Nancy Bowen is a mixed media artist known for her eclectic mixtures of imagery and materials in both two and three dimensions. Most recently, Bowen’s installation project “Spectral Evidence” explored her ancestor’s involvement in the Salem Witch Trials. It was exhibited at several museums in the Northeast. In conjunction with that project, she collaborated on a book with the poet Elizabeth Willi. Published by Litmus Press, Spectral Evidence: The Witch Book paired the 46 lines of Willis’ poem The Witch with collages by Bowen.
Bowen has shown widely throughout the US and in Europe. She has won awards including the Anonymous was a Woman Award, Individual Artist Awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts Foundation, a Trellis Foundation Funders Award, and others. Bowen is professor emerita of sculpture at Purchase College, SUNY. She is currently working on an installation exploring the imagery of mermaids, sirens and crones in both ceramic sculpture and drawings.
At MacDowell in 2010, she worked on a series of large-scale collages that combine imagery and text. Sources include various alphabets, grave rubbings, spiritual symbols and historic almanacs. During her 2017 residency, she worked on a series of collages that would be part of her solo exhibition For Each Ecstatic Instant
at the Kentler International Drawing Space in 2018. In 2024, Bowen began a new body of sculptural work. She fused hundreds of small colored glass tiles into a large-scale sculpture. She also continued work on a series of reconstructed and altered book collages.
Portrait by Chrysanne Stathacos
