nicole gsell

Artist Equation

collage, crafty, fine art, Mass Art

For my Concepts and Processes class at Mass Art, our homework was to create an artwork that involved a famous artist. We could “add, multiply, divide, square root”, i.e create an equation between us and another artist. The artist I chose was Pepon Osorio, a Puerto Rican artist known for large scale installations.

The piece “Tina’s House” was particularly inspiring for me, provocative and mesmerizing.

In an Art21.org article on Osorio:

“My principal commitment as an artist is to return art to the community.” A recent example is “Tina’s House,” a project created in collaboration with a family recovering from a devastating fire. The house—a tabletop-size art piece—tells the story of the night of the fire and those affected, and is traveling the country in a series of “home visits”: a home visit invites a new family to live with the art work for a period of at least one week, allowing the story of “Tina’s House” to be told in many homes and environments.

Nicole + Pepon / Nicole X Pepon = “Another Little Incident”

For reference, this is Tina’s House (referenced in the quote above):

Several of my pieces have gotten a new boost of promotion recently.

First, the wonderful folks at Literary Lights for Children used the image I provided last year for a bookplate for their “Save The Date” cards, sent out to the honored guests of the kidslit community to join this reception honoring 4 prestigious children’s author/illustrators:

I am so honored to know that my artwork continues to provide the look and inspiration for the Literary Lights for Children project.

Also, a few months back my agent – Kristy King from Writers House – and I put together a sweet little postcard announcing our partnership. I posted the sneak peeks of this piece awhile back, but here are the final images:

I always appreciate the collaborative process of creating artworks that have been crafted with care and thought. Thank you to these fantastic people who help refine my vision, and give my work a place to live and be seen!

character sketches, children's illustration, freelance