Nancye McCrary has exhibited her work throughout the United States. She has taught visual art in public and private elementary, middle, and secondary schools, including Arts Director in a development center for children and youth with disabilities (Knoxville, TN). Additionally, she has been Artist-in-Residence for Learning through Education in the Arts (LEAP) (San Francisco, CA), Youth in Art and the Very Special Arts (Marin County, CA). Her students have won numerous awards in the National Scholastic Arts competitions, were selected to exhibit at the Tennessee Arts Commission Gallery (Nashville, TN), the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the San Francisco Ballet. Dr. McCrary has also taught studio courses, art history, art appreciation, art therapy and art education on the post-secondary level, designing and serving as Program Chair for a new Art Education teacher preparation program at a small Women’s College (Gainesville, GA). More recently, she was an Assistant and Associate Professor in fine arts and teacher education at the University of Kentucky (Lexington, KY) and St. Catharine College (St. Catharine, KY), where she served as Chair of Professional Studies.

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In a recent series, Sacred Places (image on right), McCrary juxtaposes images of what are commonly considered sacred sites with images of the unacknowledged sacred places in the natural world. She is concerned with the tendency to preserve human-built sacred sites while rapidly destroying the most sacred in our natural world. Living in a time when glaciers are melting, rainforests are burning, and people are masking themselves against pollution and contagions, it seems more urgent than ever to reconsider what we view as sacred and how we embrace and protect those places. It is a consciousness that acknowledges the sanctity of a walk in the woods. McCrary has co-authored a book that investigates the aesthetic intersections of poetry & painting in collaboration with long-time poet, Marilyn Fox, Ph.D. 

 

Nancye McCrary lives in Central Kentucky, where she maintains a painting and teaching studio on 43 acres.