SUNY Empire mourns alumnus who founded feminist arts school

(SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY — JULY 16, 2024) Nancy Azara ’74, a sculptor best known for her carved wood sculptures and mixed media collages, has died. She was also a co-founder of the New York Feminist Art Institute, a school for women artists that emerged from the feminist consciousness raising that began in the early 1970s.

Azara was born in Brooklyn and began her training at Finch College, where she studied costume design. She spent several years working in theater as a costume designer.

In the mid-1960s, she attended the Art Students League of New York. She studied painting with expressionist painter Edwin Dickinson and sculptor John Hovannes. She fulfilled her dream of receiving a bachelor’s degree when she got a B.S. in community and human services from Empire State University in 1974, becoming one of the university’s earliest graduates.

In 1979, Azara co-founded the New York Feminist Art Institute with Miriam Schapiro, Carol Stronghilos, Irene Peslikis, Lucille Lessane, and Selena Whitefeather.  The institute’s advisory board included the sculptor Louise Nevelson, multimedia artist Faith Ringgold, and author Kate Millett, as well as feminist and activist Gloria Steinem and feminist art historian Linda Nochlin.

NYFAI was a place where art was taught to women by women. As an educational space, it served as a forum for female artists and art professionals to examine gender, self, and identity. It closed in 1990, due to a lack of funding.

From her studios in Tribeca and Woodstock, Azara developed and worked in a distinct style of large-scale sculpture and mixed media collages of found wood that she carved, ornamented, and mounted. Among the workshops she taught was one on making visual diaries, a form of personal journal drawing that became a popular feminist consciousness-raising technique.  

“She really did have an impact on new female artists of many generations, including me,” said Betty Wilde-Biasiny, a painter and printmaker as well as a professor of the visual arts for SUNY Empire.

Alan Mandell, Ph.D., a long-time faculty member and mentor at SUNY Empire, said it was notable in Azara’s obituary in “The New York Times” that she fulfilled her dream to attain a bachelor’s by attending SUNY Empire.  “What a wonderful example of the ways in which, for over more than a half century, our institution could help a person achieve something that she always felt she lacked,” he said. “How lucky SUNY Empire was to have welcomed her.” 

In 1984, Azara served as an advisor for the founding of Ceres Gallery, another feminist non-profit gallery space in New York City. Azara was also an alumna member of A.I.R Gallery in Brooklyn, the first all-female artists’ cooperative gallery in the U.S. founded in 1972.  

She is survived by her wife Dr. Darla Bjork, a daughter, a stepson, a granddaughter, and two siblings.

You can read more about her in our alumni stories and in a New York Times obituary.