ARTIST STATEMENT
I’ve been experimenting, making my own watercolor paint. I have settled on red. I love red, I’ve been searching for sources of rose madder, the oldest red, in root and pigment form. And found reliable color from exotic locals like Schaumburg, Illinois and Forest & Meadows in Poland. I’m even babysitting a madder plant for my friend Melissa Potter, (it takes two years before the roots of the madder plant produce color). I’m angry, yes, disappointed with our world, seeing red. The warm cinnamon color and the slow pace of making paint and painting makes me feel better, hopeful. It feels good to take some time away from the screen, and create madder experiments to share with Woman Made Gallery.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Niki Nolin, (Chicago, IL), is a mixed media artist and educator. Her work blends painting, drawing and poetry with motion, interaction and assemblage. Working solo or collaboratively with students, artists and poets, her focus is to awaken, the learner and the viewer, to the spaces between words and images; the intuitive gaps and leaps of faith, and the associations of thought-play and choice. Individual and collaborative projects exhibited at Art Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Woman Made Gallery, Art Prize, Chicago Cultural Center, IDMAA, International Calligraphy Organization, eNarrative Roundtable Boston, College Art Association, Chicago Sculpture International, Rockford Art Museum, Center on Halsted, Fideofest in Tallin Estonia, IUN Art Gallery, The Poetic Justice League, SIGGRAPH and others.
© Niki Nolin