Nancy Staub Laughlin is an assemblage artist who has exhibited throughout the Northeastern United States. Her work has been extensively critically published including by the late art critic Sam Hunter from Princeton University. Some recent exhibitions include Gormley Gallery at Maryland University in Baltimore, Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, Monmouth Museum in Lincroft, New Jersey, Carter Burden Gallery and West Gallery in New York.
In terms of assemblage, Nancy Staub Laughlin works in two formats. The first format consists of photography mounted on paper with the rest of the composition filled in with a pastel drawing. And the other format consists of photographic assemblages where she creates a montage of two or more photographs with related imagery. In these original photographs from both formats of assemblage, we will often find performative still lifes, seascapes, and wintery landscapes. The still lifes and objects contained within the assemblages usually consist of jewels, pearls, flower petals, diamonds, crystals, beads, and glass. Typically, the objects are reflective and express a motif based in crystallization and refractured light. Like immaculate and luminous enchanted glass castles from another realm, these still life structures are carefully integrated into seascapes and wintery cropped landscapes usually containing a magnolia, wisteria, or similar types of trees. Some of Nancy’s most interesting pastel assemblages contain dark starry and cold nightscapes with sometimes a field of ice in the foreground, such as a frozen lake. These particular types of nightscapes handle well against the sparkle of jewels and the mystical starry passionate twilight.
The photographic assemblages have a puristic conceptual approach to them while the pastel assemblages seem more expressive. In the photographic assemblages, we will find strings of precious gems, crystals, and glass acting as magical prisms and gateways into landscapes. As if the artist is communicating these jewels are enchanted and provide ethereal insights into our mysterious surroundings. These playful compositions with their carefully constructed and performative still lifes reflect a sense of regality and prestige. The consistent sparkling elements in her work and manipulation of light reflects a thoroughly magical and enchanted quality to contemporary image-making. In both formats of assemblages, we will find portals into another dimension induced by very real materials carefully chosen and assembled into a performance of luminosity, a light show through the representation and reflection of light rather than a direct reference to the subject.
Photo 28 depicts gemstones and crystals like a chain against a sparkling coastline. The concept being the sparkle in the body of water matches the glistening of the previous stones. With a combinative approach, the wholistic composition reveals a narrative based on expressing how luminosity and light can be expressed in reflection and shimmers, revealing a regal and enchanted environment.
With magical qualities and constructed configurations expressing seemingly sacred surfaces through high quality imagery and subjects, Nancy Staub Laughlin creates art which has the viewer measure the value of light as well as the tools and garments which enhance our lives. These performative still lifes integrated with landscapes create clever inter-disciplinary approaches to the concept of cherishing. Through precious stones, reflective materials, wintery snowy-sparkling landscapes, gleaming bodies of water, and starry skies, the artist investigates how visual art defines cherishing mindfulness as well as expressing the concept of value. The worth of light, the regality of reflection, the ludic experiences of dreamy landscapes, and how combining experiences leads to a grander journey, these are the themes contained with the works of Nancy Staub Laughlin.