Department of Fine Arts
ECH building
Tel 519 888-4567 x36923
Thursday, October 18, 2018
Nancy-Lou Patterson, founder of the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo, has died. It has been a while since she was able to visit, but this Department literally wouldn’t be here without her initiative, imagination, leadership, and service. I hope many others will share their stories of her life, but here is a small celebration of her teaching.
Nancy-Lou studied folklore and fantasy, designed liturgical textiles and stained glass, wrote and illustrated wonderful stories. She had a large family, an extended community of faith, and many colleagues on campus. And for more than thirty years, everyone who studied art at the University of Waterloo got to spend time in her classroom. In the 1980s, I was one of the lucky many, and she reshaped my ideas about art and teaching and living a meaningful life.
Hers was the first classroom where I heard the consistent, enthusiastic use of inclusive language. Hers was the first art history course I took that spot-lit the work of Indigenous artists and called the First Nations by their names. Her history of the world included all the inhabited continents, not just Europe. Her history of art embraced craft and popular culture and mixed media, not just oil paintings and bronze. She championed the art and artists she shared in class, with boundless zeal.
She lavished fierce affection on her students, in all our awkward, eccentric glory. One of my classmates wore a tutu over her jeans for most of the semester. Nancy-Lou didn’t blink. She gave us a drawing assignment about identity and costume. She called one of my pieces “numinous.” I had to go home and look it up—it means filled with a sense of spirituality or divinity—but I have seldom cherished a compliment so much.
I heard from Nancy-Lou’s colleagues that she was unabashed about her generous grades. It wasn’t inflation, she said, it was just that her students all did unusually well in her classes!
I don’t know the origin story of Nancy-Lou’s own signature look but by the time I sat in her classroom, she had adopted a uniform: a no-nonsense pageboy bob and a colourful, comfortable, floor-length “granny gown.” Don’t imagine her as old-fashioned. She was a scholar of visual culture who spoke with equal enthusiasm and expertise about Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Don’t imagine her as delicate, either. Nancy-Lou Patterson persuaded the very new University of Waterloo—as STEM-centric then as it is today—that it needed an art department, and she made it happen.
That Department, that University, and the Region of Waterloo are better places to work and live today because of her contributions. Thank you, Nancy-Lou. You will be missed.
Dr. Linda Carson
Lecturer, Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business
University of Waterloo
Photo from UW Gazette circa 1990
Nancy-Lou Patterson was widely-known as a writer, artist, scholar, teacher, novelist and poet whose educational and artistic career spans five decades. The daughter of academic parents, she was born in 1929 in Worcester, Mass. She received her BA in Fine Arts from the University of Washington in 1951, afterwards working for two years as a scientific illustrator at the University of Kansas and at the Smithsonian and then for nine years as a lecturer at Seattle University. In 1962 she moved to the Waterloo Region with her husband, Dr. E. Palmer Patterson, who was to teach at the University of Waterloo. In addition to her position as Director of Art and Curator of the University's art gallery, in 1966 Professor Patterson taught the University of Waterloo's first Fine Arts course, and in 1968 she founded the Department of Fine Arts, twice serving as Department Chair.
In 1993 Nancy-Lou Patterson was named "Distinguished Professor Emerita" by the University of Waterloo, and in the same year received an honorary doctor of letters degree from Wilfrid Laurier University in recognition of "a life dedicated to expression." (Biography from the University of Waterloo, Special Collections and Archives - Nancy-Lou Patterson fonds)
Nancy-Lou Patterson, founder of the Department of Fine Arts, passed away October 15, 2018. Her funeral will be held on Saturday October 20 at 3 p.m. at St. Columba Anglican Church, 250 Lincoln Road, Waterloo, with a reception to follow. There will be a visitation beforehand from 10 a.m.-noon. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to St. Columba Anglican Church and may be made by contacting Erb & Good Family Funeral Home, 171 King Street South, Waterloo at 519-745-8445 or www.erbgood.com.