nat Nicholson
Duration: January-April 2022
Nat Nicholson wants to take her current style of work and adapt it for outdoor use while she is in New Harmony. This will involve designing new and sturdy base structures as well as transitioning to a 100% glaze-based practices to insure color-resilience. She believes that in focusing on these things, she will create durable outdoor sculptures that interact with nature and explore the relationship between humans and earth.
quick facts
How many years have you been working as a clay artist? Four years is probably the most accurate answer. I loved clay as a kid and later on as a teenager I spent my downtime in my high school’s art room working on my pieces. It wasn’t until later on in college that I realized I want to make sculptures in a long-term way.
What is your main clay body that you currently use? I switch it up so much that it is hard to say. Porcelain is always a favorite when I get my hands on it. But the main body I use and love is this deep red colored mid-range stoneware which was gifted to me by another resident at Northern Clay Center who couldn’t take it with her when she left. I still have some a year later. It shows under glazes in a beautiful way, and it enriches their colors.
What is the primary method you use for building your work? Additive hand building.
What is your favorite studio tool? My favorite studio tool is without a doubt the banding wheel.
Do you have any future clay wishes or dreams? Yes! I want to keep making sculptures for a long time and hopefully work with a gallery one day!
ARTIST STATEMENT
Particles within a lump of clay can be arranged in space an infinite number of ways. Pieces can be glazed and fired repeatedly, left outside to weather for any amount of time, broken and stuck back together incorrectly, and flipped over and stacked on top of one another. Any additional material can be incorporated, any number of technological edits can be made, and pieces worn into cohesion can rest in many real places on Earth or float around in any virtual reality.
All of these processes I use are functions which act on the input (clay) to create output (sculpture). Given the boundless nature of viable functions, there is potential for the output to have any appearance. I try to invoke forms from that hidden, yet-to-be-imagined realm by relying on serendipity and curiosity to uproot pieces. I’m most drawn to the sculptures which hint at movement and growth-- those which suggest the gentle sway of plants, the chaotic pulsing of microscopic creatures, orgasmic alien energies, or the gurgling motion of swamps and human organs. To further explore the idea of sculptures as realm-defying objects, I have begun placing them in virtual spaces and finding ways to make digital alterations. The pieces I brought into the physical world are thus blurred into less tangible places yet again.
BIOGRAPHY
BORN: Ames, Iowa | USA
Nat Nicholson received her BFA in Ceramics with a minor in Cinematic Arts from The University of Iowa in 2019. She has studied in Florence, Italy at Studio Arts College International and completed residencies at Northern Clay Center in Minnesota, where she received the 2019 Anonymous Artist Studio Fellow, and New Harmony Clay Project in Indiana. Nat was the Arts Coordinator and Instructor for youth at the Seward Cafe Free Space in Minneapolis and instructor at Northern Clay Center. She continues to exhibit her work throughout Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota and Indiana and internationally in Italy and Georgia, and has received various awards, including “Best in Show” during Heart of Iowa Activities Conference in Baxter, Iowa.