Nicki Voss merges her passion for photography with textiles to create fiber art. Her work in quilted textiles begins with outdoor photography translated into shapes and color compositions materialized in cloth.
How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? Always there? Lightbulb moment? Dragged kicking and screaming? Evolving?
I’ve been on the artist’s path since I was little. My mom has saved many of my childhood crayon self-portraits in which I always drew myself surrounded by art supplies and fashion tools. She also taught me how to sew when I was five to keep me busy while my older brother was at school.
As a teen, I had a hard time deciding between art school or fashion school, and finally decided that art school might have more artistically experimental opportunities. I’m glad that I took the route of openness with respect to art making.
How did you find your creative niche?
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I’ve always been interested in collage, and had been working with paper and photographs in a sculptural format. At the same time, I was continuing to do quite a bit of garment sewing and needlework.
On a walk one morning, I started to think more about quiltmaking, recognizing that it was also a form of collage-making. I wondered why I was keeping my two interests – art and sewing – intentionally separate.
This curiosity, on how to merge my two passions into one, led to my first landscape quilt, Downtown Los Angeles. Simply put, I wanted to see if it was possible to be “enfolded” by a landscape or the outdoors. Quilting seemed to be the best vehicle for that.
I was aware of the broader art vs. craft dialogue and wanted to see how quilting work could exist equally as art and craft, intentionally confounding the viewer and their expectations.
I was also feeling a real connection to the historical matrix of women artists and women crafters, long gone, and their rich, innovative creative textile work. I was really drawn to seeing how I might disrupt, in a positive way, how quilting is regarded, when this medium enters the contemporary art world arena.
How does your formal art education help your work develop? Does it ever get in the way?
I love this question and it immediately activated feelings! I will always be grateful for the formal art education that I had; getting my BFA and my MFA allowed me to dive into creative critique and explore my work and my intentions with real depth and training. I appreciate being able to articulate my ideas and to be able to analyze the “why” and the “how” of a concept and its realization.
At the same time, the education did get in the way, because that rigorous scrutiny can, if you aren’t careful, completely derail creative curiosity. Sometimes you just want to make something, and you aren’t obligated to have a reason beyond that. It took me awhile to see beyond the training and to more fully lean back into the pure joy of making something.
Is there an overarching theme that connects all of your work?
Yes. I’m absolutely passionate about the environment and the outdoors.
The natural world feels like home to me. In my work, I am intentionally using cloth, as opposed to paint or other medium, to articulate my ideas about the planet and our stewardship of it. It adds compositional surprise.
I’ve also given thought to the relationship that we have with cloth, which begins moments after birth, newly enfolded by fabric. It stands to reason that we must certainly hold unconscious feelings of being nurtured, of texture, and of smell, as we engage with textile art. That’s endlessly interesting to me and a deeply considered element of my work.
Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?
The design process is multi-faceted. If I had to pick, I love that moment when I settle on what I know I’m going to be doing. It’s oddly energizing, and my brain really activates with possibilities.
In contrast, my least favorite part is the actual cutting of fabric, as I’m always afraid of getting hurt, if I don’t pay attention while using the rotary cutter. However, herein lies an interesting contradiction, because one of my absolute most liked sounds in the world is that of scissors slicing cleanly through cloth or crunching through thicker fabric!
When it comes to creating, are you more of a planner or an improviser?
I think I am a little bit of both, in equal amounts. I definitely make a plan for what I am going to be making (sourcing fabric, looking at the color palette, thinking about the structure, counting yardage), and then once it’s in progress, I allow improvisation to take over.
I try to have a conversation directly with the textile piece as it’s evolving. Perhaps it’s a bit of anthropomorphism. I’ll make changes to my initial idea if it’s needed, sometimes even large edits tied to the overall emerging composition. I spend a lot of time just looking at the work as it’s coming together.
That solitude and creative nonverbal scrutiny are essential.
Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your works? How does a new work come about?
All of my quilt work starts with my own landscape photography. It’s important to me that the work is my vision from the beginning through the making of the final quilt.
I will take lots of photos while I’m outside, either hiking or traveling or just doing something. A specific photo will begin to rise to mind repeatedly, and I’ll start to think about how it might be assembled into a cloth composition, and what those challenges might be.
A good example is the Death Valley Badwater Basin quilt. I was fascinated with the foreground of my photo, and I intentionally incorporated chunky cotton lace into the seams to be suggestive of the crunchy texture of the white salt flats and create more three-dimensionality.
Do you use a sketchbook or a journal? How does that help your work develop?
I used to feel bad that I don’t really use a sketchbook or do endless drawings of my ideas before I get started. It was incredibly liberating to realize that I just don’t work that way, and that’s OK.
I do a tiny bit of sketching out of what I’m going to be doing, but the majority of the creative process happens in my head, or directly in real time on my design wall where I move fabric around endlessly until it’s right.
I do have lots of journals, and I am constantly writing things down; books that I want to read, artists whose work I want to look at, references, color combinations that I find striking, measurements, and so forth.
Are you a “finisher”? How many UFOs do you think you have?
I am 100% a finisher.
It fits with my orderly personality! In a wacky way, I feel that I owe it to the project to bring it to completion; seeing orphaned half-finished projects in thrift stores makes me feel sad.
I have issues with waste and trash anyway, and so seeing projects that can’t really be used activates all of those feelings.
I have a slightly nerdy self-imposed mandate, which I mostly adhere to, about completing a quilt or other textile project before starting the design work for the next one. For example, I can think about the next piece, but I can’t start cutting the fabric and getting the actual pieces ready.
I will confess that I do have a few UFOs, but for good reasons! One is a light blue wool sweater that I started knitting when I was in my teens. I like the fact that it’s “almost done” and it makes me happy to see, tangibly, my early knitting efforts. If I had finished it, I’d never be able to have that creative conversation with my younger self. Instead, this light blue wool sweater in a forever stasis provides me with a joyful reminder of my art making progress every time I open the box it lives in.
Do you lecture or teach workshops? How can students/organizers get in touch with you to schedule an event?
I wish I had realized years ago how much I would love teaching, because I would have absolutely leaned into this passion much earlier.
I tested the “teaching” waters by starting with community based, civic recreational programs and surprisingly immediately found my niche. The accessibility of this type of learning model remains appealing to me as it provides just about anyone an opportunity to try something out without having to spend a lot of money. I think that fosters curiosity, which is absolutely tied to creativity.
I teach for the City of Los Angeles as a Teaching Artist – Fiber Arts, primarily at Barnsdall Arts Center in LA, and also for the City of Santa Clarita. I teach private lessons and small classes at my small business location, Textilepop. I’m reachable via email at [email protected] and always open to discussing all types of workshops and specialized events.
Where can people see your work?
I have all of my work online on my website, Textilepop.com. I’ve just participated in a lovely fiber arts group show at Freehand Gallery, and next, in early 2025, I’ll be showing several of my large quilts in a show at the Palos Verdes Arts Center. Additionally, Artful Home has a number of my pieces on their juried website, where I am one of the artists that they work with.
Interview posted December 2024
Browse through more inspiring art quilts on Create Whimsy.