Nadine Epstein | Artist
Visual artist, photographer,
drawing journal keeper
Nadine’s mixed media work encompasses drawing journals and photography, in particular, shadow self-portraits and collages. Her art has been displayed in museums and galleries in New York City, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Philadelphia and Washington DC, and has been supported by the Washington, DC Commission on the Arts. She’s also been an editorial illustrator, magazine art director, art show curator, multi-media exhibition designer, convener of art conversations, creative workshop leader and gallery cofounder.
The iShadow Project
While on a reporting trip to Ukraine in 2008, Nadine began to take photos of her shadow on a Kyiv street, while thinking of her ancestors, who had fleetingly called that land home. Since then, using mostly her iPhone, she has traveled around the world, exploring permutations of her shadow in daylight, moonlight, starlight, lamplight and streetlight. The iShadow Project is human geography with cultural, environmental and spiritual overtones. Texture and surfaces, natural and manmade; time of day; moisture in the air; topography; wind and weather; hormones and chemicals; and bodies of water, be they puddles or oceans, are all variables, not to mention the filters of light, soul and experience. The iShadow Project is also theater, dance and movement, hair and attire. Overall, it’s deeply feminist, exploring the exterior and interior shapes of the female body, and making what is fleeting, permanent, as a way of marking female existence on the earth.
Drawing Journals
Nadine’s drawing journals are vibrant and intimate documentations of her life, expressed in ink, marker, pastel, paint and other media. Focused on the interior life of women, her journals touch upon themes such as “The Inward Astronomer,” “Lovely Inarticulate Woman Goes into the World,” “Women as Highway,” “Women in Windows, “Women in Walls,” “The Middle East,” and “Drawing Fertility and Pregnancy.”
Illustrations
For several years, Nadine was a regular editorial illustrator contributor to the op-ed page of The Christian Science Monitor. She also created illustrations for Tikkun, Moment, The Whole Earth Review, Environmental Action, and other magazines and newspapers.