Nicole Stauffer

Artist Statement

Currently residing in Davis, California, I am a multidisciplinary artist favoring ceramics, textiles, and printmaking. Being surrounded by agricultural land and growing up exploring the outdoors, I work across these mediums to examine how natural environments reflect the relationships throughout my life and others. Whether it is through natural means or man-made influence, geography is constantly shifting just like our connections with one another. My work inspects the way the modern world has developed to value digital craft and the influence it has had in disconnecting people from each other and the earth.

By working with materials often deemed inaccessible and inequitable, I have had to undergo my own journey of building techniques from traditional knowledge through local craftsmen and spaces beyond artistry. From what I have experienced, people want community and embrace outsiders. However, individuals are unable to form long-lasting and genuine connections out of fear, suspicion, and lack of third spaces. Direct inspiration for my work has come from this feeling of lost community and need for connection. My work questions if it is possible to reconnect with ourselves and others through nature and kinship. What does the cohabitation between the natural world and humanity look like in a digital age where isolation is common despite being more connected than ever? How do we come back to ourselves when the world has now developed to grab attention and overstimulate? As I contribute to the slow art movement and ask participants to interact with my work, I want people looking inwards to rediscover themselves and develop their communities to authenticate their relationships outside of the digital world.