LAYERS OF MEANING: THE ARTISTIC UNIVERSE OF NICOLE HAVEKOST
| by Barbara Pavan |
Nicole Havekost (1970) develops an artistic practice that traverses multiple media and expressive languages, maintaining as a common thread a rigorous investigation into the potential of materials and the processual dimension of creation. Her work has been presented in numerous exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, and she is currently represented by Dreamsong Gallery in Minneapolis. At the same time, she is engaged in research and teaching activities: she is a national alumni member of A.I.R. Gallery and serves as a Teaching Artist Fellow at the Center for Craft, where she deepens the relationship between artistic practice and the transmission of knowledge. Her academic training includes a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the University of New Mexico. She lives in Rochester, Minnesota.
Havekost’s work is situated within a territory of strong conceptual density, where body, memory, and fabric become instruments of aesthetic and existential inquiry. Her research unfolds through a continuous dialogue between autobiographical experience and collective dimension, with particular attention to the condition of women and issues of gender. The use of sewing and textile manipulation takes on symbolic and narrative value, capable of interweaving layers of meaning, time, and lived experience. Her works are distinguished by the tension between fragility and resilience, intimacy and monumentality, within a trajectory that transforms manual gesture into a meditative and cathartic act.
This interview offers insight into the evolution of her practice, revealing the deeper motivations that drive it and providing valuable perspectives for a broader reflection on the relationship between art, the individual, and the collective.
Nicole, the body is at the center of your artistic exploration. What are the deeper motivations behind this choice, and how has your investigation of the body evolved through your different works?
I am nearly 55 years old, and I do not remember a time where my body was not a site of judgment or a means through which I could exert control. It was only through the making of objects that referenced these emotional and physical sensations that allowed me to process the experience of living in this body. Making work about my body has allowed me to come home to it, to accept it in ways I would not have thought possible.
The female figure emerges powerfully in your work: to what extent is this an autobiographical reference, and to what extent is it a reflection on the collective experience of women and gender issues?
For a long time, I didn’t want to claim the work as auto biographical or a self-portrait. I was more comfortable working within the “collective experience” of women as I wasn’t yet ready to own my experience, desire and ambition. It was only when I claimed the personal in the making of the work that my practice really began to grow and I had more empathy for myself, the same empathy and compassion that I had for other women in this collective experience of womanhood.
How did you come to choose fabric and sewing as the main tools of your artistic practice? What led you to prioritize this technique over others?
When I went to college, I wanted to be an apparel designer. My mother had a great fabric stash and could sew anything. I loved how fabric moved around the body. I then went to art school and had an amazing freshman foundation year, which didn’t exactly change my mind, but allowed for new possibilities. I became deeply curious about materials and clothing did not feel broad enough. Technical sewing fed into my terrible perfectionism and I was miserable, so I changed majors and tried everything. It was my senior exhibition that brought me back to sewing, with painted rice paper stitched together into small sculptural dresses. Returning to sewing allowed me to experience it was a process and rediscover fabric as a material that could be manipulated into many different forms.
In your works, sewing takes on a conceptual meaning in addition to its technical function. Could you elaborate on how this manual gesture contributes to the narrative of your pieces?
Stitching allows me to be both present in time and my physical body in ways that not much else does. It is a way to experience and mark a moment and accumulate moments into a larger picture. A stitch can join disparate materials together make something whole or heal a wound. A stitch can be both destructive and make a repair. I love that accumulated stitches can transform a surface. My stitching has become a though-line between different bodies of work and different periods in my life. Stitching is work made visible. It is a flexible and forgiving process that allows me to experience quiet. There is a meditative quality to a repeated gesture that I find compelling.
Do you believe that art has a cathartic power? If so, how do you experience this yourself as an artist, and how do you perceive it in the audience that engages with your work?
I absolutely know art has had a cathartic power in my life and that understanding comes with an admission: I had to give myself permission to be a shitty artist. I had to let go of judgement. I had to return to curiosity and uncertainty to discover myself and transform. Making work allows me to claim my desires, faults and ambition and be more authentically myself. I believe experiencing authentic artwork brings one closer to knowing the artist who made it. Authenticity allows us to be truly seen. And when an artist’s perspective is understood by an audience member, that understanding comes from a particular lived experience that when shared allows for more empathy and understanding in our world.
