Nancy Edell (November 12, 1942 – June 9, 2005) was an American-born Canadian artist, best known for her rug hooking practice that challenged the boundaries between art and craft.
[3] By the time Edell was in her 20s, she had lived in Los Angeles, California, Victoria, British Columbia, and then Bristol, England where she continued her cinematic works and studies.
[5] In 1980, Edell moved to the small village of Bayswater, Nova Scotia, and discovered the traditional domestic craft of rug-hooking which changed her art practice dramatically.
[11] Edell says that most of her early film work was a form of self-therapy, a response to growing up in the 1950s in Nebraska, the "rigid sex-roles" that defined her life and the violence she associated with sex.
[14] It is described as an “experimental...dark surrealist fantasy, full of bizarre often erotic imagery and feminist themes.”[15] Edell herself explains the creating of Black Pudding as a "really gut things and I just spewed out everything I wanted to say".
[11] Jana Vosikovska, in the program for the film series Canadian Women Filmmakers, describes these characters as "[a] procession of fantastic creatures from the worlds of H. Bosch, R. Crumb and T.
[18][19] The film also features hermaphrodite-like characters, which Edell attributes to her interest in "dual aspects" and Siamese twins: when two things are joined together in impossible ways.
[23] Edell's work with this medium mixes the traditional practices of rug hooking with controversial themes such as feminism, sexuality, and death.
[24] "Using found wool rag (used clothing) and a traditional method of shrinking, she began to construct images that spoke of enclosed interior (indoor) spaces as related to the gender issue.
[26] Edell, along with artists like Joyce Wieland, Kate Walker, Eva Hesse, Jackie Winsor, and Miriam Schapiro pushed the boundaries between craft and art in the 1960-80s.
[27] "Mat hooking aligned Edell with feminist artists of the time who were incorporating folk and craft elements into their fine art practices.
Edell’s final body of work has been described as cataclysmic and urgent, depicting pathological processes, micro-organisms and systems of medicine and biology — a response to the terminal cancer that would eventually take her life.
[7] She combines textiles, collage, painting, and carving techniques and styles to provoke rich imagery intertwined with her self expression and themes.