CLARE NICHOLLS

WRITTEN BY LAUREN M. MCCARDEL

Clare Nicholls’ work is a summons, an invitation to observe and participate in rituals that explore the relationship between spirit and object. Deeply rooted in her personal practice of witchcraft, Nicholls draws influence from spirituality, mythology, and the histories of craft and domesticity that connect her to generations of makers who came before.

For Nicholls, objects are the matrices that can open the way to a more connected spiritual world. Her practice explores the ways in which made things can blur (or cross) the boundaries between intellectual and physical experience, urging us to reconsider the familiar. Embroidered lace handkerchiefs appear to contain traditional motifs of female culture and exchange…but their transparency, heightened by the ultra-neon acrylic frames they hang within, makes the stitching almost impossible to read until viewed up close. Then, monochromatic leaves, before nearly invisible, suddenly appear to look back with eyes of their own, while sinuously stitched vines unravel into previously unseen words (“ugh nothing again,” “miss you”). Are they poking fun at us for determining to decipher deeper meaning in them? Or do they mirror thoughts and feelings we try hard to keep buried?

Nicholls’ painted silk offers a different, perhaps warmer point of entry to her viewers. An enveloping spiral of brightly hued silk softly encourages nonlinear, somatic engagement with deep-seated histories and cultural memories. There is no critique embedded here, only appreciation – of shared human experience and the possibility of a future built on collective action for the common good. Here Nicholls extends a welcoming hand to anyone willing to leave the cognitively familiar, to risk taking part in a communal questioning.

Flexible portals, Nicholls’ pieces are queer points of entry into untapped layers of consciousness and psychic healing. They are places of respite and renewal. But they also present a challenge – through the historic continuity of familiar signs, symbols, and modes of making, they ask us to imagine a different future, one apart from the collective trauma of capitalism and an increasingly mediated world. Ultimately, they are tools through which we can access not only our own deeper consciousness, but also a deeper awareness of our connection and responsibility to the world around us

FLEXIBLE PORTALS, NICHOLLS’ PIECES ARE QUEER POINTS OF ENTRY INTO UNTAPPED LAYERS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHIC HEALING.