We celebrate 25 years of McColl Center by celebrating the artists who have been in residence since we opened our studio doors in 1999. McColl Center's artist residency program has provided space, resources, and community to nearly 500 contemporary artists from around the world and around the block. Today, we feature Nick Cave, an Artist-in-Residence at McColl Center in 2000.
Nick Cave’s work is built upon nostalgia and self-trust. He morphs himself to the moment, fostering a perspective that can only be revealed once he arrives at a new destination.
Best known for his Soundsuits, Cave uses found objects to create his multimedia pieces. Often donning and dancing in them himself, he gathers objects such as twigs, buttons, beads, fabric, and fur and creates vibrant, wearable sculptures in which race, sex, and class become indiscernible. Concealed in these suits, the dancer is free to move and express themself without the constraints of labeling or judgment, without fear of profiling. As the dancer moves, glittering beads, fur, and tassels swish and shift constantly, revealing our ever-evolving natures as humans.
“I’m a maker,” Cave says. “To see that I’m still building with my hands… that is a critical part of my practice.” During his artist residency at McColl Center in 2000, Cave built the entire body of work for his show at Allentown Art Museum, Amalgamations. In Charlotte for the first time, he was eager to get out and hunt for found objects and new experiences in this foreign, unfamiliar place.
“I’ll make what I’ll make when I’m there,” Cave says, describing the times he’ll pick up his backpack and scout for new objects. Once there, he responds to the moment, having no access to familiarity, and ask bigger questions.
To this day, many objects found in Charlotte during his residency at McColl Center linger in his works. With each show, with each new work, he takes those memories, the nostalgia embedded in them and reclaims them.
“How can we serve humanity?” Cave ponders. He explores the fine balance between sustainability and excess, focusing on surplus as abundance, as displayed in his extravagant, highly-detailed pieces. Cave trusts the mediums to provide support for his ideas, to guide them along.
Cave received his BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He lives and works in Chicago, and considers his studio a “sacred space” where he is free to fully explore himself. In his studio, he can develop trust within himself and his work, whether he chooses to publicly display it or not. According to Cave, “[Art is] the vehicle where…you can express yourself without apology.”
While Cave has done many artist residencies, he claims that McColl Center’s artist residency program built the artist he is today. Here, Cave learned to trust himself, to explore mediums and create community with fellow artists.
“It was divine to be able to know that there was all of this surplus that was available, which just opened the doors to just endless possibilities,” Cave says. “[McColl Center] has changed my life to be able to…trust the residency as a place of learning, as a place of discovery, a place to reflect and to ask myself bigger questions about art making.”