NANCY WEBB, through many of her sculptures and drawings, seeks the secrets of creatures who are nearer to earth, water and the sky than we are -- horseshoe crabs, fish, birds -- and introduces us to a world in which form is paramount. She opens that world to us and we discover it with her. As she revels in it, we revel. As she delights in it, so do we. She thus accomplishes one of art's most fundamental objectives -- she brings us closer to nature.

Nor is her work limited to the creeping, the finned and the winged. She is as at home in the world of man and plants as she is in that other. The hollow bronze trunk of a human figure stays in my mind, indelibly. It is as if she were peering not just at the human surface, but also at the underside of that surface ... An inward urge is at work. In her sculptures of bony formations is seen the desire to reach the bare essence of things, stripped of ornamentation. And plants: thistle and thistledown, the seed that takes to the air, all manner of leaves, roots, flowers and fruit are lovingly expressed, live again in her drawings and bas-reliefs.

There is consummate skill, there is breadth, there is range, and there is an uncanny feeling for form, structure and anatomy in her art. Through it the spirit of the naturalist is wedded to that of the artist in an exquisite union.

--Arturo Vivante