We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nicole Banowetz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nicole below.
Nicole, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
As a child I was always making things, and art was my favorite subject, but I didn’t really think about careers. Once I was in high school I was really lucky to learn the concept that there is work in the arts from a summer job program called Arts Street. Arts Street is a career training through the arts program. This amazing summer arts program was created by Stella You and ran through the Mayors Office in Denver. The first summer I worked under two artist mentors Amy Laugesen and Tim Flynn. They taught a group of young artists about how to become working artists and then we all collaborated to design a project, create a proposal, pitch the proposal and then build it. Learning these skills as a 17 year old was something that changed my life. The first summer we designed a performance. We built a giant carousel as a stage, created costumes, sculpted carousel creatures based on lab animals, and wrote the whole performance. The second summer I worked with Joe Riche (of Demiurge) as a mentor and our group designed and built educational sculptures about birds that were installed at Duck Lake in city park. These 2 summer convinced me that I should not only study art, but that I could think of art as an actual career rather than a hobby.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Nicole Banowetz is a Lakewood based sculptor who makes sewn inflatable sculptures. Nicole’s work is inspired by the natural world. She addresses human qualities and relationships using the imagery she finds in the animal, plant, mineral, and bacterial worlds. She has made made installations inspired by bacteria, parasitic fungus, viruses, radiolaria, rotifers, rhinos, etc… All these forms she recreates in soft inflatable sculptures, which she designs and sews on her sewing machine. Inflatables have power. They draw an audience in by promising the familiarity of childhood, a jumping castle, and the wacky waving man. The inflatable is familiar, soft, and comforting which gives viewers the security they need to enter a space, immerse themselves, and become curious. With curiosity comes a questioning state of mind. Nicole’s work creates a unique combination of the familiar and the strange which allows viewers to question the world around them.
Nicole Banowetz works as an artist in sculpture, design, installation, and education. She has lived and worked internationally creating and / or showing work in India, Italy, Ireland, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Taiwan, and England. Nicole has shown in the Biennial of the Americas, the Arvada Center, Ironton Gallery, Pirate Contemporary, Gray Contemporary, The Silos at Sawyer Yard, Saginaw Valley State University Art Gallery, The Denver Art Museum, Wonderspaces, and the Kreuzburg Pavilion. She has also created large light sculptures for the Amsterdam Light Festival and Canal Convergence, and outdoor installations for Breckenridge International Arts Festival, PASSAGES INSOLITES in Quebec City, Open Art in Sweden, and Environmental Art Exhibition Barfotastigen in Finland. She is in the permanent collection of the Denver Children’s Museum, Meow Wolf Denver, and the Denver Zoo in the US, The Amsterdam Light festival’s Light Art Collection, and Kids Awesome Museum in Taipei, Taiwan.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Although I learned about careers in the arts in high school, when I went to collage to get my BFA it was actually scorned upon to think of art as a career. We were taught only to make art for arts sake and that being a staving artist was actually the goal. There wasn’t any discussion about audience or social practice. We made art in an art school bubble only for other artists. When I graduated I had no idea what to do so I applied for a work abroad program and went to Ireland. While in Ireland I was working in a hostel. I made a lot of friends from around the world who were living in the hostel while trying to immigrate into Ireland. No one that I knew at the time was an artist and I realized that the kind of art I made wouldn’t impact any of my new friends. One day I took the train to Sandy Cove near the James Joyce Tower. As I wandered along the beach I found massive bunches of seaweed. I had basically lived my whole life before this in Colorado so I had never seen anything quite like this. The sight of the beautiful sculptural forms brought me to tears, and I realized that nature had already made everything beautiful. This moment in my life made me rethink everything about being an artist. I actually thought I would no longer make objects and mourned my former identity. I did not know at the time but this was actually the beginning of my interest in using forms and stories from nature to create artwork that has the audience experience at the forefront.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
As I explained in the last question I really want my artwork to bring in a wide audience. I hope that by using the medium of inflatables that people will feel open and conferrable with my work which will allow them to think more about the stories and ideas behind it. One good example of my mission is illustrated in a performance I created called Our Obligate Future. This performance illustrates the obligate mutualistic relationship of the Yucca Moth and the Joshua Tree. This means if one were to die out then the other would follow. As the climate is changing the area where the moths and trees can both survive is getting smaller. My inflatable sculptures highlight the poetic beauty, strangeness and fragility of this unique relationship. My felled Joshua tree lays across the dessert ground, a stark white against the dessert landscape. Each enlarged blossom has bright orange soft pollen attached to it, and an opening where the pollen can be deposited by the moth. The pollen’s bright orange color contrasts its environment and draws attention to its importance. In my performance the moth is trying to pollinate a dead Joshua Tree. The moth appears slowly approaching the Joshua trees, swaying gently. The moth seems to dance with the Joshua Tree, and her movements express the gentle and kind relationship between moth and tree. I wanted to draw attention to the sad situation that climate change is creating for so many.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.nicolebanowetz.com
- Instagram: @nicolebanowetz
Image Credits
1. Erupture. Wonderspaces Philadelphia. Photo credit: Society Hill Films 2. This Body Overwhelms. Understudy. Photo credit: Nicole Banowetz 3. An Adaptive Moment. Ex Muro. Photo Credit: StéphaneBourgeois 4. The Intervening Substance. Foothills Art Center. Photo credit: Nicole Banowetz 5. Mycelium Mite. Meow Wolf. Photo credit: Richard Romero 6. Our Obligate Future. Photo credit: Devin Reilly 7. Simulent Futures. Photo credit: Devin Reilly 8. Simulent Futures. Still from video credit: Devin Reilly