Nancy Andrews' Phantom Limbs

Nancy Andrews, On a Phantom Limb, 2009. Courtesy of the Estate of Nancy Andrews

The mysteries of the body, mind, and natural world animate the darkly funny, deeply tender, and genre-defying films of artist and musician Nancy Andrews (MFA 1995), who probed the boundaries between scientific knowledge and the unexplained. Andrews, who passed away this summer, emerged from Chicago’s experimental performance scene of the 1990s, presenting unruly, handmade productions that combined projected film, music, puppets, and sculptural sets. She carried this radically hybrid approach into her moving-image work, casting visionary women, talking animals, and psychic doubles in tales of natural history, paranormal phenomena, medicine, trauma, mortality, and the body’s capacity for transformation. Bringing together works and collaborators from across Andrews’ career, this program celebrates her cosmic cinema and its capacious embrace of the unknown.

Introduced by the filmmaker Jennifer Reeder and accompanied by remarks from Andrews’ friends and collaborators.

1996–2025, United States
In English
Format: 16mm and digital
ca. 75 min.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Nancy Andrews (1961–2026) was an artist, filmmaker, animator, musician, and educator whose expansive practice encompassed film, performance, drawing, installation, sculpture, music, and publications. Born in Syracuse, New York, Andrews received her bachelor of fine arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1983 and her master of fine arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995. She joined the faculty of College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1999, playing a central role in the development of the college’s film and media arts program during her 25-year career there.

Andrews’ films include Monkeys and Lumps (2003), The Dreamless Sleep (2004), On a Phantom Limb (2009), The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes (2015), and I Like Tomorrow (2021), co-directed with Jennifer Reeder. Moving fluidly between cinematic and visual art, she also published the graphic novel Loupette and the Moon in 2012 and adapted The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes into a Gotham Award–winning web series. In addition to her art-making, Andrews played in the Baltimore art-punk group Ceramic Madonna Head (with Plastic Arms) (Andrews, Linda Smith, Elizabeth Downing, and Peggy Bitzer) and cofounded the performance-art band Lambs Eat Ivy (Andrews, Downing, Michael Willis, and Jonathan Gorrie). Her later musical projects included the Gertrudes (Andrews, Smith) and the solo recording alias Pinky. She reunited with Smith for the album A Passing Cloud (2023) and toured with her in 2026.

Andrews’ films have screened internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Pacific Film Archive, Anthology Film Archives, Flaherty Film Seminar, and Ann Arbor Film Festival, among many others. Her visual and installation work was exhibited at the 2013 deCordova Biennial and Center for Maine Contemporary Art. Six of her films are held in MoMA’s collection. A 2008 Guggenheim Fellow in filmmaking, Andrews also received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Franklin Furnace Fund, Illinois Arts Council, LEF New England, and Ellis-Beauregard Foundation.

ACCESSIBILITY

Conversations at the Edge events have live captions (CART). The Siskel Film Center is fully ADA accessible and its theaters are equipped with hearing loops. For other accessibility requests, please visit saic.edu/access or write cate@saic.edu.

TICKETS

$14 General public
$9 Students & seniors
$8 Film Center members
$8 SAIC staff & faculty & AIC staff
FREE for SAIC students with a valid ID

All CATE programs are free for SAIC students. Unless otherwise noted, SAIC student tickets are released five days prior to showtime. Tickets must be picked up in person from the Siskel Film Center box office. A student ID is required.

RESOURCE GUIDES

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