Nancy Anne Nielsen Colbath was born March 2, 1929 in Riverside, California, the second daughter of Josephine Van de Grift Nielsen and Alvin Nielsen, a citrus grove manager and owner. She grew up in a Victorian house on Orange Street that her grandfather Jacob Van de Grift had built in 1903 and her parents had lived in since 1923.
When she was 11 years old her mother Jo resumed her activity as an artist, studying under David Scott and Rex Brandt who had ties to the later-named Mid-Century Modernist group of artists centered around Claremont, California, where Nancy matriculated at Pomona College in 1947.
She took art classes at Pomona, as well as Scripps College. After graduation in 1951, she started on her career in mosaics, making mosaic table tops for a local custom furniture firm, after that moving into executing murals designed by Jean and Arthur Ames for such places as Ahmanson Bank, Beverley Hills, Weinstock & Lubin Department Store in Sacramento, executed a sculpture in from of the Broadway department store in West Covina, the Goddess Pomona at the West end of the Pomona mall, and many other smaller projects.
When the Ames turned their attention to tapestry design, Nancy started contract work for Millard Sheets. His projects on which she worked were numerous, including most Home Savings & Loan murals, Scottish Rite Temple (Los Angeles), Travis Savings in San Antonio, San Jacinto Savings in Dallas, Detroit Public Library, Garrison Theater in Claremont, Westwood Towers restaurant in Westwood, plus numerous shields and signs--at the Pomona mall, for instance.
In early 1967 she completed her largest solo commission to date, a six foot by 40 foot historical mosaic mural depicting the long and varied history of the Borrego Valley, installed in an outdoor mall in downtown Borrego Springs. Later, she completed a 40 square foot mural for the A. A. Burnard III home in Borrego Springs.
At the time of her unfortunate death at age 45, from an asthma attack, on May 1, 1974, she was at work on a mosaic in her home studio.
Spreadsheet with list of 23 Sheets Studios projects Nancy worked on. Courtesy
of Adam Arenson's website. His excellent book, Banking on Beauty: Millard
Sheets and Midcentury Commercial Architecture in California, details the
commercial activities of Millard Sheets and contains a number of references
to Nancy.
Transciption of one of Nancy's Projects Lists.