Gallery Exhibitions

My work explores personal narrative, collective memory, and the human experience through storytelling rooted in history and tradition. Working across multiple mediums, I create visual narratives that give form to individual stories, organizational identities, and historical moments, often drawing from Jewish texts and cultural symbolism. I am interested in how meaning can be layered, finding what is revealed, what recedes, and how subtle details shape a larger story.

Material choice is central to my process. Through color, paper, and composition, I build symbolic language that supports each narrative while maintaining clarity and intention. In my gouache paintings, I layer color to move seamlessly from one image to the next, creating work that is clean, deliberate, and visually rich. The depth and vibrancy of gouache enhance the theatrical quality of the imagery while allowing complexity to remain accessible.

Papercutting offers a different but equally deliberate form of expression. I approach this traditional medium with a contemporary sensibility, pushing the limits of delicacy while maintaining structural continuity. The tension between positive and negative space allows meaning to emerge through absence as much as presence. Across all media, my work is guided by precision, restraint, and a commitment to storytelling that honors both detail and depth.

A graduate of Parsons School of Design, Nancy Schwartz-Katz found Judaica as the perfect way to intertwine her artistic training, love of learning, storytelling, people, and Jewish heritage. She quickly made paper cutting her signature medium, using the delicate interplay of negative and positive space to explore ideas and tell the layered stories of individuals, organizations, and history.

Her work is held in public and private collections across the country—including synagogues, hospitals, foundations, and homes; in addition, she has exhibited nationally. Her illustrated exhibition on the Hebrew alphabet, The Meaning within the Letters, is currently traveling the United States, reaching communities from Virginia Beach to Birmingham to Atlanta, with more to come. Other recent national exhibits include the Parsons School of Design Juried Alumni Exhibition, the Vocabulary exhibition in Chattanooga, and the Eighth Annual Figurative Drawing and Painting Competition at the Lore Degenstein Gallery of Susquehanna University. In recognition of her achievements, she received the Ohio Arts Council’s Heritage Arts Award, honoring artists who embody both the highest level of craft and a deep commitment to sustaining cultural traditions. Her work and process were also featured in a PBS special, bringing her art to a national audience. In addition Schwartz-Katz has been accepted into the Jewish Art Salon in New York City as a Fellow giving her international exposure.

Schwartz-Katz’s practice extends beyond the intimate scale of paper cuts into the public realm. Her sculpture Hostages-Bring Them Home Now created for the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, has been reproduced in nine states and at least six countries through the American Jewish Committee and the Families of Hostages and Missing Families Forum, serving as a powerful call for awareness and solidarity. She has also volunteered her creativity for Hillel, the American Jewish Committee, and the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, to name a few, helping foster Jewish identity and visibility. Beyond the Jewish community, she co-founded The Write Way, an inner-city writing program to keep kids off the streets, has volunteered in classrooms to highlight creative career paths, and recently worked with Cleveland Heights High School students to create a mural after learning about the Holocaust.

Nancy works out of her studio in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and lives in the greater Cleveland area. She continues to create art that bridges tradition and innovation—art that honors heritage while also speaking urgently to the challenges and hopes of today.