Art Nuns

Nancy Edell (1942 – 2005)
Nancy Edell was an American-Canadian artist best known for her textile works of the 1980s and 1990’s, which pushed the boundaries between art and craft. Born in Omaha in 1942, Edell settled in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia in 1980. There she began to integrate the local folk tradition of rug hooking into her artistic practice, signalling a shift in her work towards a focus on women’s experience. Of particular note is her highly celebrated Art Nuns series depicting nuns devoted to the creation of art. Mora Dianne O'Neill, Curator for the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, noted at the time that, “Edell's art has a surrealistic edge. Her art nuns go about their business calmly while a cast of Bosch-like characters glows in the background: a votive figure is engulfed in flames; a lion stalks an Assyrian goddess in Halifax's Point Pleasant Park.”

Edell can be placed amongst other feminist artists such as Joyce Wieland, Kate Walker, Eva Hesse and Miriam Schapiro, who similarly questioned and subverted the exclusion of crafts from the ordained boundaries of the fine arts. Her work has been exhibited in numerous national and international exhibitions.