Monsters Inside and Out

Nicole Ennen

Interview by L. Valena
August 5, 2024

Can you please start by describing the prompt that you responded to?

It was a line drawing. It looked like a bust of a short-haired person facing forward, with like a monster or some sort of small creature standing on their shoulder. There were different words on the piece as well. It said, “This place is cruel and exploitative with an insatiable appetite for our most fragile and vital creatures, but you can kill the beast.” I thought it was really interesting because the monster on the shoulder could be perceived either as the fragile creature or as the thing corrupting or threatening the person in the piece. It was like the little creature monster is part of us in a way. Those were some of my initial thoughts when I started looking at and interpreting it.

Cool. And what were your first thoughts about that? Where did you go from there?

One of my most common mediums is ceramics, but I knew I probably wouldn't be able to get a stoneware ceramic piece done from start to finish within the two-week limit. I also do a lot of mixed media work. I have resin, wood, other types of mixed media, and so I decided to do something in that vein. I was thinking of starting with a tableau that was 3D. That was my first idea around how I wanted to structure it. And then, as I kept looking at the piece, I started bringing out all of my different materials. I ended up having this nice slab of wood that I painted the edges of and used as my blank canvas. I started to add different types of mixed media onto it, with the Scrabble tiles and some resin pieces that I had cast in addition to fur, and I just kept moving different things around.

Eventually, the idea of how we're a duality came into play. It was really thinking about how we can be victims of this society, but also the perpetrators, particularly as it relates to consumption. With the words “insatiable appetite” and “fragile creatures,” it made me think about consumption and how we can be consumed by society and taken over in ways that are negative to us. But we also can be the consumers of the resources of Earth making us the enemy. So there's that duality there that I wanted to come out in my piece because that's what inspired me from the prompt.

Yeah, and we can be consumed by the need to consume right? What's your relationship like with consumption? How does that play out in your life?

That's a great question. It's hard, right? There is always the consciousness of trying to be environmentally friendly. And to consume in a way that is sustainable for the Earth and for other humans. But then there's also all of the pressure coming at us from ads and marketing, social media and everything to consume, consume, consume, and buy, buy, buy. So I think it's a constant battle within myself to make sure that the things I am consuming are the right things and making sure that I'm doing it in a way that is mindful and sustainable. It’s always a process that I could probably do better at, to be honest. Something that we all have to think about.

We’re all kind of working with that all the time, yeah.

I think the hard part of it too is not just consuming resources, but consuming media, thoughts, ideas, and societal norms, all that kind of stuff. How are we being conscious of how that’s coming into our lives and affecting our interactions with others? It’s actually being mindful of how society has shaped us and being conscious and deliberate about whether that is how we want to behave or not. And if not, then how do we change that? How do we break out of those norms that we've been stuck in or taught?

Yes, we don't really see it until suddenly we're swimming in it and realize we’ve been perpetuating something we didn’t see before.

Right? Yeah.

One thing I wanted to ask—is there a snail in this piece? Tell me about the imagery.

I’ll start with the monster itself. It was inspired by the little creature I saw on the prompt piece, and I tried to make the composition similar where it's on the same side. In this piece, the creature was turned more into an actual monster. It's a little less ambiguous about being the evil part that is influencing us with its giant teeth.

With the other piece, I was thinking more about the small creatures like bees and insects that are really important for our ecosystem. The ones that, because of consumption and what we're doing to the world, are going extinct or they're just less prevalent and less able to do the job that they have normally done in the world. So the snail was representative of that. The snail’s body is actually molded…out of a brain. It was a brain mold for resin. And so it's kind of like our mind as a snail. It has more dual meanings in it, thinking about not just consuming the actual physical resources, but also the consumption of our brain and our thoughts and forcing them into a specific way. In the snail’s brain shell are flowers and other types of things from nature as well. Again bringing in those themes of consuming nature but also our thoughts.

With the words “resist consumption” from the Scrabble tiles, that came out with that same duality that is the key idea that I had around this piece, about resisting consumption—not only about how to not get consumed by society, but how do we resist our own habits of consumption?

I love that! Personally, I’m a big snail fan, and I also love the idea of being slow as a way of resisting consumption. And the wheels in opposition to these skulls that are sort of burned out.

