Name: Nic Noblique
Email: info@nobliquestudios.com
What type(s) of art do you like to create?
I am most passionate about large scale and monumental public works that focus on sustainability in public art. I use recycled steel, stainless, and corten. I continue to study the most environmentally friendly industrial coatings for my sculpture and no longer use any solvent based coatings that pollute the environment with harmful VOC's. I look for opportunities to work in urban and rural areas of decline that need rehabilitation and look for these opportunities through arts initiatives. I am motivated by the power public art has on its respective community. I do love to paint and although I'm most notably known for my sculpture, it is a great way to unload the images and ideas that constantly run through my head.
My sculpture mostly abstract and is based on the idea of 3/5/8 mathematical beauty, suggesting everything in nature can be broken down into those proportions and that everything is a structural spiral. The finished sculpture is graceful, ethereal, soft, and happy although it comes from rough, cold, rigid steel. It’s not about making a social or political statement or regurgitating a bygone aesthetic or art movement, my sculpture is about form, lines, and movement from the depths of my own imagination, that engage the natural environment in an oddly organic way. I want my sculpture to play a visual trick, a balancing act, and contradict the very nature of the material I use to produce it.
Where did you learn to do what you do?
I was actually kicked out of The Denver Institute of Art when I was 20. I taught myself everything I know and have built my own custom fabrication machines that can handle the size and scope of my work and manipulate steel the way I want it to.
I went to school at a technical college in Santa Ana, California where I studied pliable materials engineering. At the time, I didn’t know some of that education would help me later when I decided to be a full time professional artist. I really wanted to improve the design of skateboards, make surfboards, and build skate ramps, which I did. That has all played a part in what I do now and I’ve had to learn to do the rest.
Tell us about your most important projects.
Recently I've been involved with the Henderson Art Project in Dallas.
The non-profit HAP has done a stellar job of bringing public sculpture to Henderson Avenue in Dallas through a juried competition as well as an ongoing aggressive effort to put sculpture all throughout the surrounding neighborhood. I am really proud to be a part of this, it is exactly the kind of charitable effort that is focused and diligent in their vision to revitalize, educate, and foster the growth of dialogue about art within the community.
I also have to mention a current project that is very new but gaining momentum. A new non-profit in Clyde, Texas - where I live - is striving to revitalize its downtown and create a cultural center through several initiatives. Public art, a non-profit art gallery, other community events, as well as eventually a school of art and craft. This one is particularly important to me because my family, on my mother's side, has lived here for decades and now my children share that legacy. I want to see this very small, rural community experience the renaissance that it deserves - that our kids deserve.
Describe your studio.
My studio is my playground. I have a metal yard in front and am able to move my sculpture in and out through a big roll door. It's about 1500 square feet of which 2/3 is devoted to sculpture with large machinery, my hand built three-roll pinch plate rolling machine, smaller rolling machines, an assortment of welders, torches, grinders and all the sculptors accoutrement you could imagine. My work is big and heavy and since I work solo I use some heavy duty hoisting equipment. The other 1/3 of my studio is for painting and where I build frames and fabricate smaller works. I hang a lot of my paintings around the studio and use the walls to hang up anything interesting or inspiring, ideas, drawings, and sometimes notes to myself to keep me focused or I'll write quotes on the walls. One of my favorite ones, which is spattered across the wall in the paint area says ' painting is easy, you just stare at the canvas until drops of blood form on your head". The music is always loud in my studio, it helps me concentrate. I used to have a half pipe in my studio but sacrificed it for the sake of having more room. It was nice to take a break and skate for a minute, especially in case of the occasional 'artistic block'.
What type of music do you listen to while you work?
I'm strictly a punk rocker at heart. I listen to The Speedies, The Freeze, Thermals, The Didgits, Minutemen, Nomeansno, Vindictives, Bad Town Boys, Fifteen, Jets to Brazil, Blag Flag, Circle Jerks, The Ramones, Descendents, Dead Boys, Sex Pistols, Iggy and the Stooges, The Kill Rays, X, and too many more to list.
Where do you find your inspiration?
My inspiration is everywhere and all around but does come from life experience and life-long passions. I spent my whole life as a skate boarder. Everywhere I look I can see something skate-able. Most people see a curb, ledge, stairs, a drop-off, whatever. I always see at it as the next thing I could ride. It translates into art because when I’m walking around or driving through the country or in the city I might see the way a hill comes down to the base of a tree or a tree growing up through the cracks in the pavement and be inspired. In this way a hill, valley, and a house can instantaneously realize itself as a sculpture in my head, the way I see it anyway. I have a stockpile – a reserve – of things in my head that I try to get out as much as I can.
I'm also inspired by influences from a really young age. Picasso has been an inspiration to me from a really young age. We were living in an apartment in Antibes France when I was about and I went to a Picasso sculpture garden at a church there, a block away from the apartment. I would sit there for hours each day enthralled. We went to all the museums and by the time I was 10 I could identify Picasso anywhere! It was like listening to the Ramones for the first time.
It just made perfect sense to me and definitely influenced me to take art seriously.
Do you have any advice for other artists?
I learned a long time ago that if I was going to be successful and if I was ever going to be able to manipulate steel the way I see it in my head, I’d have to get real creative and be super determined to make it happen. The cost of fabrication can be overwhelming if you do not have your own equipment. I'm sure many artists relate to the frustration of not have what you need to create your vision and bring it to life. My advice to other artists is to be driven. Be unstoppable.
Do you belong to any art organizations?
ISC and the Center for Contemporary Arts in Abilene;
TSOS – Texas Society of Sculptors in Austin
Do you have a website?
www.nobliquestudios.com
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