Nancy Lu Rosenheim is a visual artist from Chicago, Illinois, USA, whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, painting, drawing, and printmaking. A Studio 88 Artist Residency alumni, she returns in July–August 2026 for a solo residency, continuing an evolving body of research that began during her previous stay in Chiang Mai.
Nancy received her Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts (SVA), New York, and has also studied at the Faculty of Art + Design, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago. Her artistic development has been further shaped through residencies including Ragdale (2016, 2022), the Hyde Park Art Center’s Center Program (2018), and Studio 88 Artist Residency (2024).
Working across diverse materials and processes, Nancy creates fictional worlds where the grotesque meets the flamboyant, and hybrid creatures express deeply human emotions within landscapes transformed by environmental change. Drawing from animal, human, and mythological forms, her works explore psychological and emotional states through portraiture, allegorical landscapes, illustration, and installation. Inspired equally by the flora and fauna of Wisconsin’s Driftless Area and encounters with wildlife during her travels, she is particularly drawn to overlooked creatures—rodents, pigeons, and worms—as symbols of vulnerability, instinct, and our shared humanity.
Material exploration is central to her practice. Whether working with traditional paints, raw pigments, papier mâché, plaster, polystyrene, natural latex, silk thread, or even gold, she allows each material to retain its own physical character, using texture and form to communicate emotion as much as imagery. Guided by intuition and a spirit of discovery, her creative process embraces unpredictability, inviting viewers to complete the narratives she begins.
During her 2026 residency, Nancy continues developing Ghost Interviews, a project that originated at Studio 88 in 2024. The work imagines conversations with the deceased as a way to explore grief, memory, consciousness, and the unseen. Through ghosts and hybrid beings that shift between life and death, she creates emotionally charged works immersed in tender, candy-coloured palettes that reclaim love and sentimentality as powerful artistic languages. The project has taken on new meaning following a death and serious illness within her family in 2025.
While in Chiang Mai, Nancy hopes to deepen her research through learning traditional metal repoussé techniques at Wat Sri Suphan, experimenting with ThaiTone pigments and locally sourced inks, and reconnecting with Lanna artists and students she met during her 2024 residency. Continuing to work independently while engaging with the arts community, she returns to Studio 88 to further investigate how cultural perspectives on death, the afterlife, and transformation can shape contemporary visual language.
More about the artist on Nancy Lu Rosenheim’s Instagram.
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