Nan Curtis is an interdisciplinary artist working in various mixed media, sculpture, and installation. My craft-based experience in metalworking, welding, and fabrication drives my practice. Materials and found objects combine in the work using mediums like kiln-formed glass, textiles, raw cotton, wood, construction flags, springs from an old mattress, photography, and video. Some are intensely personal possessions that I cull from my studio’s material library - a handmade indigo-dyed and woven rug, diaries, childhood dolls, boxes of ashes from deceased pets, and the urn of my late father. Many of these items are things I has accumulated over the years; transported and cared for between homes, studios, and back again. The work addresses the enigmatic and visceral themes relating to the day-to-day; relationships, memory, motherhood and family. My lighthearted approach to presenting profoundly personal and universal quips of the human experience is mischievousness, poignant and earnest. The work elevates and subverts the mundane.

Alongside my studio practice, I am a Death Doula. I trained online with INELDA (International End of Life Doula Association) during COVID and have been helping people die well since 2021. People often ask how my Doula work dovetails with my art practice and it has only just begun to illuminate itself to me. In particular, I have a materials library in my studio that I have been gathering for the entirety of my art career – over 35 years. This library has fabric, raw cotton, rope, plaster, carpet, concrete, flocking, paint, rocks, steel, glass, etc.I have concluded that I have enough materials to make art for the rest of my life without purchasing anything new. I want to use what I have gathered, as these materials are imbued with emotion and meaning as a result of ‘marinating’ in my studio over the years. And so, this has become the new studio parameter – no new materials, simply work with what I have. This is like Swedish Death Cleaning – when you declutter your belongings and organize your things, so your loved ones aren’t burdened with the task after you pass.

Some of the key tactics I use to invite the viewer in are scale, texture, participation and play, enticing the viewer to stay a little longer with the work. Often the work requires the viewer to participate. Sometimes this may be subtle, but other times it may be direct. The sculptures are textured to encourage touch as I believe that soft things are often sentimental. And some pieces are to be played with, coaxing the viewer to engage on a thoughtful and conscious level, activating the work through their participation. These different modes of engagement are the means that I have executed and perfected over many years to glean meaning from the work.