- WELCOME
- STATEMENTS
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.
- PORTFOLIOS
ALL ABOUT EVE:
An exploration of angst brought on by a litany of creeds re-emerging from the past. Read more...
DOUBLE EXPOSURE:
This series began as an exploration of the human condition. Read more...
GREAT AMERICAN DREAM HOUSE: The idea for this series came after I had read a book about the aftereffects of WWII. Read more...
PARTLY TRUTH, PARTLY FICTION: As with many things in Life, we encounter contradictions on a daily basis. Read more...
TEAPOTS:
Frequently, the Teapot is considered the Holy Grail of pots. Read more...
"WHAT’S A NICE GIRL LIKE YOU...?": The title for this series was gleaned from an old commercial for oven cleaner. Read more...
NON-SERIES:
Pieces that stand alone with a story unto themselves and do not represent any particular... Read more...
DISTANT RELATIVES:
For several years I have collected Peruvian Grave dolls and have been inspired by... Read more...
- BIOGRAPHY
Jean Cappadonna Nichols was born January 18, 1941, in Port Arthur, Texas, to first generation Italian-American parents. At the age of seven, her family moved to the small, west Texas town of Midland, where she attended elementary, junior high and high school. Upon graduating from high school, she attended Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. After two years, she transferred to Loretto Heights College in Denver, Colorado, to be geographically closer to her high school sweetheart and future husband, Larry Nichols. Larry graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in June 1962 and they married the following September.
After rearing three daughters, Stephanie, Michelle, and Phyllis, Jean decided to return to Texas Tech to complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree, which she accomplished in 1988. Armed with a degree in drawing but with a desire to move into the realm of three-dimension, Jean began working in clay but felt she needed additional education to accelerate her progress. In 1994, that opportunity was realized when her husband decided to sell his business, attend law school at the University of Mississippi and ultimately join their middle daughter, Michelle, in her and her husband's small firm in Tupelo, Mississippi. Therefore, in the Spring of 1994, Jean was accepted into the Sculpture program at The University of Mississippi, Oxford. After a few semesters in the Sculpture program, Jean changed her area of concentration to ceramics in order to focus on the technical aspects of the medium. She graduated in 1996 with a Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics.
After graduation, Jean and her husband moved to Tupelo, Mississippi, where she worked full-time as a studio artist. In March 1999, Jean and Larry decided to make a permanent move to Fort Myers, Florida to indulge themselves in a few additional passions: year-round gardening, sunshine and water. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions as well as solo and two person shows, and has received many awards and honors, the most recent being the 2003 Individual Artist Award in Sculpture from the Florida Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs. She was also the 2002 recipient of the Heritage of Odessa Foundation Distinguished Former Odessan Award, and the 1999 recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Visual Arts. This latter award has been presented to such notables as William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and John Grisham.
Her work has been published in The Best of New Ceramic Art, The Ceramic Design Book, Clay Times Magazine, Daniel Rhodes Clay and Glazes for the Potter, Edition III and the recently released, Working With Clay, Edition II, by Susan Peterson. She was featured in the March-April 1999 issue of Clay Times and the February 2000 issue of Ceramics Monthly Magazine. Jean works as a full-time studio artist in Fort Myers and her work is represented by Carol Robinson Gallery, New Orleans.
© Jean Cappadonna Nichols. All rights reserved.
Info(at)JeanCappadonnaNichols.com
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