what they say
“Inspired by flowing organic forms, the artist’s painstakingly assembled, laminated plywood pieces are enlivened by bright aniline dye. Autumn: Leaf 2 and Autumn: Leaf 3…seemed to float gracefully on air, as though they were wind blown. In contrast, Summer: Red Dragon, a deep red tunnel, assertively jutted out from the wall and drew viewers in. And the long, pale blue and tan Winter: Blue Wave captured the feel of gently lapping water. The compelling Summer: Sun 1…shone like spun gold rising from the floor. The tour de force of craftsmanship here, however, was Spring: Green Nautilus, in which layer after layer of plywood, dyed various shades of green, grew toward a yawning, curved opening…”
-Stephen May, ARTnews
June 2007
“A kind of modern-day alchemist, Nancy Sansom Reynolds has mastered a variety of means to transform flat sheets of plywood into abstract, organic shapes. With sweeping curves, undulating contours, and dramatic cavities, her graceful, meticulously crafted objects achieve a fluid sense of motion. Her sculptures evoke everything from desert canyons to sea life…, Working with patience and skill, Reynolds has literally bent plywood to her will, making it dance and sway.”
-Stephen May, ARTnews,
March 2004
“…these works are imbued with a lilting, irrational power. Simultaneously freeform and meticulously crafted, emotive and wise, these sculptures seek their own destiny…”
-Collette Chattopadhyay, Sculpture magazine,
July/August 2001
“A flamenco dancer’s skirt. An elephant’s ear. Exotic fungi. Pulled taffy. Seashells. A curling leaf. A cosmic explosion. These are just a few of the visions summoned by the imaginative sculpture of Nancy Sansom Reynolds…Reynolds compels wood to flex, fold, twist, sigh and stall; her shape-shifting is organic ecstasy.”
Cathy Bird, Creative Loafing (Atlanta),
December 2000
“The plywood sculptures of Sansom Reynolds… are poetry in motion. The sinuous wall-hung forms curl and ripple, fold and undulate. Forms in nature come to mind.”
Catherine Fox, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
December 2000
“Reynolds’ organic forms billow, enclose and jut, metamorphing…into sculpture that is at first challenging to address, then dauntingly beautiful. It is initially disconcerting to accept the rubbery forms as wood, then just as challenging to ponder the abstractions without decomposing the process…The results are clearly liquid.”
Curtia James, ARTPAPERS,
January-February 1999
“…sculptor Nancy Sansom Reynolds creates shapely, organic forms that were painstakingly layered from slices of wood in a technical process that defies any easy explanation. The pieces are so precise that they seem to have defined their own contours by growing that way – like fungi, or the horns of a ram. It would be easy to think that the artist simply scavenged them on a mountainside rather than crafted them in her studio.”
Marc Awodey, Burlington (Vt.) Free Press,
January 1998
“Rifts form where plywood folds meet, recalling the sharp edge of the river, and also suggesting a window onto spirit life hidden deep inside the form.”
George Howell, Sculpture magazine,
December 1996