Today we’d like to introduce you to Nikki Lewis.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I grew up in the 70’s with an artistic family, one where there was an appreciation for art and craftsmanship. My mother was a watercolorist and my dad was an exceptional tinkerer. I would spend time drawing with my mom and then hours in my dad’s shop while he built wooden stools and tables and leather-worked belts and purses.
I was raised in the deep south (Mobile, Ala) where you learned how to steer a boat and baitfish hooks at a young age. As a child, I would spend hours combing the beach for creatures that would wash up from summer thunderstorms: eels, horseshoe crabs, jellyfish, blue crab, crawfish, every kind of animal. My parents divorced when I was young so I had a duality to my childhood. I spend weekdays with mom and attended a nice catholic school, ballet, uniforms, the mall, all the normal stuff (if catholic school is normal lol), but weekends I spent in the country with my father. While I sometimes I was annoyed going to see my dad, these were the times I would get lost in nature and were very formative. I would walk for miles on country roads overgrown with kudzu, eating wild blackberries and avoiding snakes. My dad and I would go with his friends to shallow estuaries in the night to “flounder” which meant to spear flounder. I would fall asleep on an elevated army cot on the beach, the bay would wash under me, while my dad lit tiki torches he staked in the sandy shallows and spearfish all night and drink Coors.
When I think back to what shaped my appreciation of hand-work, I remember these times. These memories connected me to a presence in my hands that connected to my mind and connected to nature. My hands have always known how to make.
My mother remarried and had my half-brothers, who I am very close too. My step-father’s job took us from Mobile Ala to Miami, Florida. This was a huge culture shift for me. I learned a lot of city facts and really quick, but I loved Miami and I still do. I finished high school there and enrolled at New World School of the Arts, right in the heart of downtown Miami. The colors of Miami, the neon, the Caribbean music everywhere, the flowers and tropical plants, these things people talk about are real and infuse the city in joyful way. I think I am always searching for even more color and pattern in my ceramics because the imprint Miami has left behind on my creative psyche.
But as an artist and a craftswoman, I wasn’t getting what I needed enrolled in the college, I was in. I transferred to the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri to study with many of the best ceramic artists in the country. It was there I met my best friend and curatorial partner, Katie Queen. We had the greatest art school experience, lol. We would stay up late, firing leaky gas kilns to temperature and drinking bad gas station coffee. But it was a creative, free, and open shared community in the ceramics lab that has lived with me for years.
After Kansas City, I wanted to go to graduate school, but I needed some time off and I wanted to live a little. I moved with an ex-boyfriend to Los Angeles in an absolute “what the hell” kind of mentality. I had no job set up, no friends, and knew very little about the city. I just came out and winged it. We found a killer apartment in Silverlake and I found an excellent job working at Freehand, which is an important craft galley in Los Angeles. The owner, Carol Sauvion, was just starting to work on this incredible vision for filming craftspeople across America. This film series became the Peabody Award-winning series, Craft in America. I was lucky enough to be part of the early documentaries both on film and in books and articles.
At the same time, I was accepted in the art program at UCLA where I was able to work with art world greats like John Baldessari, James Welling, Adrian Saxe, Phyllis Green, Cindy Kolodziejski, and Joel Otterson. I taught alongside these professors as well as had a studio practice in an off campus space. These were tough years. I was working to pay the bills and go to school at the same time. I didn’t want to take out too many loans so I taught as much as possible because tuition was waived the quarters you taught. Trying to be an artist in Los Angeles is incredibly challenging. The time it takes to drive anywhere takes away from your studio time. The amount of hustling artists have to do in this city could power a small country, lol.
After graduate school, I convinced Katie to move to Los Angeles from Colorado. We have both been lucky to secure full time teaching jobs at local colleges. Over the past few years, we have founded Q&L Projects and have started to dip our toes into curating exhibitions that are primarily focused on ceramics, but have a specific voice. When we develop ideas for exhibitions, we look for fresh perspectives from artists who are working in clay or exhibition themes that seek to explore social constructs. It’s been an interesting shift away from singular studio work into collaborations with a partner and art institutions. For Katie and I, we feel like it’s another way to do good in the world and to highlight artists whose voices need amplifying. Our most recent curatorial project, “Here/Now: Contemporary Narrative and Form in the Yunomi” at the Craft in America Center seeks to explore the roles of marriage, duality, and western aesthetics in an eastern ceramic form.
For my own studio practice, I work out of my converted two car garage. I have been deeply influenced lately by mid-century textiles from Jaqueline Groag, Lucienne Day, and Alexander Girard. I also love African mudcloth and basket weavings. I respond to these visuals and these objects in a very visceral way, I think it’s the Miami in me that comes out in the studio when I am listening to music loud, drinking coffee, and coiling baskets out of rich, red clay. I approach color as an expression of soul. When I am patterning an object, I try to imagine it in a domestic setting, holding towels next to the tub or a bucket or icy beers. I think that vessels and the act of holding something, is joy and I want the colors, patterns, and textures I use to reflect that joy in unexpected ways. I will never be accused of being a minimalist and I want my ceramics to reflect the history of my knowledge.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Struggles abound when you are an artist. They become part of your DNA in a way that is not always enviable. The biggest struggle I’ve had is swimming upstream against patriarchal systems which abound in the arts. All the white men around me got gallery representation, studio assistantships, and inner circle invites that were not a possibility for me. As I got older, more men scored the teaching jobs and the opportunities I was just as qualified for.
I don’t think I fully noticed the inequities in gender until the #metoo movement really opened the eyes of many women in my field. There is so much to strive for, but I feel committed to get there.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Nikki Lewis Ceramics – what should we know?
Nikki Lewis Ceramics is not a company per se, it’s just me, in the studio, finding time between teaching and motherhood to make art. I specialize in one of a kind handmade ceramics that are more recently large scale. I make big baskets out of red earthenware and brightly colored slips. I also throw a variety of functional objects on the potter’s wheel.
I think that my technique and educational background sets me apart. And I don’t mean educational background in a high falutin way, I mean I have researched and studied historical to contemporary ceramics for years and tried to understand the historical and cultural depths of my field. This has informed and elevated my work exponentially.
I am most proud of how much joy my work brings to the people who collect it and use it on a daily basis. Getting picture messages of coffee in my coffee cups makes my day.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
I think I have a very engaged and extroverted personality. I really love people and am attracted to talking and learning. I also have an extreme work ethic. As a clay person, your mind never leaves the studio and the handwork is never work in a traditional sense, it’s nourishment for the being. Work ethic becomes part of your life ethic when you work with clay, they are so entwined.
Pricing:
- Baskets are sold at Freehand Gallery between $300-$375
Contact Info:
- Website: nikkilewisceramics.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: Nikki Lewis Ceramics
- Other: www.freehand.com
Image Credit:
Jen Côtè
Suggest a story: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
