NY2CA Gallery

Nancy Selvin

Show & Tell: Irene Nelson & Nancy Selvin

October 8, 2026 – November 15, 2026

About the Artist

Nancy Selvin

Known for her explorations of the vessel form, Nancy Selvin is among a group of Bay Area ceramic artists who identify with the radical ‘California Clay Movement’, challenging ceramic traditions involving expression, form and function and an art world that placed the medium outside the established hierarchy. A graduate of UC Berkeley, Selvin received her M.A. in 1970 studying with Ron Nagle and the late Peter Voulkos. In 2020 she retired from teaching ceramics at California College of the Arts. Selvin maintains an active studio practice in West Berkeley, California.

Artworks included in the exhibition “Show and Tell” are physical objects, ceramic booklike forms, with tactile and sensory detail in honor of that timeless literary advice Strunk and White first gave us in 1959: “show don’t tell.”

As we descend into a vortex of plagiarism, the unreal, the pirated, the unprovable, doubt and skepticism create unknowable challenges. I like the fact that we can experience the night sky, that early each morning the sun is on the horizon, that love exists. This is a time of extreme global uncertainty, but humankind has always coped with the indeterminate. It allows us to find real, meaningful, interpretations, our own strategies: Winton Marsalis improvising on trumpet, a handmade watercolor brush with natural bristle, young children painting pottery, the World Cup competition, Stonehenge: these are REAL human interventions, imparting tangible experience: evidence that craft, skill, trial and error, sportsmanship, sweat, talent, and effort triumph. The works in this exhibition would not have been possible without the expertise and thoughtful assistance of Eleni Berg, recently minted UC Berkeley MFA.