Nancy Cohen

collaborations

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Confluence a collaboration between Anna Boothe and Nancy Cohen about glass, time and rivers.

“Confluence,” was born during an international artist’s residency at WheatonArts in NJ in 2024 and combined our (Anna Boothe and Nancy Cohen) collaborative research into the regional glass history from the 1700s to the present and its relationship to local waterways and overall ecology.

The nature of our collaboration is one of taking risks in ways that eclipse what we do in our individual studios and in doing so employ atypical combinations of methods and materials. We explore the experimental and conceptually fluid nature of our chosen medium, glass. By altering the material via familiar techniques but in unconventional ways without predetermination, we push the common boundaries of the medium and achieve results that are unique and expand mainstream visual norms.

In this joint project, we combine unlikely subject matter for art: history, science, and the environment. Together, by exploiting the fluid/non-fluid dualities of glass we are able to literally melt and thus transpose the static hard-edged properties of scientific apparatus with the soft-edged sinuous characteristics of the natural world, while maintaining a deep understanding of the history of each.

Our project has generated individual wall-mounted, freestanding, and hanging sculptures and installations created from primarily recycled and/or repurposed glass.  We approached manipulating the material anew, experimentally in ways we had yet to investigate. Our fresh perspective resulted in an expressiveness that evolved organically, yielding results that were serendipitous and synergistic. For example, we used 19^th C. molds intended to make functional objects and instead generated forms that reflected the translucent quality of present-day waterways; we made faceted pressed-glass objects in the facility’s turn-of-the-last century glass press, then melted the spoils over volumes of sand to develop new shapes; and, we filled scientific glass apparatus (seconds donated by the local industry) with natural metal oxides that when heated and deformed transformed into elusive x-ray-like drawings (captured examinations of the past that illuminate visions of a future perspective).

Upcoming exhibitions:

September 9 - November 1, 2026, Robert Lehman Gallery at UrbanGlass,

647 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY.  https://urbanglass.org/events

Opening reception: September 9th, 2026 6-9pm.

Panel discussion with Mary Mills, Ferris Olin, Phil Surham and artists: September 22nd, 2026 7-8pm.

Dance Performance of Grain and conversation on collaboration: October 30th, 7-9pm

January -March 2027, Stockton University Art Gallery, Galloway, New Jersey