Nancy Graves

I met Nancy Graves (1939-1995) at Graphicstudio in the early 90’s while working on her large litho seen here.

She was very gracious and friendly. Nancy was also trying to resolve her large sculptural wall hanging titled, “Canoptic Legerdemain” which had her multi-media litho, “Canoptic Prestidigitation” as one of its elements. The litho has 23 colors with chine-collé—the “Hand of God” in purple. It is printed in black for the sculpture and contains a rag-paper cast bird, which is hand-painted and has gold-leaf. The litho contains references to ancient Egyptian, Greek, Christian, and Byzantine cultures. It is 36 1/2” x 741/2” and printed in an edition of 40 on Arches rag paper. She signed her print on the floor which was a first for me, but that was a good choice considering the size!

The next time I worked with Nancy was when she came down from NYC to Saff Tech Arts on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. At that time she was working on large scale clocks which were spindly and made up of various cast pieces of bones and other organic forms. She was also creating and assembling smaller sculptures from a large array of cast pieces. They were not related to each other but worked as a whole when Nancy was through with them! I went up to her studio with another member of Saff Tech in order to repair a part on one of her large clocks. I was surprised and saddened upon hearing of her passing. I feel grateful and fortunate to have worked with her.