My work occupies a space where sculpture, painting, design and craft overlap.
This recent work shows a dialogue among media where forms are translated from sculpture into painting and vice-versa. Ornament and surface design become the subjects of works that draw upon antique motifs from undervalued practices such as decorative painting or stained glass design and recall early Modern experiments with color and form and the doubling and refracting effects of light through windows or images in mirrors.
Ceramics has become important to my practice because it offers a medium that expresses an immediacy of touch analogous to the marks in painting and drawing while also connecting to a long historical tradition. The inherent tension between a form and its surface design means that the work actively defies the traditional roles of its medium and operates as a sculpture on one hand and a painting on the other.
My work is driven by a fascination with the life of form, the nature of creation and the will to decorate. The true creation, the art, lies in the transcendence of those parts into an animate whole.
Solo Exhibitions
2020 Slot and Tab, Gallery DA DA DA, Seattle, WA
2019 Nicholas Nyland, Linda Hodges Gallery, Seattle, WA
2018 Surface Tension, Bradley University, Peoria, IL
2018 Reliquary, FEAST, Tacoma, WA
2017 Nicholas Nyland, Linda Hodges Gallery, Seattle, WA
2016 Nicholas Nyland - New Work, SOIL, Seattle, WA
2012 A Thing In Itself, Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2012 Physical Speculations on a Future State, Prole Drift, Seattle, WA
2012 Violet Strays (online exhibition June 15-21)
2012 Decoys, Backspace, Peoria, IL
2010 The Problem of Universals, SOIL Gallery, Seattle, WA
2010 In the Garden, Telephone Room Gallery, Tacoma, WA
2009 Nowhere, Anywhere, Everywhere, OHGE Ltd., Seattle, WA
2009 Objects of the Mind, Mineral, Tacoma, WA
2008 Ceramics, SOIL Gallery, Seattle, WA
Group Exhibitions
2021 Transformers, Parsons Paris Gallerie D, Romainville, FR
2021 Seen But Not Felt, Bradley University, Peoria, IL
2020 The Gilded Cage, Slip Gallery, Tacoma, WA
2020 Conscious Collaboration with Spirit, SOIL Gallery, Seattle, WA
2019 Patient: Language is an Arrangement, Gallery DaDaDa, Seattle, WA
2019 Yellow, Specialist Gallery, Seattle, WA
2019 Encompass, a collaborative installation with Elise Richman, 950 Gallery, Tacoma, WA
2019 Inquiry, DAAP Galleries, Univ of Cincinnati, OH
2018 Luke Armistead and Nicholas Nyland at Ash St Project, Portland, OR
2018 MOOD GOOD ROOM, Gallery DA DA DA, Seattle, WA
2018 SOIL at Spring Break Art Fair, NY
2017 Forever 22 +, The Specialist, Seattle, WA
2017 F(L)AT, TSA and Napoleon Galleries, Philadelphia, PA
2017 Now Burning, Border Patrol Gallery, Portland, ME
2016 Nicholas Nyland and Angelica Yudasto, Ash Street Project, Portland, OR
2015 JUGS, Alice Gallery, Seattle, WA
2015 Good Neighbor, Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University, WA
2015 Bellingham Annual, Whatcom Museum of Art, Bellingham, WA
2015 Bed, Bath and Between, SOIL, Seattle, WA
2014 Generis 01b: Community Association in conjunction with Exchange Rates, Brooklyn, NY
2013 SML, James Harris Gallery, Seattle, WA
2013 Contemporary Northwest Art Awards Exhibition, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR
2012 Four Approaches, Pulliam Gallery, Portland OR
2012 Pots and Other Things, Cupcake Royale, Seattle, WA
2011 Three Abstractionists, Jack Davidson, Nicholas Nyland and James Boulton, Pulliam Gallery, Portland, OR
2011 An Empty Vase, Prole Drift Gallery, Seattle, WA
2011 Scattershot, Eastern Washington University Gallery of Art, Cheney, WA
2010 BAM Biennial 2010: Clay Throwdown!, Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, WA
2010 From the Inside Out, with Heather Brammeier, Heuser Art Center, Peoria, IL
