Congratulations to recent TAMU-CC Islander BFA alum Nichole Schiller for being selected to participate in the upcoming exhibition titled One, Together at Crooked Tree Arts Center in Traverse City, Michigan. The exhibition will be on display in Traverse City’s Carnegie Galleries, September 28 – November 13, 2020
Though the act of making art is often thought of as individual and solitary, many artists rely on a regular exchange of ideas with fellow artists and mentors in order to keep their creative practice going. Many more artists even work collaboratively to create th eir work. Beyond human relationships, some artists even consider the materials as collaborators. This exhibition aims to explore collaboration, collectivity, and togetherness through creative practice.
Artists were encouraged to consider the theme broadly and creatively. Possible approaches to the theme include:
One, Together, Crooked Tree Arts Center in Traverse City, Michigan.
Artwork created collectively by more than one artist
Artwork that encourages participation
Artwork exploring concepts of togetherness or collaboration
A creative practice that relies on assistance by or collaboration with multiple participants
For this exhibition, Nichole Schiller will be installing her ongoing archive and BFA thesis exhibition titled The Open Door Project. For more information about this archive and installation, please visit https://nicholewschiller.wixsite.com/opendoor2020
Nichole Schiller’s Artist Statement
Opportunity: “A set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something”.
What does it mean for something to be an opportunity?
Is it a job promotion?
Getting an education?
A friendship?
Being alive?
Are they precious or mundane?
Are they given to us or do we give them to others?
These are all questions that this body of work seeks to address. These books made of cast resin give a permanence and archival quality to the documentations of opportunities that are stored within. The small size of each book relates a preciousness about the experiences that are housed inside each set of doors. This archive addressed the opportunities that participants feel that they have been given throughout their life and those that they have given others. This collection aims to display a range of reflections coming from local and non-local communities with diverse backgrounds and ages.
“The doors of opportunity are always unlocked, but you’ll never know unless you try and open them first”- Anonymous. Doors, like opportunities, are things that require action in order to be fully utilized, just like this body of work needs the action of others to display a diverse array of opportunities. Socially engaged artist Joseph Beuys states that “Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming and reshaping” the world we live in. My work reflects this by creating art in a non-traditional way by inviting audience members and outside participants to be co-creators of the work rather than being created by one individual. I invite audience members to share their own experiences with opportunity through this continual body of work.