"My work creates a unique combination of the familiar and the strange..." : An Interview With Nicole Banowetz

I’ve admired the work of Denver-based artist Nicole Banowetz from afar for some time. Her sculptures, installations, and performances integrate many aspects that excite and inspire me. Using inflatables, she defies our expectations for large-scale sculpture by creating work that is simultaneously soft and assertive, combining a keen sensitivity to craft paired with dramatic narrative potential. Banowetz’s sculpture conveys ferocity and fragility. I’m honored that she took time out of a very busy exhibition schedule to chat with me about her process. Here’s our conversation:

Nicole Banowetz, Horses: An Inflatable Installation, 2012, fabric, mixed media, blowers. photo courtesy of the artist

Liz Miller: As someone attracted to materials that are both structural and malleable (rope, fabric, etc), I find the inflatable nature of your work fascinating. The forms are so intricate and so fully realized. But there’s also such suspense in the fact that they can seemingly deflate and disappear in an instant! The inflatables have a sense of familiarity (parade floats, holiday lawn decorations), but what you are doing with this material is much more layered and nuanced, visually and conceptually. How did you get started making inflatable sculpture?

Nicole Banowetz: The first inflatables I created were for a Holiday Light show. I was working as an assistant for an artist who wanted giant inflatable toys. I hadn’t ever made anything like this before but it was so exciting to figure it out. I made a giant rubber ducky, a Jack in the Box, and a bunch of other fun forms. I fell in love with the process and started to try and figure out how I could use the inflatable form with my own imagery and concepts. I realized right away that inflatables could give me the ability to make giant sculptures with just fabric and a sewing machine. The fact that I needed very little space to work meant I could really make anything. My first solo show was a series of inflatable horses struggling to inflate against the weight of decorative bridles and ties, but I quickly moved on to create large inflatable versions of microscopic bacteria and viruses, as well as parasitic fungus.

Nicole Banowetz, Cordyceps, 2013, fabric, blowers. photo courtesy of the artist

Liz Miller: Your work involves some engineering—it not only has to inflate, but it needs to remain inflated, sometimes through varied weather conditions, and at other times as part of a performance, or as part of an interactive audience experience. Do you have a science or engineering background? How do you make this work withstand time and the elements? I know it can’t be easy—there are quite a few deflated snowmen in Minnesota every holiday season that prove it isn’t!

Nicole Banowetz: As I mentioned before I have a background creating attractions for holiday light shows.  This experience helps me create work which I can install outdoors in different locations for extended periods of time. Inflatables are actually really resilient. I once had my artwork Rotifers on display at the Amsterdam Light festival and someone tried to pop it by stabbing it multiple times with a knife and it didn’t even deflate. This is partially because of the strength of the blowers and and fabrics I use. The hardest part of creating inflatable sculptures is drafting the patterns in such a way that the fabric inflates into the form I want and that I can get air to all the sections. I draft all my patterns by hand and sew everything myself. I studied sculpture, but making inflatables wasn’t part of my program. I have always had to experiment a lot to get the forms I want, and I have had many sewing mentors along the way. I don’t have any engineering experience, and although I love science I don’t have any formal training in the sciences. 

Above: Nicole Banowetz, Outbreak, 2017, fabric, blowers. photo courtesy of the artist.

Below: Nicole Banowetz, Rotifers, 2016, fabric, LED lights, blowers. photo credit: Janus van den Eijnden

Liz Miller: Although the forms in your installations and sculptures are intricate and quite beautiful, there’s often the sense of an invasion or infestation—as though I’m seeing a microscopic world brought to life at an exaggerated scale in the gallery (or on-site). What drives your work conceptually?

Nicole Banowetz: My work is inspired by the natural world. I find historical and environmental relationships that tell poetic stories about the human condition. I address these human qualities using imagery from the animal, plant, mineral, and bacterial worlds. I re-envision and recreate these forms in soft inflatable sculptures which invite the viewer to come close. Inflatables have power. They draw an audience in by promising the familiarity of a jumping castle or the wacky waving man. Humans are more likely to explore spaces with an open mind if we are surrounded by something familiar. The inflatable is familiar, pillowy, and comforting which gives viewers the security and confidence they need to enter a strange space with an open and questioning state of mind. My work creates a unique combination of the familiar and the strange which catches the viewer off guard, allowing them to embrace and question the world around them.

Above: Nicole Banowetz, Out of the Bloom, 2018, fabric, blowers. photo credit: Richard Romero

Below: Nicole Banowetz, The Mother, 2019, fabric, blower. photo courtesy of the artist

Liz Miller: Tell me about the work you did in Joshua Tree! I was just there last summer for a week-long visit—my husband David Hamlow also did the Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency (JTHAR) in 2020—and I find the images of your work in that severe desert landscape so poignant. It looks like you integrated performance in that setting. How is your approach to making work in the outdoor landscape different than your gallery-based work? Is the performance a new aspect of your practice?

