Woman and Her Needs: Drawings and Prints by Nikki D. May

In case you somehow missed it on Facebook or Twitter, here’s some shameless self-promotion to go with your morning coffee. I’m having a show at Tribeca! Because I’m tired of hearing myself talk about it, I’ll just repost the press release that was sent out earlier this week. You should all come to the opening, guacamole for everyone!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
3-1-2011
Contact: Karen Anderson 270-210-1753
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Tribeca Gallery Presents “Woman and Her Needs: Drawings and Prints by Nikki D. May”
 
The work of Nikki May, one of Paducah’s most interesting downtown artists, will be featured at The Tribeca Gallery from March 4th through May 3rd.  Her new collection is titled “Woman and Her Needs”. 

Nikki is a mixed media artist with an education background in drawing, painting and fiber arts. She attended the University of Georgia and the Savannah College of Art and Design as well as studying painting, papermaking and bookbinding in Italy. Her art has taken her from designing t-shirts for the National Audubon Society to designing websites for Fortune 500 companies.

She operates Blue Frog Designs from her home in LowerTown (that she refers to as her little corner of cyberspace) offering graphic design, illustration and web design services.  From her partnership in iList Paducah to the unique art-laden vehicle she drives, everyone knows Nikki. She was voted “best local artist” last year in Bazooka Magazine’s reader poll and is also a founding member of the Paducah Arts Alliance.   

“Words are the wrong language for expressing emotion. My influences are experiences, relationships, emotions, objects and reflections of my world and my life.” stated Nikki, “My artwork is influenced by the beauty of nature and nostalgia, but my greatest inspiration comes from the beauty inherent in all our wonderfully diverse physiques.”

Her work is about how the world sees people and how that differs from what the truth about a person really is. The layering of images on decorated backgrounds and pages of text talks about the things we do to hide our true selves from the world.

“The unadorned, anonymous female figures that I draw say that what the world sees is just the packaging we were put in, but did not choose for ourselves. But the outer physical shell is not the truth about a person any more than the personality that most of the world sees and thinks is the truth about us.” says Nikki.

This series of prints is made from original drawings in a book by Elizabeth Oakes Smith called Woman and Her Needs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-1893) was a poet, fiction writer, editor, lecturer and women’s right activist. The text of the book was originally published as a series of essays in the New York Tribune between 1850 and 1851. What at first glance appears to be a Victorian tome on how women should behave, is actually one of the earliest feminist publications, arguing for women’s spiritual and intellectual capacities as well as women’s equal rights to political, economic and educational opportunities.  The pages of this beautiful old book became the the perfect background for her drawings.

A reception for the artist will be held on Thursday, March 24, 2011 from 5:30-7:30 at the Gallery.  The public is invited to attend and celebrate this artist’s accomplishments.  The Tribeca Gallery is located at 127 Market House Square in downtown Paducah, during restaurant hours. Contact Karen Anderson at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for information about the Tribeca Gallery.

(attached art titled “defrauded of girlhood”)