Is there a particular work or series that has involved you emotionally more than others? What emotions did it evoke in you, and why?
There are pieces I have made over the years that are a visceral response to a deeply felt physical sensation in visual form. Lumber, a figure on all fours in my exhibition “Chthonic” was end stage pregnancy with a distended belly, and lax hips, being pulled to the ground. Lumber took up space in a way I rarely had; she was inconvenient, exposed and unapologetic. Making the work for Chthonic felt weighty and grounded when I had only ever wanted to shrink and disappear. The making of that work was both physically and emotionally challenging as it was much larger in scale than anything else I had ever produced.
From the “Candy Ladies” to the “Sewing Dolls” and on to “Chthonic,” your works have grown in scale. How has your relationship with the exhibition space and with the audience evolved during this journey?
I have always loved a big collection of little things that could be hidden away. That is what the early figures were: small, precious, no trouble and they could disappear into a suitcase like they were never there. Chthonic was a scale beyond what I had proposed for the exhibition; in my plans, 10 feet tall felt massive. When I signed the contract in the gallery with 18-foot ceilings though, I realized I had to challenge myself to deal more with the vertical space and it made such a difference in the emotional presence of the work. Working large creates a set of technical problems that are deeply rewarding to solve and has made the exhibition space more of a playground in some ways. All I want to do now is work large, but that also creates an exponential set of transportation and storage problems that are harder to manage. Scale can produce different reactions in audiences that are deeply personal and help me understand more about my own work.
Could you tell us about the genesis and evolution of your series “Massed”? How did you come to conceive of this installation from sewing patterns, and what meanings did you intend to evoke?
As I mentioned, my mom sewed throughout my childhood and sewing patterns were a kind of language I was fascinated by. You had to have all the right pieces in the right order and conceptualize how to make these individual 2D things into a particular 3D thing. It was very mysterious. I found the tissue paper, especially when layered, became skin-like, and the layering made the language impenetrable. And because we are more removed from the production of our clothes, I’ve noticed audiences have a familiarity with patterns but aren’t completely certain where they know it from. Sewing patterns had life in a particular process but I thought they would also be a lovely surface for the stitch itself. I conceived of the installation as small, individual bodies growing into a larger body, and that body had its own visual language that felt familiar and evoked memory but was not wholly legible.
In your work, manual labor and the repetition of gestures play an important role. What is your relationship with time during the creation of your pieces? Is it a meditative, compulsive, or ritual time?
It is all of those things. Time is a constant. Time is felt. I experience the process of time in my gestures with anticipation, ease, distraction or sometimes excruciating and never ending. I lose time and I am present in time simultaneously.
What role has your experience as an educator played in your artistic growth? How have your teaching experiences influenced your creative work?
These two practices are deeply intertwined and directly related to my freshman foundation experience. When I went to art school, I knew I was a good draftsperson, but I did not know that I had a voice until a very special teacher made an opportunity for me to discover it. This faculty also encouraged me to be curious about this voice. With curiosity I became more confident and capable in that voice. I want to encourage students to follow their curiosity and fail spectacularly. I want my students to make friends with process and be open to different outcomes. Mostly I want them to feel capable in their problem-solving skills.
Could you tell us about your most recent artistic research and the works it has led you to create?
I tend to alternate between my drawing and sculptural practice and they have been very different until recently. When I did a residency at the McColl Center two years ago, I gave myself a daily drawing assignment with two rules: do not plan the drawing and tear the paper into an organic shape so it was already screwed up. This way of drawing was deeply uncomfortable yet strangely more like my sculpture and fiber work. I focused on surface and after several days of discomfort started to look for ways to get out of the prompt. It was at this point that I grabbed one of my upholstery needles and poked a hole through the back of the paper making a little white beaded perforation in the charcoal on the front of the page and I knew there was something there. I spent the residency playing with the amount and placement of the holes and discovered the paper would stretch and become much more dimensional, almost fabric like. This method has made my drawings more sculptural and allowed my drawing process to become more intuitive like my three-dimensional objects. In the time since, I have also been soaking my felt in beeswax and using drawing materials to transform that surface. The work is still based in the experience of my physical body but becoming more abstract and expansive. It has been a really exciting shift.