Nicole Banowetz: I feel most comfortable creating work that is meant to be out in a natural setting because my work is generally inspired by forms and stories from nature.  When I am in a specific environment my inspiration is literally right there in front of me.  It limits and challenges me in a wonderful way. My favorite work is created in residencies like JTHAR which are set out in nature. One big difference is taking the physical landscape into consideration when I choose the forms and the colors. It feels much more alive than a white cube gallery space. I also have been working with performance more in the last few years. I created my first wearable sculpture Distended Defense in 2016 and I began using the sculpture in performance work in 2017 when I collaborated with Chris Bagley in Simulacra Vision. The moth I created in Joshua Tree for the performance Our Obligate Future is my third wearable sculpture, but it is the first one I created with a specific performance in mind. The Yucca Moth and the Joshua Tree have an Obligate Mutualistic relationship which means that if one were to die then the other would follow. As the climate is changing the area where the moths and trees can both survive is getting smaller. My inflatable sculptures highlight the poetic beauty, strangeness and fragility of this unique relationship. My felled Joshua tree lays across the dessert ground, a stark white against the dessert landscape. Each enlarged blossom has bright orange soft pollen attached to it, and an opening where the pollen can be deposited by the moth. The pollen’s bright orange color contrasts its environment and draws attention to its importance. In my performance the moth is trying to pollinate a dead Joshua Tree. The moth appears slowly approaching the Joshua trees, swaying gently. The moth seems to dance with the Joshua Tree, and her movements express the gentle and kind relationship between moth and tree. I wanted to draw attention to the sad situation that climate change is creating for so many. 

Nicole Banowetz, Concerning Plants, 2018, fabric, bilge fans, batteries. photo credit: Richard Rom

Nicole Banowetz, Microcosms, 2018, fabric, strings. photo courtesy of the artist

Nicole Banowetz, Simulacra Vision, collaboration with Chris Bagley, 2017, fabric, projection, blowers, sound and performance. photo credit: Chris Bagley

Nicole Banowetz, Our Obligate Future, 2020, fabric, Bilge fans, batteries, performance. photo credit: Devin Reilly.

Liz Miller: What are you working on now, and where can we see your work next?

Nicole Banowetz: I am experimenting creating inflatable skins with a translucent ripstop material. This material allows me to create an inner and outer inflatable. The inner forms are colored and spill out of the translucent skins.  This is a very new process for me and I am excited to see the show comes together. This body for work will be on display at Understudy, which is located in Denver CO in March. 

 I also have a giant installation Erupture at Wonderspaces Philadelphia that people can check out for the next couple months. I have a new permanent sculpture Mycelium Mite in the Denver Meow Wolf, Convergence Station, and my sculpture Out of the Bloom is always on display in the Denver Zoo Gift shop. 

Nicole Banowetz, Erupture, 2014-2018, fabric and blowers. photo credit: Airi Katsuta

Liz Miller: When you’re not in the studio, where can we find you?

 Nicole Banowetz: I try to spend as much time out in nature as possible. love to hike and ride bikes!

I also work as a teaching artist so I am often in schools collaborating with students. Right now I am working on a collaboration with Knapp Elementary. The students there are creating fabric cut outs inspired by microscopic creatures. I am going to take their fabric pieces and appliqué them onto one of my sculptures which I will install into their neighborhood sometime this Spring. This project was made possible through an Inside Fund. 

Nicole Banowetz is a Denver sculptor who makes sewn inflatable sculptures. Nicole’s work is inspired by the natural world. She addresses human qualities while using the imagery she finds in the animal, plant, mineral, and bacterial worlds. She has made made installations inspired by bacteria, parasitic fungus, viruses, radiolaria, rotifers, horses, root systems, and rhinos. All these forms she recreates in soft inflatable sculptures, which she designs and sews on her sewing machine. She has lived and worked internationally creating and / or showing work in India, Italy, Ireland, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Taiwan, and England. Nicole has shown in the Biennial of the Americas, the Arvada Center, Ironton Gallery, Pirate Contemporary, Gray Contemporary, The Silos at Sawyer Yard, Saginaw Valley State University Art Gallery, The Denver Art Museum, Wonderspaces, and the Kreuzburg Pavilion. She has also created large light sculptures for the Amsterdam Light Festival and Canal Convergence, and outdoor installations for Breckenridge International Arts Festival, PASSAGES INSOLITES in Quebec City, Open Art in Sweden, and Environmental Art Exhibition Barfotastigen in Finland. She is in the permanent collection of the Denver Children's Museum, Meow Wolf Denver, and the Denver Zoo in the US, The Amsterdam Light festival's Light Art Collection, and Kids Awesome Museum in Taipei, Taiwan.