Nicole Banowetz: Simulant Futures - June 15-26

LCCC Virtual Pop-Up Gallery from June 15 - 26, 2020 at lccc.wy.edu/PopUpArt.

Nicole Banowetz is a Denver sculptor who makes sewn inflatable sculptures and delicate assembled forms. Her artwork addresses vulnerability and struggle. Her forms move freely between growth and decay blurring the distinction between decoration and disease.

Nicole’s work is inspired by the natural world. She addresses human qualities while using the imagery she finds in the animal, plant, mineral, and bacterial worlds. She has made made installations inspired by bacteria, parasitic fungus, viruses, radiolaria, rotifers, horses, and rhinos. All these forms she recreates in soft inflatable sculptures, which she designs and sews on her sewing machine.

Inflatables have power. They draw an audience in by promising the familiarity of a childhood jumping castle. The inflatable is familiar, soft, and comforting which gives viewers the security they need to enter strange worlds and questioning states of mind. In this moment of fear and isolation we need comfort but we also cannot forget that our human relationship with nature is broken. What may our future hold, and how can we shape it?