Deborah G. Nehmad - Works on Paper |
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ARTIST STATEMENT |
My artwork is derived from pain. It has evolved into an obsession with mark making and working the surface of the paper into a visual mediation. To me, paper is like skin, and by extension, the body itself. Both the processes I employ (I repetitively burn, etch, scrape, score, stamp, puncture, type, apply pressure and draw) and materials I incorporate (heat, paper, gut and metal) are metaphors for my experience.
- Deborah Gottheil Nehmad, February 2005
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BACKGROUND
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1-16, 259 (front view), pyrography on paper, steel, rocks, 6'x30'x4', exhibit Marking Time at Academy Art Center at Linekona
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Deborah Gottheil Nehmad is a Honolulu-based artist whose works on paper have been seen in museum, non-profit and gallery venues since 1998. She was born and raised on Long Island in New York and graduated from Smith College with her B.A. in 1974. In 1982, she received her JD from Georgetown University. After years as a practicing attorney and working in politics (including the Carter White House), her legal work brought her to Hawaii in 1984. In 1985, an accident precipitated a series of life altering events. By 1998, she had earned her MFA in printmaking from the University of Hawaii – Manoa.
She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Hawaii and the “mainland”. Her work can be found in many public and private collections including the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, Yale University Art Gallery, the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College, the Hammer Museum of UCLA, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Hawaii State Art Museum, and the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu. She has received numerous awards, including the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award and was one of six Hawaii artists included in the Sixth Biennial of Hawaii Artists at The Contemporary Museum in 2003.
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EDUCATION
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1998 |
MFA in Printmaking |
University of Hawaii, Manoa, Honolulu, HI |
1982 |
Juris Doctor |
Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C. |
1974
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BA in Government |
Smith College, Northampton, MA |
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REVIEWERS' COMMENTS
[Nehmad’s] lyrical works on paper are characterized by numeric figures repeatedly burned, etched, embossed or written in such a way as to form rhythmic patterns and designs. . . .The resulting work is at times as delicate as lace and at other times as forceful as a hammer striking an anvil.
- Carol Khewhok, Honolulu Academy of Arts Calendar News, September/October 2000
Ritual, endurance, repetition, obsession—these qualitative aspects are often ascribed to the art of Deborah Gottheil Nehmad. . .
- Marcia Morse, The Contemporary Museum Biennial of Hawaii Artists Catalogue, 2003
Through the meditative process of repetitive mark-making, she burns the paper with red-hot numerical number punches that become a metaphor for numerical connections to her heritage (concentration-camp tattoos, number squares in the Kabbalah) and diagnostic tools to gauge the intensity of a person’s pain. . . . Numbers in this context have become her words. And her words have taken on new meanings in the shapes that have emerged – pulsating with life.
- Victoria Gail White, Honolulu Advertiser, July 27, 2003
. . . Nehmad, whose “Chronic Enumeration” is one of the show’s peculiar highlights. Her arcane constellations of numbers are created through “pyrography,” a process of burning images into embossable paper. That she uses her art to ease and chronicle her chronic back pain adds an extra layer of meaning.
- Josef Woodard, Along Non-linear Lines, Santa Barbara News-Press, December 5 – 11, 2003
[Nehmad’s] homage to Eva(x) occupies an undefined area somewhere between a print and a drawing. In her evocative re-imaging of Eva Hesse’s hauntingly serene circle drawings, Nehmad uses branding (in the traditional sense of the word) to form the inner area of her gridded circles, a technique that could be argued as either a transfer, hence a print, or a direct mark-making device of drawing. She then defines the circumferences of the circles with graphite. By scorching the paper, she brings a brutal and personal aspect to the Minimalist purity of Hesse’s compositions.
- Barry Walker, New Prints 2004/Spring, ICPNY
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SELECTED COLLECTIONS
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Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY |
Auchenbach Foundation Collection, Fine Art Museums of San Francisco |
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT |
Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA |
Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA |
Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, HI |
The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, HI |
Hawaii State Art Museum (Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts), Honolulu, HI |
Private Collections: New York (Wynn Kramarsky) Washington, DC, California, Massachusetts, Hawaii
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