Spotlight Artist

Nicole Shaver

MFA Annual
Artist profile photo
Featured in New American Paintings

Artist Statement

This collection of sculptural chunks—lumps, indescribable masses of material, clumsily constructed and naively glazed—are deposited in a setting that has been drastically overturned by the human hand. The cycle of industry and demand has disrupted and contaminated the sublimity of a truly divine earth.

You, who have at least once traversed and seen majesty of the landscape and yearned to hide it in your pocket, delight in this collection. Inspired by industrial objects and architecture, these objects belong to no time and no place in particular. They issue from my hand alone, revealing no function yet implying the design from which they have gone awry. For the time that these objects exist, they are ostensibly abstract, but have a charming ability to connect to a wordless cadence of something familiar. Find the form that will have a punch line, seductive confusion, curious origins, pathetic occupation and opulent indolence. These approximations, mind you, are not in the work; they enter the equation only as you try to account for them.

Artist's Additional works

Works shared by the artist outside of their featured New American Paintings selections

Featured artwork
Featured artwork

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