Nina de Creeft Ward facts for kids

Nina de Creeft Ward is an American artist born in 1933. She creates amazing art using different materials like bronze, soft sculptures, and special prints. Nina Ward has shown her artwork in many places, including the Philippines and the United States. She even won an award in 2006 for her clay artwork.

Most of Nina Ward's art is about animals. She has made sculptures of animals, including some that looked like endangered or extinct species. She also taught art to students, for example, at the University of Northern Iowa. Her unique clay animal models are made using a special technique called raku ware.

Nina Ward's Early Life and Education

Nina de Creeft Ward was born in 1933 in New York City. Her parents, Jose de Creeft and Alice Robertson Carr de Creeft, were both sculptors, which means they made art by shaping materials. Nina's mother loved animals very much, and this helped Nina develop her own strong affection for them.

After her parents divorced, Nina, her mother, and her brother moved to Santa Barbara, California. She grew up in Santa Barbara and Ojai, California. Nina went to a school called Happy Valley School, which is now known as Besant Hill School.

While studying at Scripps College, Nina started drawing large draft horses. She earned her first college degree from Scripps College in 1956. Later, she received another degree from the Claremont Graduate School in 1964. She also studied art at the Massachusetts College of Art. Nina learned from famous artists like Albert Stewart, Betty Davenport Ford, and Paul Soldner. Paul Soldner taught her how to make raku ware, which is a special way to fire clay. In 2001, Nina moved back to Santa Barbara after living in Iowa for 26 years with her husband. They have five children.

Nina Ward's Art Career

In 1975, Nina Ward moved to Cedar Falls, Iowa. There, she taught art at the University of Northern Iowa for nine years. She loved teaching art to people of all ages, from young children to adults. Before that, she also taught at Girls Collegiate School in Claremont for a few years.

Nina Ward creates art using many different methods. She works with bronze, makes soft sculptures, and creates prints like etchings, woodcuts, and monoprints. She is especially known for her clay animals, which are sold across the United States. Nina says she works "almost exclusively with animal themes." She even mixes her own special "sandy raku clay recipe."

She explained her artistic process:

The animals are individuals to me, and I try to stop once the personality is established and the basics are there. I like to leave some sense of how the piece was made, sometimes in a remnant of the texture of the canvas I roll the slab out on, sometimes in a little roughness in the modeling, sometimes in the harder line of the trimming. I like to leave in some of the scoring and drawing marks, and they may lead me to draw more with a sharp tool. I feel the piece should portray an animal in spirit and in form, but still be a clay animal.

In 1998, Nina Ward created a large sculpture of two draft horses called Shoulders of Giants. This sculpture is located at the University of Northern Iowa's library and museum. In 1999, she made a bronze sculpture of a farm dog named Shep. You can find Shep at the Patty Jischke Children's Garden in Reiman Gardens. To create Shep, Nina first drew many pictures of her own dog. Then, she made small clay models. Once she was happy with the small models, she created a full-size clay model. This clay model was then turned into a bronze sculpture in Kalona, Iowa.

In 2016, Nina Ward was a judge for the Tri-Cities Online Ceramics Show. This show was organized by the Student Art Fund of the Santa Barbara Art Association.

Art Exhibitions

Nina Ward's art has been shown in many exhibitions. In 1998, she had an exhibition called Rhino/Blaauwbock Project. This project used art that looked like extinct and endangered animals. Her goal was to show how people have harmed the balance of nature. Nina said she wanted to make people think about important issues.

In 2012, Nina Ward had an art exhibition at Young’s Gallery in Los Olivos, California. She also held an exhibition in 2015 at the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts. This show included her sculptures, prints, and drawings. In 2020, Nina displayed 28 of her animal sculptures at the South Willard gallery in Los Angeles, California. Another exhibition in 2020, called Santa Barbara Printmakers: Wild Places in Print, featured Nina's art at the Wildling Museum’s Barbara Goodall Education Center. Her work was also part of a 2022 exhibition titled An Encomium: Women in Art at the University of Northern Iowa Gallery of Art. Nina Ward's exhibitions have been shown in many places, including the Philippines, California, Maryland, Iowa, Chicago, and Kansas City.

See also

In Spanish: Nina de Creeft Ward para niños