Nancy Grossman 1981: 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.

In this interview, Grossman more fully describes her progress with collages, drawings and her life-sized leather covered heads. She protests the unfair critical assessment of this work, which focused on the sexualized and transgressive elements of the bound and zipped heads.

Interview by Kate Horsfield.

A historical interview originally recorded in 1981 and re-edited in 2008.