientific and mathematical.” Her mother sewed all the family’s clothes, crocheted, embroidered, and made all the curtains for the home. Although Nancy was born in Nashville, Tennessee, her family moved around quite a bit during her adolescence (from Colorado to Illinois to Ohio). When she began high school, they settled in Crossville, Tennessee. Noticing that Nancy drew pictures all the time, her father suggested she study art in college. “He decided that was my talent and I should pursue it.”
After high school, Nancy started her bachelor of fine arts degree at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. After two years, she decided to transfer to the University of Iowa. She’d taken many art, design, and sculpture classes at Wesleyan, but found herself interested in a wide range of subjects at her new school. She graduated with an art degree in 1968 and returned to Crossville, where she began teaching art to junior high students. After two years, she enrolled in an eight-week summer pottery workshop in Rising Fawn, Georgia, with Charles Counts. Afterwards, she decided she had so much fun that she’d rather make pottery for a living than teach.
Nancy apprenticed with Charles for the next two years. In the summer of 1972, she left Georgia for Limerick, Maine, where she shared a studio with a fellow potter. Within a year, she met her husband Donn, who had served as a Marine in the Vietnam War.
While the mainstream may have referred to them as hippies, Nancy prefers that they be known as part of a “back-to-the-land movement.” She says, “We were wanting to get out of the main flow and back into the real America from which we all basically came.” With the intention of buying property, Donn and Nancy moved to Madison County in 1974. They rented a house in Spring Creek and Nancy set up her pottery studio, specializing in porcelain dinnerware. In 1977, they purchased a 50-acre plot of land in Marshall. Donn passed away in 1996, but Nancy continues to live and work there today.
Nancy says she recalls always having a fondness for relief prints. During her apprenticeship in Georgia, she purchased several pieces of work by relief printmaker Fannie Mennen, who lived down the road from the studio and was a huge part of the annual Plum Nelly art show that Nancy attended. In addition to baskets, relief prints became one of the few things that Nancy collected over the years.
In 1997, Nancy’s boyfriend John suggested that she try playing around with woodcut engravings. He cut her some blocks and told her to give it a shot. “So I did and loved it.” It wasn’t long before she enrolled in her first relief printmaking class at Penland School of Crafts. “It took another 12 years to make the final switch from clay to relief printmaking in 2011.”
Over the years, Nancy has sought out many opportunities to hone her skills. In 2009, she learned wood engraving techniques from Jim Horton, of the Wood Engravers Network, and even took a course on Japanese printmaking in 2010 at Penland. She learned to set type and operate a letterpress at Asheville BookWorks.
Nancy prefers carving into Japanese woodblocks, which are plywood with a soft wood on the surface (usually one similar to the American Linden), but many of her bird designs are carved into white pine, and she’s also used linoleum. “I started out printing by hand with just a wooden spoon,” says Nancy. “I didn’t get the press until 2010, which really helped. It’s less elbow grease.”
Nancy creates relief prints using wood engravings and woodblocks. Although both have the same basic premise (wood that remains after carving is then covered in ink), wood engravings allow for greater detail and require smaller tools, such as burins or gravers. The carved lines are tinier compared to the chisel marks in woodblocks.
When it comes to multicolor prints, Nancy uses the techniques of reduction printing (using the same block and various stages of carving to print subsequent colors) and multiple block printing (blocks of different designs and colors are applied one after another). Occasionally, she’ll use stamping to add final detail.
Nancy’s artwork tells a story and many have described it as nurturing and a welcome reminder of home. Experience her work for yourself. The artist is participating in several upcoming shows, including the Fall Festival at the John C. Campbell Folk School, October 1–2, and the Craft Fair of the Southern Highlands, October 20–23.
From June 3 through July 29, Nancy’s pieces will be featured in New Ink: Asheville Printmakers Group Show at the Madison County Arts Council Gallery in Marshall. For more of Nancy Darrell’s work, visit The Folk Art Center, Flow Gallery in Marshall, and the Miya Gallery in Weaverville. To learn more, visit nancydarrell.net or call 828.656.2731. Visits to her studio are available by appointment. (Photo of the artist by Leah Shapiro)
