Fused: Nikki Wall translates our impact on nature, each other with stunning visuals
In an exhibit at Richard App Gallery with Steve Leary opening February 24, multimedia artist Nikki Wall returns to public exhibitions of her monumental work.
Long-time Tanglefoot artist Nikki Wall is motivated to create. Simple as that.
In the past, Wall, regularly showed in area exhibits and competitions, including a show at the Grand Rapids Art Museum years ago. These days, she says she’s more interested in just making the work. Making her work at Tanglefoot, however, has garnered the interest of the Richard App Gallery, where she’ll be opening a new show with Steve Leary this Friday night.
Whether she’s got a show she’s preparing for or not, Wall is one of those artists that has to create, because she’s finding inspiration everywhere.
Wall spent a good part of her childhood in the island of St. Croix, surrounded by nature. This childhood time in nature continues to influence her work today, as roots and other natural materials make it into her work.
“It was really outside, all the time, in nature,” she says. Perhaps that’s why as an adult, decades later, she still works to help others pay better attention to nature—and what we’re doing to it.
Of course, though nature is a main theme in her work (and her materials), Wall is one of those minds that is constantly churning new ideas and materials, not limited to one material, style, or theme. Chicken wire, plastic tape, roots, soil, lead, wood from old buildings, even egg cartons are woven in seamlessly with more traditional artist materials.
She pulls from many sources, from movies to artists around the world to junkyards…to her current fascination with dots. She’s an artist’s artist, animated when sharing the stories behind her work, full of so many ideas she can’t keep up in her work with the ideas inspiring her.
Wall explores and adds layers and tries new things to discover what it is she’s after. She works to translate themes—of isolation, of human influence on the environment in the anthropocene, of women’s rights such as the disappeared in Nigeria and around the world, of the wounded and harassed and maltreated, of lead in the water in Flint and across the country. And often, that translation ends up referencing the human form.
“Everything seems like bodies,” she says. Many of them are wrapped, often hanging from the ceiling rather than on a wall, and are more referential than direct representation, holding the sense of the figure within them.
“It’s awful to say, but I wouldn’t know what to do if I wasn’t making art,” she says, admitting that she doesn’t sit down to work knowing what she’s making before she starts.
“In a way, my life would be much simpler if I did,” she laughs, “if I knew where I was going…It’s the surprise: the process to me is more fascinating than the end result.”
That end result, though, creates a powerful experience for the viewer.
Discover Nikki Wall’s work for yourself this Friday, and meet the artist, at the opening of “Fused” at Richard App Gallery from 5–9 p.m. The opening is free and open to the public.
