Jean Cappadonna Nichols - Sculptor

SCULPTURE SERIES:
All About Eve | Double Exposure | Great American Dream House | Partly Truth, Partly Fiction | Teapots
"What’s a Nice Girl Like You...?" | Distant Relatives | Non-Series

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UPCOMING EXHIBITION:
2008: Fiftieth Anniversary, Longview Museum of Art, Longview, TX, September 13 - November 1, 2008 - Solo Exhibition

GENERAL STATEMENT:
All my work revolves around my life as an artist, a mother, a housewife, a neurotic, and a self-proclaimed fanatic of order and organization. To paraphrase musician Charles Mingus, "In my art, I'm building the truth of what I am. The reason it's so difficult is because I'm changing all the time." While I take my work seriously, I try not to take myself too seriously. My tendency is to use humor to entice my audience into a piece and allow them to take a closer look at what I'm saying. If all goes well, they leave confused.

For me, craft, and the formal aspects of art have equal billing with concept. Because my art background is heavily laden with design and drawing (and a love of same), I keep moving toward a more and more complicated iconography infused upon the surfaces of the objects I build.

Several years ago, I realized that I was obsessed with covering every square inch of surface with imagery. This affliction is called horror vacui (fear of empty space), and is practiced by some tribal artists in an effort to keep evil spirits from entering their work. It was a short step from that discovery to the intrigue I experienced when I purchased my first book on the art of the classic Japanese tattoo. Since then, I have frequently employed the aesthetic based on the tattoo to embellish the skins of my clay surfaces. The "tattooing" process allows me the flexibility to travel all around the object following my stream-of-consciousness approach. While the images have been westernized or manipulated to create my own vocabulary, this reference to the east is no accident. It is directly related to the history of ceramics and printmaking as well as to all the baggage of the tattoo. There is also no question that the impact of television and other means of communication prevalent today have been feeding grounds for my cross-cultural appetite.