Nichelle
Notabartolo
Featured
Artist Nichelle Notabartolo
By
Candice Russell
Citylink Magazine, April 7, 2004
This 1992 graduate of the Pratt School
of Design in New York is on a roll. Whenever I hear of something
interesting, I try to get more information and get involved, says
Notabartolo, whose artworks can regularly be seen throughout South
Florida, including the Cornell Museum of Art and History in Delray
Beach.
Her hard work is
producing results. Her triptych altarpiece "God Doesn't Waste
Pain" is on view at the Cornell through May 22 as part of
the 11th Annual All-Florida Juried Art Exhibition. Out of 500
entries, 70 were picked, she says. My piece shows a blue woman
who has a heart with pins in it. I put butterflies and bees on
the piece after looking at a book I have called "A Handbook
of Symbols in Christian Art;" they represent metamorphosis
and creativity.
The work is about
the fact that good things come out of painful experiences.
The artist was also one of 50 asked to decorate, in any manner
she chose, a fiberglass sailfish for the auction project "Something"s
Fishy" for the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale this year.
In the works is a project for a summer exhibition at the Boca
Raton Museum of Art, another all-Florida juried show.
"I like to work in
acrylics, polymer clay and Sculpey," says Notabartolo. "I
find carpenters to make boxes for me. I like fantasy and imagination.
My work interprets something going on inside of me."
In a style she
calls "whimsical expressionism," she labors on a single
piece 40 to 60 hours, concentrating on one work at a time. But
because her time is split by commitments during the day to the
Milagro Center in Delray Beach, where she works as a mural painter
and teacher, and the Donnith Fletcher Art and Cultural Center
in Pembroke Pines, where she also teaches, she needs the impetus
of a contest or an exhibition to get her going. "I'd like
to build a body of work and have a one-woman show at a gallery,"
she says.
contact
RaZoo GaLLery
(954) 663-3888
webmaster@razoogallery.com
"Freida" mixed media 18"x 16"
"I'll
never leave you" mixed media 18"