Nicole has also begun her journey experimenting with woodcuts and works in a similar process as her paintings. Though for creating her prints, she goes through an additional step of stylizing her photographs with a sketch-like art style. She uses her prints to give a full encompassing view of herself and personality. Showing both sides of herself by creating prints that mirror her paintings but in a different style. Emulating some of her favorite artists, such as junji ito through her sketchy line art and graphic design.

I focus heavily on the surface to convey the intensity and variation of the emotion I’m expressing. I gravitate towards organic shapes, as well as warm color and my pieces focus on expressing my experiences through various qualities derived from defense mechanisms found in nature, such as spikes. Sometimes I use metal wire to get a more gritty feel to my work, and I allow room for “mistakes” like running glaze, broken spikes, or stretched-too-far porcelain. These coincidences that occur throughout my process all make room for expressing the ugly, less fun parts of the human experience. I work with lettering to more directly communicate some of my ideas. Phrases such as “Mother Nature’s bitch” and “A wounded animal yet bears teeth” are things I add into my work because of the power of the phrase, but also to clue in my audience on some of the emotions I’m conveying in my other, less in-your-face pieces.

The idea of memory in the body is very prevalent in what I have to say, which makes porcelain the perfect medium for me to express my ideas. I see myself emerging through my ceramic pieces the more developed that they get. My goal in my work is to make space for my experiences that make me unique, especially my suffering, as I find we can all relate greatly to others’ pain. I hope for others to find themselves in my work too, and I strongly believe in the power of vulnerability and its ability to heal humans and bring us closer together.

One of my favorite quotes is by Dr. Brene Brow, “If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.” This idea is an enormous influence in my work, as I find shame to be the root of a great deal of my suffering and those close to me’s suffering. You might even find it’s the root of yours as well. I believe putting my pain on display, direct and representational, or more of a head-scratcher, can be extremely healing, and it only begins with me. These porcelain pieces are different versions of me throughout my experiences, ready to start the conversation.

I work through emotion and feeling with creating a constructive result. I have gone through thyroid cancer and have been radioactive as a treatment for it. Going through these events has led to my interest in creating pieces that revolve around my experiences as well as radioactivity and hazardous materials generally. I also desire to add symbolism to my pieces relevant to my journey. I desire a color scheme that seems almost other worldly. My pieces are a combination of reality, playfulness, and fantasy. Combining elements of art therapy with my own experiences to create radioactive-inspired artwork is a process that I hope to convey in a thought-provoking, yet whimsical way.