I do tend to like the skull motifs. It’s something that comes up in a lot of my work. Here it’s representative of, again, getting pushed too far. Whether we're pushing the Earth too far by consuming too many resources and it gets to that point of potential death, or we're getting pushed too far to that point of burnout, right?

Yeah. How does this piece relate to the rest of your work?

I mostly do single-media projects, but I do some mixed-media too. I love putting different types of pieces together, particularly with costume accessories and other wearable objects or home decor. I think this relates to my own work in general because I often investigate ourselves and our society via themes that arise from horror or taboo topics, or these mysterious or weird spaces. I think this definitely falls under that umbrella of trying to put a mirror on ourselves and seeing how these things come out to play, and actually thinking about it instead of just consuming and moving on. I think it definitely falls under the umbrella of how my work aims to look at those mysterious spaces and bring them to light.

As skulls are a motif of mine, there are some resin-cast skulls that I'm bringing into this piece. I use the Scrabble tiles and other materials with my cast resin work. So it’s bringing in some things that I have done in the past or even some resin that was cast a few months ago and figuring out how I can bring it new life as something different in a mixed-media piece that is more three dimensional. With the themes and messages I wanted to convey, I was considering whether or not to do a drawing or painting or something like that, but I really wanted it to pop out of the canvas.

That's awesome. How did you get started making this kind of work?

I've been making art on and off my whole life. I left my corporate job in 2023, so for the past couple of years I have started my own businesses. One of them was really deep diving into my art and being able to express and invest in that side of myself a lot more. That has been really refreshing, to not just have it in a hobby space, but be able to actually take time for it and not feel guilty about that.

I’m also trying to bring art into other things that I do. I do workshops for teams and for leaders to help build empathy and emotional intelligence so people can work better together in organizations. I'm always thinking of ways to use art as a medium or a learning tool to help folks do that. It has been an interesting journey, which I would say I'm still on. At this point, I feel very grateful that I am able to express my creativity more and that I don't feel shackled. I’m able to express these things even though they are weird or may be counter to some of the norms. I want to continue to challenge and bring this forward even if it's not the most easily digestible message.

If you were interviewing yourself, what question would you ask next?

I don't know if it's a question, but here’s one thing that I always like to say in one form or another. I named my art business Bad Art, and I did that for a couple of reasons. One was what we chatted about before: investigating our society via these weird and macabre themes. But another piece is that I want us to embrace the idea of perceived imperfections and not try to shy away from us being asymmetrical and messy and maybe not always “together” all the time. I am not perfect. Neither is my art. And I think that there is value in that, especially in today's world of AI and folks stealing from artists and all that. There is value in the act of creation, and it is a human activity. There's a lot of research on this. I'm just reading this book called Your Brain on Art, which is a combination of neuroscience and art, and what art does to our brains, and how we really are wired to be creative, and that it’s our society that stops us from doing that. We should continue to do art, not necessarily because it's a product, but because the act of creation is in itself valuable to us. We learn something from it and we get something from it even if the end product isn't “perfect” or “good.” Art is subjective. So what is “good,” right? That's something that I have been pushing recently, especially for folks who don't think they are artists and are worried about doing art because they don’t think they are good at it. That's not the point of art. The point is to create and experience it. Who cares what you get at the end of it? There is Magic in the process.

Yes, I absolutely agree with that. Awesome. Do you have any advice for another artist approaching this project?

I would say look at your prompt and have some time to sit with it. I looked at my prompt and I didn't start right away. I wanted it to sit with me and see what ideas would form over the next couple of days. It was a process. I had a couple of things arranged on my board that I eventually shifted around as the ideas became clear over time. So I would guess that they don't have to worry about being perfect right away or having their idea right off the bat. Let the message percolate and sit within you. It will guide you in the right direction.

Call Number: O128VA | O129VA.enMo

Nicole Ennen, Artist and Owner of Bad Art by Nice, specializes in creating unique and strange mixed medium art: ceramics, resin, costume accessories, home decor, and more. Her work aims to promote the embrace of perceived imperfections and investigate ourselves and our society via the themes that arise from horror, taboo topics, and mysterious spaces. She also loves to facilitate workshops to help others grow through the act of creation and is on the Board of performing arts non-profit, HarmonyWerks.