Nancy Jane Rosing

Nancy Rosing, a visual artist and museum exhibit designer born in 1936 in North Saint Paul as Nancy Jane Howard, died January 8 of natural causes.
She earned her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and was active in the Minneapolis art world of the 1960s, along with her husband Larry Rosing. In 1965, Bottega gallery (Article) featured their work in a six-artist show that got some attention.
After studying and living in both Mexico (scholarship to Instituto Allende, San Miguel) and Italy (Monreale), she returned to the United States, first in Ohio and then to New York City, where she and Larry were some of the earliest artist community in Tribeca; they bought a warehouse loft in 1973 and had to make it inhabitable, and she lived there 50 years.
She was a talented professional calligrapher and avid amateur poet, and she often illustrated her poems. Pastels were her favorite visual art medium, but she also loved to photograph and print ganged/panoramic images using cyanotype; the Mississippi River and the MN farm of her relatives were two of her early and favorite photographic subjects.
An important trip to her was visiting China, as one of the first American groups allowed in the late 1970s. Late in life, she also traveled in Africa, especially Burkina Faso, to support friends starting a boutique textile company.
She had a mischievous, sardonic sense of humor and loved being among the experimental fringe of New York artists; she and Larry attended the earliest dance shows at Judson Church (famous for the germination of Contact Improvisation and many other modern dance explorations), would travel to others' lofts to see Philip Glass perform his latest (earliest) work, and crossed paths with denizens of Andy Warhol's Factory (she was tickled that Taylor Mead once complimented her fur coat).
She was happy in New York but also happy to spend part of almost every summer in MN at nearby Avatan, a clothing-optional campground community. She also often used the professional name Nancy St. Paul.