Nancy Price was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada and has resided predominantly in Nova Scotia, Canada for the past 25 years. She has (Textile) degrees from the Ontario College of Art (1984) and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (2002) and more recently studied at Ecole de La Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne (2014).
Price has received awards and award nominations for her work. Her design and textile experience includes periods working in Italy, Japan, and the Stratford Festival wardrobe department in Ontario. Her distinctive accessory designs have appeared in boutiques alongside international avant-guarde clothing designers, and in film. Currently emphasis is on her gallery production which has appeared in several solo and group exhibitions. In 2015 Price co-organized and curated with Naoko Furue an exhibition titled MEISEN: From the Collection of Haruko Watanabe. This exhibition comprised the largest single collection of Meisen kimono in the world.
Price’s teaching and production record attests to the scope of her lateral and interdisciplinary capacity. Price is interested in work which considers technical and conceptual overlaps. Much of Price’s work addresses the notion of “fitting”, both literally and metaphorically, often with regard to her own “fit” within various situations. She engages ironically but affectionately with themes of high and low "taste". Her work includes loom-shaped garments sensitive to material and structural properties. Madeleine Vionnet is Nancy’s cultural hero in the context of clothing and dress. Vionnet is nick named “The Queen of Draping”! Nancy’s love of cloth in relationship to the concept of clothing and the lived body has been central to her artistic output and research the past two decades.
Price has received awards and award nominations for her work. Her design and textile experience includes periods working in Italy, Japan, and the Stratford Festival wardrobe department in Ontario. Her distinctive accessory designs have appeared in boutiques alongside international avant-guarde clothing designers, and in film. Currently emphasis is on her gallery production which has appeared in several solo and group exhibitions. In 2015 Price co-organized and curated with Naoko Furue an exhibition titled MEISEN: From the Collection of Haruko Watanabe. This exhibition comprised the largest single collection of Meisen kimono in the world.
Price’s teaching and production record attests to the scope of her lateral and interdisciplinary capacity. Price is interested in work which considers technical and conceptual overlaps. Much of Price’s work addresses the notion of “fitting”, both literally and metaphorically, often with regard to her own “fit” within various situations. She engages ironically but affectionately with themes of high and low "taste". Her work includes loom-shaped garments sensitive to material and structural properties. Madeleine Vionnet is Nancy’s cultural hero in the context of clothing and dress. Vionnet is nick named “The Queen of Draping”! Nancy’s love of cloth in relationship to the concept of clothing and the lived body has been central to her artistic output and research the past two decades.
Textile artist, curator and scholar, Dr. Wendy Landry states:
“Price’s work directly relates body and home décor as parallel modes of materiality constituting our socialized spatial environments that establish our fit and aspirations to, or our comments on, diverse dimensions of behavior and civility. These works also expressively delineate the intimate fit of dress with bodily anatomy and movement, as well as with social identity.”
Artist, curator, author Stephen Horne writes:
“With these works that traverse the boundaries of art, couture and craft, Price considers what is implied with the notion of “fitting” or it’s alternative, to not “fit.” Her conjunction of meticulous crafting and attention to varieties of detail are revealed in a work such as “Go On…” (2008). She has incorporated a series of expressionistic phrases or slogans appropriately spelled in the fabric by burning out the letters from the dress’s material. The imperatives she proposes (living, loving, dying) are all processes of dispersal, of ways in which a self is fractured, multiplied, lost, displaced. These are Nancy Price’s alternatives when faced with the constraints of “fitting.” At the same time, she uses processes and techniques that recollect aspects of tradition. Thinking through making and thinking in materiality, Price reshapes the body and its capacities such as movement and gesture while crossing from moments of comic absurdity to expressions of genuine reverence, between the materials and forms of popular or folk culture and high modernist couture.”
“Price’s work directly relates body and home décor as parallel modes of materiality constituting our socialized spatial environments that establish our fit and aspirations to, or our comments on, diverse dimensions of behavior and civility. These works also expressively delineate the intimate fit of dress with bodily anatomy and movement, as well as with social identity.”
Artist, curator, author Stephen Horne writes:
“With these works that traverse the boundaries of art, couture and craft, Price considers what is implied with the notion of “fitting” or it’s alternative, to not “fit.” Her conjunction of meticulous crafting and attention to varieties of detail are revealed in a work such as “Go On…” (2008). She has incorporated a series of expressionistic phrases or slogans appropriately spelled in the fabric by burning out the letters from the dress’s material. The imperatives she proposes (living, loving, dying) are all processes of dispersal, of ways in which a self is fractured, multiplied, lost, displaced. These are Nancy Price’s alternatives when faced with the constraints of “fitting.” At the same time, she uses processes and techniques that recollect aspects of tradition. Thinking through making and thinking in materiality, Price reshapes the body and its capacities such as movement and gesture while crossing from moments of comic absurdity to expressions of genuine reverence, between the materials and forms of popular or folk culture and high modernist couture.”