U of W art department founder inspired generations of artists
Nancy-Lou Patterson of Waterloo Born: Sept. 5, 1929 in Worcester, Mass. Died: Oct. 15, 2018 of age-related illness
WATERLOO — When a reporter asked Nancy-Lou Patterson to express her feelings about her art she responded “Being creative is who I am. It is everything. It is what I am about.”
That simple response hardly describes the breadth of NancyLou’s influence as an artist, an art teacher and a vigilant cheerleader for the arts. Founding chair of the University of Waterloo’s fine arts department, Nancy-Lou impacted thousands of students but she was also a prolific artist working in whatever medium moved her at the time: pencil sketching, fibre arts, quilting, illustration, liturgical art and stained glass. She was also a scholar, a published poet and author of several young adult novels based on the adventures of the Salisbury family.
If it related to creativity, Nancy-Lou not only embraced but mastered the art form yet these wildly creative streaks were always about the work, never about her.
“She would say ‘life is purpose, not applause,’” said her son, Jordan Patterson, the youngest of nine siblings and one of six mixed-race children Nancy-Lou and her husband, Palmer Patterson, adopted. That was the other thing about Nancy-Lou, she was all about diversity and inclusion long before it was a common theme in Waterloo Region or anywhere else for that matter.
In a tribute, art educator Linda Carson, said Nancy-Lou “reshaped my ideas about art and teaching and living a meaningful life.”
Linda was particularly impressed that Nancy-Lou’s art history course did not focus solely on Europe. She had a much more expansive view and included all the inhabited continents of the world. Nancy-Lou was interested in folk art and crafts, anything that represented a culture, a history, a people.
Nancy-Lou was born in Massachusetts on Sept. 5, 1929, one of four children born to parents who were academics. She followed in her artist mother’s footsteps, graduating in 1951 with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of Washington. She began her artistic career as a scientific illustrator at the University of Kansas and the Smithsonian, later spending nine years as a lecturer at Seattle University before moving to Waterloo with her husband, New Orleans-born historian Palmer Patterson.
The university was only five years old and in search of talented academics from the U.S., people like Palmer who holds a PhD in history.
Nancy-Lou quickly developed a life for herself in this new town. And what a life it was for the woman who was described by everyone as brilliant and interesting, the kind of person who could hold an entire room rapt as she delivered a lecture. Her attention to detail, her rigorous research and ability to be engaging made her lectures unmatched.
For an artist of Nancy-Lou’s ambition and energy she saw the lack of a fine arts department at the university as a challenge. She began teaching art and art history at the university’s Renison College, then in 1964 she became the director and curator of the university’s art gallery. Her foot was now firmly wedging open that door.
In 1968, a fine arts group was formed, a group that soon gained status as a department under Nancy-Lou’s leadership. In 1981, she became a full professor.
Linda recalled Nancy-Lou’s classes as a place of exploration where thought and self-expression was its lifeblood.
“She lavished fierce affection on her students, in all our awkward, eccentric glory,” remembered Linda. “One of my classmates wore a tutu over her jeans for most of the semester. NancyLou didn’t blink. She gave us a drawing assignment about identity and costume.”
Nancy-Lou taught art history and studio art until 1992 then following her retirement, she became the university’s first woman to be named distinguished professor emerita. That same year she received an honorary doctorate from Wilfrid Laurier University. She is also an inductee in the Waterloo Region Hall of Fame.
Outside of academia, NancyLou was an accomplished artist, with her textile work adorning churches across three continents, including St. John’s Lutheran Church in Waterloo. In her home church, St. Columba, Nancy-Lou created a collection of decorative art including quilted banners, stained glass, embroidered cushions, wood carvings, metalwork and ink drawings. She donated it all to the church, a rare and precious collection said the church’s former minister, Rev. David Joyce.
“Her art is an inspiration, her art is so unique,” he said. “St. Columba has some of the most beautiful works you can imagine and it’s not just here.”
He rhymed off several facilities home to her works, such as the stained glass in the chapel at Conrad Grebel College, Beth Jacob Synagogue and Pioneer Park Library. In St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Kitchener her largest altar banner hangs at 27 by nine feet. Another banner, “Tree of Life,” adorns a wall at the Freeport campus of Grand River Hospital.
Jordan said that to list his mother’s accomplishments is not how she wanted to be remembered, though it’s impossible to ignore.
Susan Burke, retired curator at Schneider Haus, said Nancy-Lou spent a year at the museum in 1999 as folk artist-in-residence.
“As soon as she and Palmer got here, they got interested in (Mennonite) folk art,” said Susan. “She focused on what the women were doing.” Nancy-Lou became an expert and wrote scholarly papers on Mennonites.
Nancy-Lou was well-read, articulate and knowledgeable but she definitely was not an art snob. Her tastes in literature included detective novels and her musical tastes stretched to Elvis.
She was the kind of person who assessed a situation, took action then moved on, no fuss and she had an uncanny ability to focus. Friend Stephanie Walker said when Nancy-Lou was involved in a project, even if it was just reading a newspaper, she was fully absorbed.
“She could be intimidating,” admitted Stephanie. “She was this force and she didn’t suffer fools gladly.
“She scared people but I don’t think it was intended, she just operated at that pace.”
In Jordan’s eulogy, he said his mother made many dreams come true. “She threw birthday parties for people who might not have had one” and she never sought recognition.
“All she cared about was you and that your feelings mattered,” said Jordan.
On the home front, Nancy-Lou created a Bohemian lifestyle for the family. Jordan said their yard always looked like a “hippie playground.” Nancy-Lou was about creativity, exploring and not about acquiring things unless those things had artistic merit.
In their personal lives, Palmer and Nancy-Lou were very close and they supported each other when their little girl, Jennifer, was hit and killed by a car. It was a tragedy that darkened part of their brilliantly colourful lives.
Stephanie remembers their home as lively, always interesting and there were towers of books everywhere.
“It was a fascinating household,” she said, adding the family had a housekeeper which relieved Nancy-Lou of the day-today operations of keeping house.
Nancy-Lou once told a reporter that over the years she had taken many people into their home, from draft dodgers to refugees. Novelist Jane Urquhart, a former neighbour hinted to a reporter that Nancy-Lou was the model for Klara, the protagonist in “The Stone Carvers.”
Nancy-Lou was high energy, intense and planned her day-today life with meticulous precision, so when she was diagnosed with Alzheimers about 15 years ago, she didn’t complain. She simply accepted and admitted to Jordan “one day, it will all go black.”
And it did. Nancy-Lou spent several of her final years in that blackness and passed away Oct. 15, 2018.