Boomtown
Video related to a large scale installation at the Sun Valley Art Museum, Spring 2020
Tucker Nichols
Boomtown, 2020
Wood, paint, mixed media
The Post Office
From Noah at Electric Works in SF:
Tucker Nichols and Electric Works love the USPS. With a 91% approval rating by the US public, seems like lots of other folks do too.
To hear about the USPS being torn asunder by those in charge was certainly a lowlight of the year that brought us many lowlights. Rather than sit around our houses under lockdown and let the bad feelings eat us up alive, we decided to do something about it.
Here is that something: a t-shirt celebrating the great service the United States has fostered for hundreds of years.
Here are some people who worked at the post office over the years: Abraham Lincoln, William Faulkner, Charles Bukowski, Harry S. Truman, Sherman Hemsley, Steve Carrell, John Prine, Conrad Hilton, Brittany Howard, John Brown, N. C. Wyeth and even Noah Webster.
The postal service is a major character in US history. It’s more than just an employer and service provider. It has personality, magic and mythology. Need a short read, please spend some time with Eudora Welty’s “Why I Live at the P. O."
Proceeds from these t-shirts go to Ameelio, a non-profit whose mission is to "decouple incarceration and profit, and combat mass incarceration.” Meaning, they keep incarcerated family members in touch with their loved ones for free. To date, they have sent over 42,000 letters to inmates for free.
Read on: Nearly one in two Americans has a family member who has experienced incarceration. When a loved one is imprisoned, staying in touch is vital. Yet prison communications options remain prohibitively expensive.
The $1.2 billion prison telecommunications industry is one of the most under-reported bad actors in the criminal justice space.
Private telecommunications companies exploit vulnerable families’ desire to remain connected while separated by incarceration. These providers are profiting primarily from low-income families: one in three families with incarcerated loved ones are forced into debt due to the costs of maintaining contact.
We want to reconnect incarcerated people and their loved ones, for free. Our vision is to disrupt the prison telecommunications industry by outcompeting incumbents with services that prioritize users over profits.
There is strong evidence that sustaining contact during incarceration improves post-release outcomes and reduces recidivism. We hope that in the long term, our services will significantly shrink prison populations.
Read more about them here.
So please let “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” stay you from swift completion of your ordering these shirts.
You're Fired postcard set
Double sided postcard set, pre addressed and waiting for your stamp
Brought to you by the good people of Park Life in San Francisco
Screen printed by the wizard Nat Swope at Bloom Press in Oakland
Let the postal workers know where you stand
Catalog text from "American Genre" at the ICA, Maine
From the exhibition:
American Genre: Contemporary Painting
Institute of Contemporary Art, Maine
July 20 - September 15, 2017
Curated by Michelle Grabner
Tucker Nichols, Untitled (BR16114), 2016
Enamel on panel
18 x 24”
Flowers For Sick People
Know someone struggling with illness?
I will mail a small flower painting on your behalf to a loved one in need.
Digestion Placemats
Tucker Nichols, , 2019
6 printed placemats on cork, 12 x 16” each
$150
Published by Workshop Residence, San Francisco
Available here
Digestion Placemats
We generally don’t like to think about digestion, especially while we’re in the process of doing it. But ultimately it’s what makes eating so appealing—the magic of taking food into our bodies and blindly extracting each essential part to give us raw energy. I designed these placemats as a way of introducing the most basic elements of digestion into the dining experience: tubes and bits. If it didn’t seem so disgusting, we would no doubt find it delightful. I hope your next meal with loved ones can celebrate the pleasure of a delicious meal and the miracle of turning food into life. — TN
Feeling despair about the state of things? This listicle from McSweeney’s can help:
Recent commission
Untitled (GP1903), 2019
Recent commission for a private residence in Hillsborough, CA
Tucker Nichols
400 Posters, 2019
Sumi ink on printed posters, ed. of 400
In collaboration with MacFadden & Thorpe
I’ve never understood editions. They feel like the demoted cousins of “originals” somehow: less valuable, more watered down. Of course, the distinction is all in our minds–either the artwork gives off a charge or it doesn’t—so I decided to see an edition as nothing more than a group. Making 400 sumi ink drawings on the exhibition posters doesn’t fit with my sense of what makes an edition, which made me want to make at least 400 more. So is this one work or 400? I don’t really care.
—Tucker Nichols
What Is An Edition, Anyway?
McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco
May 24–Sep 7, 2019
For information on poster distribution, contact the museum at info@mcevoyarts.org or 415-580-7605
The New York Times has made prints of three of my Op-Ed drawings from over the years. Thanks to the various art directors I've worked with there who have repeatedly made the case for my work to appear alongside the day's most serious writing. Getting these assignments is a perfect blend of fun and terror, as time is crazy tight and the world is watching. Having a drawing appear on these pages has been a dream of mine since well before I considered myself an artist. I know it's a cliche, but this work has shown me firsthand that you can do anything if you point yourself straight at the task and don't stop until they give in.
