I make collages. I use a lot of floral and nature images. They are accessible
to the viewer and offer a huge palette. Generally those organic bits
are woven with a geometry that offers a sturdy scaffold for metaphors,
feelings and concepts.
I create a conversation based on the interaction of the textiles that I find, procure and have in my large collection. That conversation usually leads me down one of two paths - a surrealist narrative or a formalist's concern where I build a new item from de-constructed ones. I rearrange and manipulate elements until they look right as a formal arrangement or psychological landscape. Sometimes the two converge or overlap and I can explore both ideas in one piece. My ideas often boil down to the push and pull of opposites: order and disorder, alignment and the eccentric.
This piece below, by Lousie Farr for Women's Wear Daily, describes my clothing, my deafness and my background. It's older, yes, but Louise sums up my design years pretty well.
It not unusual at West Side Los Angeles gatherings these days for people to pounce on each other gleefully with a sense of kinship if they dressed in Nancy Cook Smith subtle, but instantly recognizable designs. They seem to take a delight in meeting someone else who has made a discovery that the rest of the world hasn yet been let in on.
Cook Smith is a weaver who works mostly in cotton and rayon, with some silk, wool and linen. She creates dresses, skirts, jackets, coats and scarves that have caught the attention of affluent, artistic clients, as well as with celebrities. Actresses Lauren Bacall, Carrie Fisher and Anne Bancroft and writer Melissa Mathison buy her clothes.
Actually, Cook Smith was reluctant to name drop, even to drop her own name. She resisted labeling altogether until recently, then moved to removable paper tags and finally to sewn-in labels. "I wanted people to be attracted by the fabric, she says, "Not the name."
She sitting in her high-ceilinged sunlight studio which is tucked away behind a California bungalow on a leafy street. Behind her are shelves of scarves and racks of skirts, tops and coats of rich and varied textures and shadings. Her production methods, she points out, resemble those of an artist studio rather than a factory. In another room across the lawn, three weavers sit at looms surrounded by brightly colored yarns. She doesn't use patterns. I don't need them. I've been sewing all my life", she says.
As a child, Cook Smith, who was born without any hearing, attended the Clarke School for the deaf. She began sewing and collecting fabric when she was seven and later decided to make her own fabric. At 17, she transferred to a regular high school.
"Making that transition dealing with people who never dealt with deaf people - was hard," says Cook Smith, who lip-reads English and Spanish and speaks English. (Often, according to her husband, artist Peter Tigler, people don realize that she deaf. They think she has a foreigner. But, Tigler points out, she always said "yes" to opportunity.
After high school, she attended the Rhode Island School of Design. "When I was a kid, it was my dream to be part of the world of the hearing," she says. "And my dream was fulfilled."
But she is afraid that her desire and ability to communicate with the hearing world might make her "a rare species." While she feels it important for hearing people to try to understand the deaf (she hopes that Marlee Matlin Academy Award will help), she also thinks deaf people have to make an effort to communicate with the hearing.
Cook Smith is not sure how many garments she creates a year. The number is in the hundreds rather than the thousands. But she and her weavers make 8,000 to 10,000 scarves a year. She uses them to experiment with techniques for larger fabric pieces. "I use yarn as if it were paint." she says.
Ten years ago, she and her husband arrived in Los Angeles from her native Connecticut, and since then, she has built a national following without advertising or trade shows. Her designs are carried nationwide, at Santa Barbara Elizabeth Fortner Gallery; the Smithsonian gift shop in Washington, D.C.; the Folk Art and Craft Museum and Jerry Magnin both in Los Angeles, and Henri Bendel and Stuart Ross in New York.
"I think her sense of weaving is the finest of any contemporary weaver I know," says Jan Brilliot owner of the fashionable Weathervane II on Santa Monica's Montana Avenue. "Most weavers don like to cut into their fabric, which gives the clothes a boxy, Sixties look that isn interesting to the contemporary woman. Nancy is cutting into and tailoring and draping the fabric and coming up with beautiful shapes."
According to Brilliot, her customer is a woman from 30 to 35 on up, well-educated, sophisticated and traveled and tired of the mass-produced. She won't, says Brilliot, buy Liz Claiborne or Donna Karan just because it's the thing. "She might buy a piece of Donna Karan, but she'll put it with one of Nancy's jackets and an antique pin."
"The most important thing about my clothing is the fabric itself. You can tell anything by seeing it on the hanger," says Cook Smith, who becomes frustrated over what she calls her clients "matching hangup." She likes to mix fabrics, and they don't
"I use every possible color so that my customer can finish off with whatever they have in their closet," she says.
