37 Pat Nixon | Arts + Literature Laboratory | Madison Contemporary Arts Center

37 Pat Nixon

  • Pat Nixon by Kassandra Palmer
  • Pat Nixon by Kassandra Palmer

Pat Nixon

Kassandra Palmer
Oil on canvas, wood, plastic toys, gouache, watercolor
$300

Artist Statement

My sense is that Pat Nixon was an intensely private woman and a reluctant public figure. Although, being the type to make the best of things, Pat’s disdain for political life didn’t keep her from successfully playing the game. Seemingly conflicted by the gaps between some of her more progressive instincts and her deep obligations to tradition, the many paradoxes of her position and her person resist easy summary. In her own words, “I know a lot, but you have to keep it to yourself when you’re in this position...I just want to go down in history as the wife of the president.”

About the Artist

Kassandra Palmer is an artist who makes paintings, drawings, and sculptures.

Intuitive, intimately scaled, and often imbued with a lighthearted humor, her work is inspired by melodies from the B-side of human history. Through the layering of symbol, fact, figment, and emotion, her images are like an accumulation of echoes, a cacophony of fragmented phrases that combine to create a familiar sound, almost like a song you’ve heard before. As a keeper and maker of stories, Kassandra considers herself to be an unreliable, but earnest, witness. She manufactures these missing artifacts in the hope that they become beacons that flatten time and point toward paradox.

Kassandra was born in Fairfield, California and was raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin. She graduated summa cum laude from Santa Clara University with a degree in physics, and earned her MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Iowa. Kassandra has exhibited her work internationally, and she has taught painting and drawing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Carroll University, and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kassandra lives and works in Madison, WI and is currently represented by James May Gallery (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and Stay Home Gallery (Paris, TN).

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Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.

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