Artist: Nick Bamford
Exhibition: No name
Media: found objects, plaster, clay, wood
Gallery: Max L. Gatov Gallery East
Website: none
Instagram: @nickbamf4d
Nick Bamford is an undergrad student in his last year in the BFA ceramics art program. He is from Huntington Beach and fell into his love for art in high school. Nick always enjoyed art as a kid but taking a ceramics class in high school greatly deepened his passion for art. His interests of building things and experimenting with objects stems from his love for art. Nick especially enjoys sculpting and finds joy in creating new things from a simple block of clay.
Nick’s largely scaled art work is a combination of various found objects, plaster, clay and wood. Each of the pieces include sharp, and jagged edges as the different objects come together. Nick’s use of vibrant colors such as lime green, neon orange, magenta and electric blue really captures the audience’s attention. He chose to utilize neon lights because he has always liked black lights and finds that it brings a more artistic meaning.
His art work isn’t inspired by anything in particular but instead, each of the objects used in his sculptures are from his own life whether it be random or not. Therefore, the art pieces Nick creates are somewhat personal to him. Although there is no definite meaning, Nick encourages onlookers to take in each sculpture and interpret their own meaning and relate it back to his or her life. Nick also describes the objects in the art work as exploring different concepts of use and putting things to use for a different purpose.
Overall, I found Nick’s sculptures to be extremely captivating with his unique use of bright colors and random objects. I also found that placing the self-lit sculptures in a dark gallery greatly increased its appeal. In my opinion, I see the dark gallery as the world we live in and the brightly lit sculptures as treasures or joy’s each person can find in life if they just look. I loved Nick Bamford’s exhibit and I look forward to seeing more art from him!