light step and unswerving feet

Claire Nicholls, MFA 2022, Fibers & Material Studies

I write poems in dream-like fragments and embrace textiles as evocative holders of cultural memory. Layering handmade weavings and lace with silk painting, my work speaks about surface, image, and object as an entangled whole. My objects are grounded in personal research in witchcraft and somatic traditions, with an emphasis on experimental poetry, mythology, and oral histories. These processes are forms of embodied drawing: an accumulation of intention. Textiles contain a record of their own making, an inscription of the values held by their maker and beholder. Textiles are an invitation to read these subtle markers of the past in the present in the interaction of object, material, and viewer. Textiles are texts. Stories change with every writer and with every reader. Meaning is hidden and revealed at every turn in every spoken word as well as every silence. Textiles are a nexus of the past and present.

“light step and unswerving feet,” 2022, installation, dimensions variable. Photo credit: Neighboring States.

“inner spiral,” 2022, painted silk, 14 ft diameter. Photo credit: Neighboring States.

“ghost ladder,” 2021, hand painted and hand woven gauze, 80 in x 60 in. Photo credit: Neighboring States.

“meet and separate (parasol),” 2022, embroidered lace, 19 in x 34 in. Photo credit: Neighboring States.

“hanky (tears)” 2022, embroidered lace, 18.5 in x 18.5 in. Photo credit: Neighboring States.

Claire Nicholls

Website: www.clare-nicholls.com
Instagram: @clarenicholls

Artist Clare Nicholls writes poems in dream-like fragments, and embraces textiles as evocative holders of cultural memory. Layering handmade lace with silk painting, her work speaks concurrently about surface, image, and object as a complex and entangled whole. Clare’s fiber objects and images are grounded in personal research in witchcraft and somatic traditions, with emphasis on experimental poetry, mythology, and oral histories. Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, Clare earned a BA in Art and Art History from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 2010, and obtained a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from MICA in 2013. She has since earned an MFA in Fiber & Materials Studies at Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2022. Her work has been exhibited in several venues on the east coast, most recently in Future Tense, a juried exhibition for the Surface Design Association. She lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.