Although she has struggled, she does not seem bitter. Sometimes she even wonders if her deafness is a blessing. "My eyes are my important tool," she says. "If it weren't for that, I wonder if I would have this keen eye."
Her husband answers the phone and talks with clients – at the moment they handle 70 accounts. When they first arrived in Los Angeles, they made cold calls to stores, garments in hand. "We were rather unprofessional," Tigler says. "But in Los Angeles, you can still do that."
Meeting people used to be tough for Cook Smith, but three years ago she began to feel confident.
"I don't consider myself a deaf woman anyway," she says. "I consider myself a designer."
Cook Smith is a weaver who works mostly in cotton and rayon, with some silk, wool and linen. She creates dresses, skirts, jackets, coats and scarves that have caught the attention of affluent, artistic clients, as well as with celebrities. Actresses Lauren Bacall, Carrie Fisher and Anne Bancroft and writer Melissa Mathison buy her clothes.
Actually, Cook Smith was reluctant to name drop, even to drop her own name. She resisted labeling altogether until recently, then moved to removable paper tags and finally to sewn-in labels. "I wanted people to be attracted by the fabric, she says, "Not the name."
She sitting in her high-ceilinged sunlight studio which is tucked away behind a California bungalow on a leafy street. Behind her are shelves of scarves and racks of skirts, tops and coats of rich and varied textures and shadings. Her production methods, she points out, resemble those of an artist studio rather than a factory. In another room across the lawn, three weavers sit at looms surrounded by brightly colored yarns. She doesn't use patterns. I don't need them. I've been sewing all my life", she says.
As a child, Cook Smith, who was born without any hearing, attended the Clarke School for the deaf. She began sewing and collecting fabric when she was seven and later decided to make her own fabric. At 17, she transferred to a regular high school.
"Making that transition dealing with people who never dealt with deaf people - was hard," says Cook Smith, who lip-reads English and Spanish and speaks English. (Often, according to her husband, artist Peter Tigler, people don realize that she deaf. They think she has a foreigner. But, Tigler points out, she always said "yes" to opportunity.
After high school, she attended the Rhode Island School of Design. "When I was a kid, it was my dream to be part of the world of the hearing," she says. "And my dream was fulfilled."
But she is afraid that her desire and ability to communicate with the hearing world might make her "a rare species." While she feels it important for hearing people to try to understand the deaf (she hopes that Marlee Matlin Academy Award will help), she also thinks deaf people have to make an effort to communicate with the hearing.
Cook Smith is not sure how many garments she creates a year. The number is in the hundreds rather than the thousands. But she and her weavers make 8,000 to 10,000 scarves a year. She uses them to experiment with techniques for larger fabric pieces. "I use yarn as if it were paint." she says.
Ten years ago, she and her husband arrived in Los Angeles from her native Connecticut, and since then, she has built a national following without advertising or trade shows. Her designs are carried nationwide, at Santa Barbara Elizabeth Fortner Gallery; the Smithsonian gift shop in Washington, D.C.; the Folk Art and Craft Museum and Jerry Magnin both in Los Angeles, and Henri Bendel and Stuart Ross in New York.
"I think her sense of weaving is the finest of any contemporary weaver I know," says Jan Brilliot owner of the fashionable Weathervane II on Santa Monica's Montana Avenue. "Most weavers don like to cut into their fabric, which gives the clothes a boxy, Sixties look that isn interesting to the contemporary woman. Nancy is cutting into and tailoring and draping the fabric and coming up with beautiful shapes."
According to Brilliot, her customer is a woman from 30 to 35 on up, well-educated, sophisticated and traveled and tired of the mass-produced. She won't, says Brilliot, buy Liz Claiborne or Donna Karan just because it's the thing. "She might buy a piece of Donna Karan, but she'll put it with one of Nancy's jackets and an antique pin."
"The most important thing about my clothing is the fabric itself. You can tell anything by seeing it on the hanger," says Cook Smith, who becomes frustrated over what she calls her clients "matching hangup." She likes to mix fabrics, and they don't
"I use every possible color so that my customer can finish off with whatever they have in their closet," she says.
Although she has struggled, she does not seem bitter. Sometimes she even wonders if her deafness is a blessing. "My eyes are my important tool," she says. "If it weren't for that, I wonder if I would have this keen eye."
Her husband answers the phone and talks with clients – at the moment they handle 70 accounts. When they first arrived in Los Angeles, they made cold calls to stores, garments in hand. "We were rather unprofessional," Tigler says. "But in Los Angeles, you can still do that."
Meeting people used to be tough for Cook Smith, but three years ago she began to feel confident.
"I don't consider myself a deaf woman anyway," she says. "I consider myself a designer."