Nancy Elliott

My father is from Newfoundland and my mother is from Japan. They are without-a-doubt middle class, have their high school diplomas, and if I could get them to vote, they would probably vote Republican. My mother is a bartender and mutual funds wizard who thinks Sylvester Stallone is a comic genius. My dad, a retired Chief Master Sargent, watches Animal Planet and weekly polishes his three motorcycles. Me? I still can’t figure out if I am downwardly mobile or a bourgeois bohemian. I hide the fact that I have an advanced degree and wonder out loud what fine art has done for me. I can’t stand group politics, yet would be labeled a bleeding heart liberal. An old therapist thought I was gay because I spent the hour ranting about homophobia. And if another person labels me “exotic,” I’ll give them a karate chop. My point? Obviously, I am a mixed bag when it comes to education, class, gender, and ethnicity. And consequently, I am a hybrid artist when it comes to subject matter, medium, and language.

 Due to these apparent contradictions, I am in the ritualistic process of constructing an identity— trying to align my personal experience with outer social, political, and sexual realities. In my attempt to create personal urban folk art (ala Mike Leigh or The Ramones), I use common materials and talk about everyday situations that make up a life. In general, my work deals with the female psyche, intimacy, power, feminine aesthetics, and my mother. I confront embarrassing moments, unpleasant feelings, and difficult situations, while maintaining a wry humor that tempers the discomfort of my subject matter. Perhaps, this is related to my childhood obsession with the game Truth-or-Dare, and later, my worship of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band. The images come to me as reactionary flashes to what I have heard, seen, or experienced. I literally cough them up. Hence my work is a visual diary, brimming with suffering and sap, that rests in the space between memory and imagination. Through the use of confessing characters and tattle-tell personas I guide the viewer down a multi-layered narrative path.

 My most recent body of work, Old School: The Memorialization of Freedom and Excess, is a punk rock soap opera that links sullenness with subjugated sexuality, independence with isolation, and freedom with excess. It questions the notion of sustainable youth and the relationship between gender stereotypes, marketed rebellion, and pop culture. Old School leads viewers to examine the aesthetics and politics of nostalgia, coolness, and, ultimately, consumerism. It underscores that the creation of an authentic alternative youth movement is dependent on media literacy and diversity, not impassivity, mimicry, and hyper-masculinity.

 In this series, I consciously avoid the use of Freudian language and hairshirt imagery—our culture is overly dependent, or perhaps co-dependent, on angst-ridden and guilt-ridden sexual and religious symbolism. (Ironically, in my past work I critiqued this language while using it. When I realized that I was essentially, in practice, a feminist Freudian, I decided to cut the cord.)

 Influences:

Punk Rock: Like punk, my work is a DIY suburban rebellion—a reaction to middle class values and tastes. My visual language is loud, passionate, and immediate; and my aesthetic avoids frills and the notion of the pristine. I am continuously questioning my need and the culture’s need for control, cleanliness, and closure.

 Multiculturalism: I grew up and reside in a region, the San Francisco Bay Area, that is culturally fluid, in which the notion of race is being constantly redefined. Multiculturalism is not a buzzword or an ‘80s fad, it is a reality. Artists of color have directly influenced my work: I am attracted to social realism, narratives, and outsider art.

 Women’s Craft: My mother introduced me to the visual world and taught me how to make art, more specifically how to decorate, adorn, and transform. And though my work, at times, reeks of “girlie” aesthetics, it is not kitsch. I am not a slumming cultural tourist for my reverence is sincere.