Celebrating Nancy Hom’s Art
by Eddie Wong. Posted July 31, 2019.
If you’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and been involved with community activities, chances are that Nancy Hom’s artwork has touched your life. Her silkscreen posters, children’s books, and art installations have addressed a diverse array of social issues that affect all of us. Additionally, many people know of Nancy through her curatorial work and arts leadership as the Executive Director of Kearny Street Workshop from 1995 to 2003. She is also a poet whose work has appeared in several anthologies.
In March 2019, a retrospective of Nancy Hom’s 45-year legacy of art and activism was presented by the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (APICC) at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco. APICC’s Artistic Director Melanie Elvena highlighted the significance of Hom’s works: “Each piece has a thoughtful story or message that represents a community, a movement, an idea, or a place, and redefines the role that art plays in activism.”
“Dancer with Birds,” a silkscreen print by Nancy Hom.
The following video which was commissioned by APICC for the exhibition gives an overview to Nancy Hom’s art and her practice. It was produced by Alexander Lim and Jeffrey Yip of MACRO WAVES.
I had a chance to talk with Nancy about the origins of her artistic practice which is rooted in her education and training as well as her involvement with the Asian American movement. Nancy also talks about how various artists influenced her work.
In the next video, Nancy shows how growing up in a working class, immigrant Chinese family in New York is woven into her art.
A central part of the exhibit was the “Evolving San Francisco” mandala, which changed during the course of the one-month run. She added new items each week, including work by students from from Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 School in the Mission District and seniors at TODCO Development Company housing in the South of Market. In this video, Nancy explains how the mandala came to life and what it signifies for her and all of us.
Although much of Nancy Hom’s recent work has focused on creating impermanent mandalas which involve the community in the making of it, she has also continued to work in graphic arts. I was particularly struck by “Catalina’s World,” a digital print that resembles a silkscreen print but was entirely created on a computer. Hom’s print provides a chilling, ominous counterpoint to Andrew Wyeth’s famous painting “Christina’s World,” an homage to a disabled woman who drags her body across a field of blueberries while peering at the warm and idyllic landscape. In Hom’s work, Catalina is an immigrant woman who attempts to reach El Norte by crossing over a “field of death.” Her work evokes deep feelings and sharp consciousness as all good social commentary art should do.