2010 Champagne Truffles, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA
2010 Search for Landscapes, SOIL Gallery, Seattle, WA
2010 Clay? III, Kirkland Art Center, Kirkland, WA
2009 Hello, The Telephone Room, Tacoma, WA
2008 Painting Pink Pajamas, Contemporary Art Center, Peoria, IL
2008 The Prom; A Semi-Formal Survey of Semi-Formal Painting, Lawrimore Project, Seattle, WA
2008 This is a Time Machine, with Ellen Ito, the Helm Gallery, Tacoma, WA
2007 8th Northwest Biennial, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA
2006 Drawings, Dessins, Zeichnungen, Basil Halward Gallery, Portland, OR
2005 BaseCamp, juried by Laura Matzer, Enumclaw, WA
2004 Induction, SOIL Gallery, Seattle
2003 Living Room: Issues of Taste and the Politics of Decoration, Storefront 1838, New York, NY
2002 2002 M.F.A Thesis Exhibition, the Power Plant, Philadelphia
Education
2021-23 M.F.A. Fashion Design and the Arts, Parsons Paris - The New School
2002 M.F.A. Painting, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
1999 B.F.A. Painting, University of Washington, Seattle
Public Projects
2015 Denny Hedgerow, ALL RISE, Seattle
2011 On Site: Summer Projects, Seattle Art Museum - Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle, WA
2005 Surge, Tacoma Contemporary Urban Art Installations in the Woolworth Windows, Tacoma, WA
Galleries & Professional Associations
Linda Hodges Gallery, Seattle
Member/Treasurer (2004-21), SOIL Artist Collective, Seattle, WA
Awards and Honors
Contemporary Northwest Art Awards finalist, 2013
Artist Trust GAP Grant, 2010
Artist Trust Fellowship, 2008
Finalist, Betty Bowen Award, Seattle, 2008
Puget Sound Energy Purchase Award – City of Enumclaw, 2005
Dean’s Award grant, University of Pennsylvania, 1999-02
Residencies
Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT, 2019
Château Orquevaux, France, 2018
Ash St Project, Portland, OR, 2018
Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT, 2017
Prairie Center for the Arts, Peoria, IL, 2010
Kamiyama Artist-in-Residence Program, Japan, 2005
Royal College of Art Exchange Program, London, 2001
International School of Art Summer Program, Umbria, Italy, 1999
University of Washington Studio Art Program in Rome, Italy, 1997
Collections
City of Tacoma, WA
Cancer Care Alliance, Seattle, WA
City of Enumclaw, WA
City of Seattle, WA
Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR
Town of Kamiyama, Japan
Bibliography
Benjamin Sutton, “West Coast Represents at Exchange Rates Bushwick,” Hyperallergic.com, October 27, 2014
Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, Contemporary Northwest Art Awards 2013 (catalogue)
Matthew Kangas, “Nicholas Nyland; Prole Drift,” Art in America, Vol 100, No.10 (November 2012).
Matthew Kangas, “Bellevue Arts Museum Biennial 2010: Clay Throwdown,” Ceramics Monthly, April 2011.
Dawn Quinn, “Ceramic and Paper,” Tacoma Weekly, July 21, 2010.
Gary Panetta, “Installation Art,” Peoria Journal Star, April 17, 2010.
Jen Graves, “Last Resort,” The Stranger, Vol. 19, No. 30, April 1-7, 2010
Jen Graves, "Sweet Messes," The Stranger, Vol. 18, No. 29, April 2-8, 2009.
Elise Richman, "Nicholas Nyland's Fall Into Color,” La Especial Norte, vol. 4, 2009.
Heather Brammeier, “Painting Pink Pajamas,” Painting Pink Pajamas, 2008 (catalogue).
Adriana Grant, “15 under 35,”Art ltd., May/June 2008.
Rock Hushka, 8th Northwest Biennial, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, 2007.
Nowhere, Anywhere, Everywhere, OHGE Ltd., 2009 (catalogue).
Rosemary Ponnekanti, “The Helm Gallery exhibit in Tacoma takes trip to colorful, cozy time,” The News Tribune, January 30, 2008.
Rosemary Ponnekanti, “Lakewood artist adds dimension to already wild world,” The News Tribune, August 4, 2007: E2.