Nicole Schneider

By this point, you all know we love color, texture, and patterns. Naturally, we can't get enough of Nicole Schneider's work! This Ohio based artists combines printmaking techniques to contrast structured and free form lines in her work, creating contrasting bold patterns referencing desire to find balance amid order and chaos one may experience in day to day life.

Nicole Schneider received her BFA in printmaking from Kent State University in 2007, and her MFA in printmaking from Kent State University in 2012. In 2011, Schneider was honored with the Thomas D. Little Prize for Excellence in Printmaking. From 2008 to 2018, Schneider worked in various capacities for the printmaking cooperative Zygote Press, Inc., including that of Gallery Director (2012-2015), and lead printer on several projects for Ink House (2014-2018), producing editions for Michelle Grabner and Adeel uz Zafar, the 2014 Creative Fusion Residency artist. In 2015, Schneider was commissioned by the Ohio Arts Council to create the Governor’s Awards for that year. Schneider has recently shown work at the Manhattan Graphics Center in New York, and her work has been included in the public and private collections of the Cleveland Clinic, Metro Health, The Westin Cleveland Downtown, and American Greetings. Schneider lives and works in Lakewood, Ohio.

Nicole explains her work and process:

Negotiations is a series of thirty abstract monoprints combining silk-screen and relief printing processes to build overlapping layers of gestural marks and hard-edge geometric forms. The interplay of these distinctly different elements represents the psychological struggle to find balance between order [rational thinking] and chaos [raw emotion]. Without chaos, there would be no creative invention, and without order there would be no security in which to explore chaos. The balance between the two is critical.

The exploration of human consciousness and psychology is integral to my work. Our bodies are constantly taking in more sensory data than we are able to process. It is the job of our consciousness to make sense of this data in a way that allows us to navigate the physical and social world that we live in.

This series is inspired by my role as a mother and experiencing first-hand the task of socializing a toddler, or teaching one to “color inside the lines.” In my sketchbook, I mimicked the erratic, forceful marks my son would make in his coloring books while paying little attention to the dark outlines of the illustrations on each page. Once enlarged, these scribbles and doodles became the gestural marks that are screen-printed in different colors, positions, and configurations throughout the entire series. I incorporated hard-edge geometric forms to impose structure and order over the chaotic marks. The interplay between these opposing formal elements creates a visual dialog that mimics the way we are in constant negotiation with ourselves, our surroundings, and others.

You can see more on Nicole's work online at www.nicolemschneider.com/ and on Instagram @idleprinter