Gloria Nusse: “Putting a Living Face on the Nameless Dead”

 

A nicely done article about the work of one of the best forensic artists out there, Gloria Nusse. It was originally in the Bay Citizen News, but was also picked up by the New York Times, no less!

I love seeing forensic art so well-represented, and to have it be given such a wide audience is almost too much to hope for.  Gloria is as talented as she is humble, and I’m proud to call her a friend.

An excerpt is below, but please check out the full article:

“Ms. Nusse began her career illustrating textbooks and creating museum exhibitions. Her fine-arts education placed an emphasis on human anatomy, eventually leading to her first job as a forensic artist in 2000. She has done 17 facial reconstructions, leading to nine positive identifications.

…in California, with the highest population of illegal immigrants in the country, Ms. Nusse’s works of art have begun to serve another purpose. Unrecognized in many respects during life in the United States, the invisible, in her hands, become visible.

“That’s the untold story of this,” Ms. Nusse said recently from her office at San Francisco State University, where she teaches anatomy. “People — they can disappear.”