Nicole Lenzi

About the Artist

Nicole Lenzi’s work questions what a drawing is and its link to thinking. Recent works explore the relationship between drawing and time along with daily life. She works between mediums and dimensions to expand the concept of drawing which includes installation, photography, and works on paper. Lenzi has exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally and has a B.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.F.A. from Maryland Institute College of Art. She is based in Baltimore, MD, United States.

Artist's Statement

My art questions what a drawing is and how it can affect thinking. Works are composed of marks that are signs of time and, referencing artist Avis Newman, thought. I take an interdisciplinary approach to expand the concept of drawing that includes installation, works on paper, and photography. Time, light and shadow, architecture, Eastern philosophy, the everyday, and Conceptual Art are influences. I aim to work responsively in the space between all these entities.  That is where experimentation happens and the medium opens to what it can be.   Traditional drawing is a rendering of a 3D subject on a two-dimensional surface. I am interested in an unconventional, organic approach rooted in tradition that moves fluidly between mediums and dimensions. The diverse approaches taken end up informing and redeveloping each other over time. This invites more questions about the nature of the medium.  Newman's statement, “A mark is a sign of thought.”, informs my Art on many levels. As the hand or body makes a line across paper or space, what happens inside the mind? This has led to an interest in the relationship between drawing and time. How is time experienced when mark making? How can it be perceived when working between dimensions? Concurrently, I am interested in how a site can influence how drawings form. Various philosophies, particularly Taoism, inform and guide my practice. It encourages forming perspectives from an even place. More recent work explores how daily life, like walking, can affect how drawing is experienced.   In my work, marks are generic and nondescript. These qualities leave them open for interpretation, as they suggest rather than show. Drawings grow out of light and shadow and in response to their surroundings. Repetitive tracings of shadow lines expand across paper or space, as in Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings. In Time Lines (2015-current), shadows lines cast by the sun are traced in relation to architecture, both in real time and through projections. Light, when interacting with a building or 3D structure, turns into shapes that shift in form as it moves. This action becomes an entry point into a drawing.    Tracing and recording shadows bridges the internal world of thought with the external happenings of my surroundings. Marking their movement leads me to experience the ephemeral and encourages keen observation and reflection. The static mark and image produced as a result contrasts and endures the temporal.  Engagement in this practice over time leads to surprising microscopic and macrocosmic interconnections and alignments. Unexpected formal dialogues emerge from the process that piques curiosity to see what happens next.    Resulting works are frameworks of consideration.   Current Series: Time Lines. In these works on paper, shadows lines cast by the sun are traced in relation to architecture, both in real time and through projections. Light, when interacting with a building or 3D structure, turns into shapes that shift in form as it moves. This action becomes an entry point into a drawing.    Walking Drawings: In these works on paper, marks are made in response to what is seen while walking.