Nanette Carter (born on January 30, 1954 in Columbus, Ohio) is an African American artist living and working in New York City. Her father, [[Matthew G. Carter]], was the director of the segregated Negro YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) in Columbus. Her mother was an elementary school teacher who taught dance on the side. Nanette had an older sister, Bettye Carter.
The family moved to Montclair, New Jersey due to her father’s new job at the National Office of the YMCA in New York City and became the Mayor of Montclair, NJ. Her mother became a reading specialist in the Paterson public school system and a Vice Principle. When she was six years old Nanette’s first art class was at the Montclair Art Museum (MAM). Enthralled by the Native American collection at MAM she saw for the first time American indigenous art. Looking at headdresses made from beads, feathers and leather opened her eyes to the materiality of art. She recalls her mother designing and sewing the costumes for the dance recitals. Watching her mother working with colorful and shiny fabrics ignited her creative instincts. Bringing together pieces of brightly colored fabric to make a tutu or dress also made an indelible mark on the young child.
Nanette received a BA from Oberlin College in 1976 majoring in Studio Art and Art History. During her junior year she lived and studied at the Academia Belle Arti Perugia, Italy. In 1978 she received her MFA from Pratt in Brooklyn, NY. Then in the fall of 1978 she began teaching printmaking and drawing at the Dwight Englewood School in Englewood, NJ. After teaching there for 9 years she became a full time artist exhibiting at the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art in Detroit and Chicago and the June Kelly Gallery in NYC, Sande Webster Gallery in Philadelphia, [[Alitash Kebede Fine Art] in Los Angeles, California and more. Today Nanette C. Carter is a tenured Adjunct Professor at Pratt in Brooklyn, teaching Drawing.
Nanette is known for her collages with paper, canvas and most recently Mylar. Mylar is a sheet of plastic that is archival. Like her mother she is joining colorful pieces of Mylar that she has painted, drawn and printed on to create her art. She first saw Mylar at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in the 1984 exhibition, “Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School”. Many of Wright’s students exhibiting in the show were drawing on the Mylar surface. Nanette approached one of the curators to inquire about the sheet of plastic. Today she is best known for her works on Mylar. Her works are direct reactions to issues around war, injustices, technology and living in the 21st Century.
