Nancy Azara + Darla Bjork | OPUS 40: The Richards Gallery at OPUS 40

CROSSING OVER  is an exhibition featuring the sculptures, paintings, and prints of the late feminist artist Nancy Azara (1930-2024), and encaustic paintings by her widow, Darla Bjork. Although their artworks were inspired by different sources, (Azara explored matriarchal archetypes while Bjork mined the psyche), Both artists were neo-expressionists and emphasized the power of the gesture on their mark-making.  

Together for over 40 years, Nancy Azara and Darla Bjork were a couple during a transitional time in American history from a barely tolerated union in the 80s through an official recognition of their relationship in 2011 when gay marriage finally became legal in New York State. The artists were both part of the New York Feminist Art Institute, an organization that grew out of the feminist movement of the 1970s providing art and writing classes taught by women for women. 

About Nancy Azara: 

Nancy Azara was an artist and feminist educator best known for her large-scale wood sculptures and mixed media collages. Nancy developed a distinct style of sculpture - found wood, carved, ornamented and mounted. Instinctive chip carving peels off an outer layer of wood, reaching for an essentialized raw experience of the body, of the limbs, exposing flesh and blood. This work explored life cycles, utilizing the metaphor of tree for personhood. Egg tempera, often in reds and pinks, and aluminum, palladium, gold gilding recover these exposed layers, exploring folkloric stories of women’s roles, goddess imagery, ancient symbols, mystic spiritual traditions and affirmation of female self.

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About Darla Bjork: 

Darla Bjork is an artist who early on channeled her creative energy into her career as a psychiatrist in NYC. After some early explorations in stone sculpture, she turned her attention to painting in 1977.  Culled from years of working as a psychiatrist, Bjork's imagery is formed from thr driving forces of the human psyche: passion and pain. Her most recent paintings  are created with oil stick on wood panels of varying sizes, often layering and scraping to achieve qualities of richness and vitality while digging beyond the surface to reveal what is hidden. This layered technique invites the observer to explore the depths of shifting perspectives and consider the personal experience of identity. Uniting her career as a psychiatrist together with her art practice , Darla Bjork seeks to reveal the hidden layers of living a human life. 

This exhibition at The Richards Gallery at Opus 40 will travel to Venice, Italy for an affiliated show at Castello 925 during the 61st Venice Biennale.