Nancy Hartman: Dreams and Fancies

This exhibition brings together a body of work rooted in memory, materiality, and the passage of time. Through embroidery and assemblage, intimate fragments—fabric, thread, found objects, inherited materials, and carefully considered details—are transformed into works that function as repositories of memory and emotion.

Nancy Hartman’s use of needle and thread is significant. Embroidery is traditionally associated with domestic practice, patience, and repetition, yet here it becomes a contemporary language for examining experience. The labor of stitching creates a physical record of time, while the combination of materials allows personal associations and cultural histories to coexist within a single work.

Rather than relying on preliminary drawings, Hartman allows each piece to emerge through an intuitive process. Color, texture, rhythm, and material guide the development of the work, creating compositions that feel discovered rather than predetermined. This openness gives the works a sense of intimacy and immediacy while maintaining a highly considered visual complexity.

Across the exhibition, recurring references to nature, memory, history, music, and personal experience create a visual vocabulary in which seemingly modest materials acquire emotional weight. Small details become essential: a fragment of lace, a button, a particular stitch, or a worn surface can suggest an entire history.

The resulting works invite sustained attention. Their scale, intricacy, and tactile surfaces resist the speed of contemporary looking, encouraging viewers to slow down and consider what is held within an object, what is carried through memory, and what can be communicated without words. In this sense, the exhibition is not simply about embroidery; it is about the ways we preserve, interpret, and emotionally inhabit the traces of our lives.