Nicole makes interdisciplinary art and is a resident of Park County in Montana. Before settling in the Rockies, she lived in a pretty vast spectrum of different places — inner cities, unincorporated areas, and on seasonal travels throughout the American West as a guide. All that exposure to and love for a diversity of ecologies and cultures plays a major role in her creative practice, which is conceptually rooted in an exploration of the symbiotic relationship between humans and landscape. Nicole’s art celebrates, critiques, and evokes thoughtfulness about the way in which Western Society’s efforts to better understand and manipulate natural order can profoundly alter human experience, the essence of place, and all that kind of jazz.
Often, Nicole’s work finds common ground in the sense of the present as a moment in time innately linked to the past and future — a nod to the existence of this big old space time continuum we’re all up in. She is a fan of the power of now, digs Ram Dass’ writing and stuff like that, but likes to balance it all out with careful consideration for and acknowledgement of the also sometimes mind-blowing power of history and that which is to come. These kinds of concepts have found form in Nicole’s portfolio via a variety of media, such as photography, collage, and sculptures that juxtapose mirrors with historical attempts to notate our elusive understanding of known unknowns. As an artist, she is inspired by an eclectic array of people — musicians, mechanics, grandmas, ranchers, conservationists, diplomats, Carl Sagan, Joy Harjo, Jenny Holzer, etc.
Nicole’s solo and collaborative work has been performed and exhibited coast to coast and in-between, at the Exploratorium, the Prelinger Library, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Goodnight Projects, the Cooper Union, the Wythe Hotel, the Flying Squirrel, and Brackett Creek Exhibitions. In 2011, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts. One of Nicole’s original designs was adopted into the legacy of one of her heroes when it took the cake in an international competition hosted by the Buckminster Fuller Institute in 2013. Her work has been featured in Wired, Gizmodo, Dezeen, Architizer, Fast Company, Tree Hugger, and DRIFT: A Magazine of West Coast Cultural Production. After collaborating on a Bay Area local legend of a public art project known as the Games of Nonchalance (2009 - 2011), her work served as foundational inspiration for a feature-length documentary, The Institute (2012) and an award-winning TV series, Dispatches from Elsewhere (2020).