Sat 10/26 @ 5PM
“I’m so new to this; I don’t have an art degree,” says photographer/visual art Jen Nicker. “I’m just a person who likes art and who loves to create. In some ways, I feel out of my depth. I’m just really dumbfounded that this is happening.”
About seven years ago, though, she got an Apple iPhone and began taking walks, shooting what she discovered and what moved her. Now those images have resulted in her first-ever solo show Wonderwall: A Photography Expedition, taking place at Gadi Zamir’s Negative Space Gallery in AsiaTown.
The opening event on Saturday October 26 is part of the gallery’s Spooky Weekend 12th anniversary celebration. The annex will be featuring work by Victor Melaragno, there’ll be a vendor market, and performances from 5-7pm including acoustic duo Alan Madej and Brandon Orloski, and solo musician Marcus Whiteamire; spoken work poetry by Alex Beaudet; belly dancing by Jessica Julian; and a Butoh dance performance by Laura Swedenborg, followed by an open mic at 7pm.
Nickler isn’t as much of a novice to art making as she modestly claims. For the past four years, she’s been one of the Ingenuity festival’s Ingeneers, the team that creates the multimedia works and installations the festival is known for.
That’s where she picked up a lot of her ideas and approaches to creativity.
“Art isn’t just about creating art,” she says. “it’s about the whole process. Most of the art I’ve been involved with in Cleveland, the art I’ve created at Ingenuity, has been about the collective creative power we have. A lot of my influence comes from Ingenuity. You go to Ingenuity to work on a project, you’ve got people that are engineers, you’ve got people that are woodworkers, you’ve got people that are painters, you’ve got people that are fashion designers and we’re all working together for Ingenuity Fest. You see all the crazy things created by a bunch of creative types, different kinds of creative, producing something is singular.”
Being around those creative people with different backgrounds and experience levels built her confidence about sharing the work she had been creating privately on her own.
“Seven years ago, I started walking and going a lot of places by myself and shooting things with my phone,” she shares. “I don’t necessarily shoot a picture of something obvious. There are 30 to 35 photos most taken in the last three years that I call Wonderwall. Some things you’ll see are pretty obvious, you go, I don’t have to wonder about that one! Other photos you’ll look at and you ask, what is that or where is that, how did you take that, where is that from and it makes you wonder what you’re looking at.”
“I chose the name Wonder Wall: A Photography Expedition because I hope this exhibition of both abstract and concrete images inspires in viewers a sense of wonder and a feeling of having gone on a fun visual voyage across the Wonder Wall,” she says.
The Wonder Wall opening reception and 12th Anniversary Party for Negative Space galley is free and open to all.
Go here for more information.
Cleveland, OH 44114