by Giovanna Marcus, 3/24/10
Nikki McClure loves to sweep.
“Everything we do is built on the experiences and failures of others. Everyone in my family for the last thousand years has swept.”
She cites this ancestral connection while performing routine tasks. It is the same mindfulness that make her paper cuts of picking apples and laying in hammocks so evocative. In her art she re-creates scenes that seem to romanticize every day life by focusing in on connections with our homes, the natural world, and with one another. Her work has a grounding force. It manages to convey simplicity, despite the complexity what she does to a single sheet of paper, nicked and etched with an exact-o knife using delicate intention until a unique and seemingly living, breathing moment is created. Her work is at once both timeless and topical, sturdy and fleeting.
The medium of paper cutting gave her the means to create such dynamic images. Unlike a photographic negative, the images keep true when enlarged, and paper cuts are, by nature, highly reproducible. Size wise, the images translate successfully whether being made into a small stamp or a poster. What began as only an inkling that she wanted to create something crisp, with bold, clean lines and black and white, evolved into a successful annual calendar project over the last decade. Expensive equipment is not needed, and the medium is portable. McClure tells me of a friend who makes paper cuts with scissors in the van while on tour with his band.
There is an authoritative quality to paper cuts that is fascinating. Each swipe of the blade is a definitive and unmovable gesture. And simultaneously fluid. I venture to ask McClure a question that I am sure she is constantly asked: What do you do when you make a mistake? She tells me that she just goes along with it, but that she usually starts with the hardest part first. Faces are the most difficult, she says, especially when making multiple images for a book. McClure shows me preliminary sketches for her next book and we talk more about the complex process of creating a book from start to finish, with decisions like choosing recycled paper, and printing domestically vs. overseas, at the same time as working to develop the actual content of the book. 
When asked whether she has found inspiration in the history of paper cuts in different cultures, she answers some, but that she is more inspired by the WPA public health posters generated during FDR’s New Deal. And also by the likes of those plastic framed posters you see in business offices, eagles soaring majestically across mountain ranges while boldface text proclaims “Success.” She muses that it would please her to see her artwork in their stead, and gently boasts of reports that her posters are in a women’s health care clinic in Hawaii.
McClure is unassuming and likable; she has impressive eye contact and uses words like “festoon,” which delights my inner bibliovore. Later in the day she will be traveling to the University of Puget Sound to give a presentation to an art class. She hopes to inspire students at a more traditional college to take artistic risks, but hasn’t the time in between parenting, working and daily life to teach on a more regular basis. McClure herself received a Bachelor of Science degree from Evergreen, a fact that makes sense given that her art often exhibits such a high reverence for the natural world.
Over the last dozen years, McClure has broadened her scope to include fine art sold in galleries, indie rock album covers, a fabric line for Patagonia, cards, children’s books, and even the manhole covers for downtown Olympia. The calendars remain a large source of fun and creativity (and income) for her since becoming a working artist. “I have a lot more freedom with the calendars. It’s not the same as working with an editor.” The self-published calendars give McClure a chance to reflect on each month. McClure tells me that she sits down and thinks about her personal relationship to the current month. March. It’s about the nettles coming up and listening for the swallows, of daily awareness and excitement found in acts like watching the flowers in her yard unfold.
While McClure’s art conjures up universal human themes such as communing with one’s physical surroundings and family, her work has become increasingly autobiographical as she has become more confident as an artist. She talks about spending time in her backyard with her 5-year-old, helping the bees to pollinate the apple trees in her yard with a paintbrush dabbed in pollen. It’s moments like this, quiet and small that excite McClure. Taking time to notice the hints of other seasons that are evident throughout the present one, and how the world is in constant motion.
Such sentiments allude to a thoughtfulness that has been largely lost, as humans have become less in tune with the world’s natural rhythm. In the moment where McClure and her son are out back pollinating fruit trees, there is a tale of activism, of families working together with nature to accentuate and enhance what occurs naturally, and yet the fact that there is a lack of bees to pollinate conjures a hint of sadness that we’ve traded something for convenience that we may never regain. Still, the hopefulness of her now brightly colored paper cuts prevail, as they speak to simple tasks that regenerate the spirit: breathe, make mistakes, give in.
She is currently working on another children’s book due to come out in 2011 called, “To Market,” which details McClure’s personal investigation into exactly how the locally-produced goods she consumes are made. The book features many local Olympia businesses, including Blue Heron Bakery and Pixie Honey. She brings over the paper cut on her desk to where I am sitting and I can instantly recognize the likeness of Ben Pixie, apiarist (the fancy word for beekeeper), complete with blackberry tattoos. At 40 pages, the book will be relatively long for a children’s book.
McClure suggests to everyone the activity of finding out exactly how the local goods which they love are made. The book promises to function an artistic snapshot of some of the highlights and inner workings behind the loyalty many Olympia citizens have to perpetuating the local economy. McClure has also donated an image that will be featured as the first in a series of posters for the Olympia Farmer’s Market.
Upcoming exhibits for McClure include an installation during Spring Artswalk at Batdorf and Bronson with images from her new children’s book, “Mama, Is it Summer Yet?” A public reading and book signing is scheduled at the downtown Olympia library on May 1st from 1-3PM. ◙
A collection of McClure’s original paper cuts, books, card and calendars can be found for purchase at www.buyolympia.com and you can also visit her website at www.nikkimcclure.com.