Vendor Spotlight
On Artist Nancy Patz
A blog post by JMM Office Manager and Shop Assistant Jessica Konigsberg. For more posts from Jessica, click HERE.
As my September blog contribution, I’m delighted to feature a longtime Gift Shop vendor and JMM collaborator: Baltimore artist, illustrator, and children’s book author Nancy Patz. Many of Nancy’s popular children’s books are available at Esther’s Place Gift Shop, including To Annabella Pelican from Thomas Hippopotamus, Sarah Bear & Sweet Sidney and her newest offering, The Elephant with a Knot in His Trunk, written with Dr. Stuart Sheer.
Patz is a Baltimore native who went to Forest Park and Goucher before graduating from Stanford University. Her paintings and drawings have been featured in exhibits at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, the Peale Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art and numerous galleries, and she often speaks to school groups and teachers on the art of the picture book. Patz is the mother of two wonderful daughters and six “absolutely terrific” grandchildren.
I suggested a few questions that Nancy might respond to, and she eagerly accepted the opportunity to share about her current project, an exhibit about memory and loss soon to be displayed as a part of Reimagine End of Life—a weeklong, community-driven program in New York City exploring questions about life and death. These events will be held October 27 to November 3, 2018.
Nancy’s current project has its roots in a 2010 Jewish Museum of Maryland exhibition called Nancy Patz: Her Inward Eye.
Nancy shared:
“Now, eight years later, paintings, drawings, and poems from the section called Remembering My Mother have been brought up from my basement, unwrapped, re-curated, re-wrapped and will be exhibited in New York in October.
My mother, Fanny Jonas Patz, died of cancer in 1947. She was 41. It took me almost 50 years to begin to write and paint her back into my life. I wrote poems about her. I drew her portrait from old photographs, painting in different mediums and different styles. Sometimes I wrote poems on the drawings. Sometimes I drew drawings on the poems.
I cherished this sad, happy, bittersweet experience, and I returned to it again and again for more than 15 years, as I re-imagined my mother and the part she played in my early life. My new exhibit, now called All About My Mother, is one of more than 250 events in which collaborators will explore the subject of death and celebrate life from many perspectives.
On the evening of October 31, Rabbi Elana Zaiman and I will walk through my exhibit, discussing with each other and with visitors Remembering the Dead and the Living: Sharing Their Stories and Ours. (FYI, Rabbi Zaiman is the daughter of Rabbi Joel and Ann Zaiman – a lovely unexpected Baltimore connection!)
It pleases me deeply that this meaningful part of my original JMM exhibit will be seen again. The moment also gives me a chance to lift my glass once more in praise of JMM’s former Associate Director Anita Kassof, former Curator Karen Falk, Director of Learning and Visitor Experience Ilene Dackman-Alon, former Deputy Director Deborah Cardin, and the rest of the incredible JMM Team for their expertise in creating that original exhibit years ago.”
Thank you so much to Nancy for sharing this update. Nancy Patz’s children’s books are a staple at Esther’s Place, where we love their themes of friendship, adventure, acceptance, and self-discovery as well as their memorable illustrations. We also carry two adult books by Patz—18 Stones (co-authored by Susan L. Roth) and Who Was the Woman Who Wore the Hat? Both offer thought-provoking and poignantly imagined Holocaust stories that address themes of connection and loss.
