PaperCity Magazine

September 2019- Fort Worth

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66 A mong Fort Worth icons, few are as recognizable or universally adored as sculptor and painter Nancy Lamb. A Fort Worth native and Texas Christian University graduate, she is impossible not to like, with her bubbly personality and signature rainbow-hued spectacles. Lamb is perhaps best known as the artist behind the "Social Spaces" series of voyeuristic oil paintings, translated from bird's-eye-view camera snaps taken at galas, parties, and weddings. Many a socialite has seen her raising a camera on the dance floor of them," she says. "When digital came along, it was a revolution to be able to show something to somebody right there, so they wouldn't worry about what I was doing … But it doesn't really matter what you look like. I've tried to help people see that. It's all beautiful to me, really." This month, Lamb revisits and reinvents sculptural works from the past in a solo exhibition at Artspace111. "Refired POW!: Nancy Lamb" takes its cues from the famous clay creations she made during her days teaching ceramics at the old Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. The new series of works reinterprets those three-dimensional sculptures into vibrant 2-D prints with eye-popping backgrounds, in a nod to Warhol and Lichtenstein. The new series was a result of an inspirational visit to the Takashi Murakami exhibition at the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art in 2018, where she was drawn to the Japanese Pop artist's prints that featured oddities reminiscent of works that had emerged from her kiln years ago. Also making its debut in the gallery is The Nancy Lamb Shop, a pop-up cache of limited-edition Nancy Lamb merchandise, with her work printed on acrylic trays, silk scarves, wrapping paper, porcelain plates, and a signature- scent candle from Calyan Wax Co. The pop-up will also have her high-profile collaboration with Vans shoes, and a capsule collection with local designer Brooke Wright, who has retooled Lamb's iconic works on to towels, poufs, clutches, and more. "Refired POW!: Nancy Lamb," September 7 (opening in conjunction with the Fort Worth Art Dealers Association Fall Gallery Night) – October 12, at Artspace111, 111 Hampton St., artspace111.com. to capture a celebratory moment in time, later to be painted vividly on canvas. It all started with an early iteration of the selfie, Lamb says. "One night, my husband and I were on the dance floor. He was my first exposure to selfies — this was, like, 1997. We were dancing, and he put his arm out with his camera … I looked up and thought, 'That is what I need to be doing.'" And, just like that, before the age of instant- gratification iPhone snaps, Lamb began taking overhead photographs at parties then painting them in oil. She drew a skeptical response at first. "People would think that I was taking bad photographs BY REGAN LANDRETH THE ARTIST FAMOUS FOR TRANSLATING PARTY SNAPS INTO BOLD OIL PAINTINGS GETS AN EXHIBITION AT ARTSPACE111 — THIS TIME TAKING HER CUES NOT FROM SOCIALITES, BUT FROM LICHTENSTEIN, WARHOL, AND MURAKAMI. NANCY LAMB ALL FIRED UP A self portrait by Nancy Lamb, circa 1970s Nancy Lamb's California Dreaming, 1979 A self portrait by Nancy Lamb, circa 1970s Nancy Lamb's Prickly Pear Pete, 1985

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