Oakland, CA native Nicole Dixon received a BA in Studio Art at Spelman College in Atlanta, in 2002. In addition to public exhibitions, she has produced private and commissioned works for over two decades. Nicole has served as the altar-artist for numerous gatherings, conferences, and activist organizations. She is also a Montessori preschool teacher and firmly believes education and creative expression should go hand-in-hand. She teaches art to youth and adults alike, which has taken her as far as the Kalahari as a guest art instructor. Nicole uses art as an interactive medium, and vehicle for self-transformation, community bridge-building, and positive social change. Living in a society where boxes and labels are a way of life, forces one to hide and resent the parts of themselves that are not accepted. Never being strictly one thing or another fostered the realization that “I am all things” “We are all things”.
“Telling stories that are unheard, or undervalued gives greater meaning to any work.” -RA
“My objective is to make the viewer connect and think outside themselves or what they know to be true. To see beyond the pretty picture on the wall” -RA
In a time when injustice, apathy, and all the blatant “-isms” are stealing Black lives and liberty, it will take a shift in mainstream consciousness to humanize blackness, and an arsenal of tools for Black people to protect their identity and spirit. Using art as her tool, Nicole's work presents blackness as spiritual, empowered, anchored in culture, beautiful, and unapologetic. It draws viewers in, and gives them a more holistic view of blackness to take out the door, down the street, and across the path of the next black person they meet. It offers Black viewers a spiritual and cultural touchstone to arm and affirm them as they brave each day. Black women have a unique power that can destroy obstacles and birth solutions if they maximize their potential, and therefore Nicole has centered black women in her art for this exhibition.
