Nancy Grossman 1975: An Interview

Best known for her carved wooden heads wrapped in black leather affixed with zippers, glass eyes, enamel noses, spikes and straps, Nancy Grossman has a broader body of work accomplished in draftsmanship, assemblage, and relief sculpture in addition to these meticulous carvings. After growing up on a farm in upstate New York, Grossman went to Pratt, where Richard Lindner’s emphasis on the figure and in the integrity of his personal syntax became an influence. In the 1960s her head sculptures brought her notoriety and five solo exhibitions before the age of thirty. However, the sensationalistic reading of these pieces has also distorted the power of her work and its diverse evocations. The male figure has been a persistent theme, though speaking variously with a brutal aggressiveness or a fluent femininity. Grossman’s attention to process and materials is also a consistent emphasis regardless of the medium. Her assemblages combine the precision of her drawn line with the resonances of her found materials and the human bodies they touch and/or reference.

Grossman begins the interview with her early interest as an artist and her education at Pratt in the late 1950s. Like many artists of this period she had to struggle financially to support her collages and sculpture. She did this (reluctantly) by illustrating books until she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which freed her to concentrate on her work. She talks about finding her vision by moving from collage to drawing and sculpture.

Interview by Kate Horsfield.

A historical interview originally recorded in 1975 and re-edited in 2008.