How We Got Here available HERE
30% Chance available HERE
Chart of Knowledge available HERE
The German translation of This Bridge Will Not Be Gray has been nominated for the German Children's Literature Award. I was surprised that there would be a market in Germany for a book about a bridge in SF, but I'm pleased to know a story about unconventional thinking and the power of people to stand up to boring resonates in other parts of the world. Now let's paint more bridges ridiculous colors. Thanks to Dave Eggers for bringing me along, and Dan McKinley for putting it all together.
Sculptures from the Pacific coast of Costa Rica
The Aldrich catalog is quite a thing to behold. Here’s a PDF of images and the delightful essay by friend and collaborator Dakin Hart. Thanks to everyone for all of the work that goes into putting something like this together.
Tucker Nichols, Cordball (TG1807), 2018
Obsolete cords
Made in cooperation with the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and its visitors
Now on view in the exhibition:
Tucker Nichols: Almost Everything on the Table
Curated by Dakin Hart
May 20, 2018 - January 13, 2019
Tucker Nichols: Almost Everything Else Vol 1 and 2
ZieherSmith Pop-up, 485 Madison Avenue, October 16 – November 16
Madison Ave reception and artist talk: Monday, October 15, 6-8pm
ZieherSmith, High Line Nine, 505 W 27th St, October 18 – November 3
Chelsea reception: Thursday, October 18, 6-8 pm
Tucker Nichols: Almost Everything on the Table
Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, through January 13
Artist talk and collaborative project: Sunday, Dec 2, 1-3 pm
Almost Everything Else Vol 1 and 2 is a two-venue exhibition of dynamic new paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Tucker Nichols, presented by ZieherSmith at their gallery in the new High Line Nine in Chelsea (505 W 27th St) and at a special temporary storefront location in Midtown Manhattan (485 Madison Avenue). These presentations complement Nichols’s current solo exhibition at the Aldrich Museum, Almost Everything on the Table, which centers on an array of tabletop sculptures that act as makeshift scientific experiments aimed at helping us better understand what can’t be seen. The work on view with ZieherSmith expands this theme, exploring a range of subjects that are broad and oddly specific at the same time: maps, electronics, the human body, celestial dynamics and even his trademark flowers. Whereas the artist is known for his simplification of seemingly complex phenomena, here we see his depiction of complexity itself, with layers of information, grids and specimens often all visible at once. By pointing our attention to languages of information just beyond our comprehension, Nichols delivers both wonderment and delight.
Together, these three simultaneous exhibitions mark an important moment in Nichols’s career—a celebration of curiosity and analysis for the sake of something beyond its technological, scientific, or even philosophical achievements. He revels in the sheer energy of endless human inquiry into the larger universe, full of promise and futility. There are no conclusions here—there aren’t even remotely useful applications. Instead, his work leaves viewers with the pursuit itself, something as natural and powerful as any great breakthrough.
Tucker Nichols (b. 1970, Boston, MA) received his BA from Brown University and his MA from Yale University. His work has been included in exhibitions nationally and internationally, at venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh, NC; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Denver Art Museum, Denver; and SFMOMA, San Francisco. Of his 2016 show at the gallery, Roberta Smith wrote that “these hardy works vibrate with energy…The works’ flattened space, dense tactile surfaces, random drips and sharp, solid colors are very much of the moment, as is their boisterous scale. They self-identify as new. Part of the modernity and joy of Mr. Nichols’s paintings is the suggestion that all the elements in a composition are autonomous” (The New York Times). Nichols lives in Northern California. This is his sixth solo exhibition at ZieherSmith.
Gallery hours are Mon-Fri, 11am-5pm at Madison Ave and Tues-Sat, 10am-6pm at High Line Nine, Chelsea. Inquiries can be sent to info@ziehersmith.com or call 917-837-7201.
Two shows with ZieherSmith in New York coming up in October in Midtown and Chelsea. Details to come.
New stickers available at Park Life in San Francisco and beyond. Contact Park Life for details on ordering them for your own distribution.
Video for Tucker Nichols: "Almost Everything on the Table"
Aldrich Contemporary Museum, Ridgefield, CT
aldrichart.org
tuckernichols.com/aldrich
Show at the Aldrich opens May 20.
Organized in the anyone-can-be-a-natural-philosopher spirit of the Age of Enlightenment, Almost Everything on the Table, an installation of epistemological apparatuses conceived by artist Tucker Nichols, answers questions propounded by curator Dakin Hart. Exploring the enterprise of curiosity that has produced the most absurd and ennobling understandings of man, this exhibition shows that with the right tools, you can hold infinity in the palm of your hand. Almost Everything on the Table is organized by Dakin Hart, senior curator, The Noguchi Museum.
New drawing for a fascinating essay by James Gleick in the New York Times on the enduring puzzle of quantum physics:
