Nancy Cohen Hackensack Dreaming

Nancy Cohen achieves a delicate balance between celebration and critique in her large installation 'Hackensack Dreaming' of 2013-15. She revels in natural beauty and fecundity as she also comments on reckless environmental disregard. With this amalgamation, Cohen fills the gallery space with numerous images and forms recalling Mill Creek Marsh, a wetlands section of the Hackensack River. The topic of Cohen's installation is an area of New Jersey that is over-built. Principally, it is an environment of interlacing highways with massive big box stores offset by the Manhattan skyline in the distance. This portion of the New Jersey Meadowlands is lowlands, situated between the Palisades cliffs and the Watchung Mountains. Cohen's work recalls these specific surrounds while considering the environment and our relationship with it.