Echo staff report
The “Hold & Unfurl” exhibit by Nicole Simpkins will be featured in the RCTC Art Gallery through Dec. 16. (Echo Photo by Luis E. Cisneros Pito)
Rochester Community and Technical College Art Gallery will be featuring a collection of the images of artist Nicole Simpkins.
The exhibit, called “Hold & UnFurl,” is free and open to the public through Dec. 16 during normal gallery hours.
“As both a writer and artist, I’ve always loved the marriage of text and image made possible by traditional printmaking,” Simpkins said. “With mixed-media drawing and installation, I manipulate scale to inspire vertigo and inquiry. I persist in describing the work as drawing (as opposed to painting’), because I am fascinated by line, structure, motion, and the sense that it is always on the cusp of completion. The breathless quality of refusing to stand still is essential.”
Simpkins grew up reading books and climbing trees on the New England coast in an old Victorian cottage by a salt marsh. She moved to the Twin Cities to pursue her bachelor’s degree in English from Macalester College in Saint Paul. She holds a master’s of fine arts in printmaking from Indiana University, Bloomington. She is an instructor of drawing and 2-D design at The University of Wisconsin – Stout. Nicole lives and works in South Minneapolis.
The RCTC Art Gallery, located in College Center 200 near Hill Theatre, is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.The gallery will be closed Nov. 24-25 for the Thanksgiving holiday.