artist
ABOUT
Nicole Bricker (b. 1977, Minneapolis) is a mixed media artist based in Connecticut. Her work explores nostalgia, memory, and the visual language of Midwestern suburbia, transforming familiar tropes of Minnesota culture into work that affirms identity, belonging, and cultural significance. Drawing from family keepsakes and cultural ephemera, she reconstructs fragments of domestic experience into layered compositions that merge personal narrative with collective experience.
​
Her practice spans painting, collage, and sculpture, combining found objects, cast forms, and materials such as liquid rubber to create tactile works that balance humor, sentiment, and introspection.
​
Bricker’s work has been exhibited at the Lyman Allyn Museum in New London, Rosalie Gallery in Minneapolis, and Field Projects in New York. She is the founder of Anonymous Society, a Connecticut based art platform that supports artistic experimentation through exhibitions and initiatives.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My artwork examines the visual language of Midwestern American suburbia, reframing kitsch as a site where memory, identity, and belonging are constructed within domestic life. Drawing from keepsakes passed down through my family such as homewares, toys, and photographs, I reconstruct fragments of the domestic space into layered compositions that merge personal narrative with cultural frameworks.
​
Each assemblage begins with writing and color mapping. Post it notes filled with words and memories evolve into carefully constructed palettes of collected materials and constructed fragments. Through processes of accumulation and transformation, I physically assemble cast forms, found objects, and tactile surfaces to create compositions that shift between familiarity and distortion. Household motifs reappear in unexpected color relationships and material combinations, where fragments of the familiar become slightly strange, both tender and irreverent. The work balances humor, sentiment, and introspection.
​
Beneath their surface charm, the work examines how memory is shaped, circulated, and reinforced through domestic and cultural belief systems. By reclaiming visual codes often dismissed as decorative or sentimental, I position kitsch as a structure that organizes attachment and value. The work treats these objects not as artifacts of nostalgia, but as active agents in shaping how identity is formed and understood within the domestic sphere, transforming kitsch into a form of emotional architecture
CURRICULUM VITAE
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
Solo Exhibitions
2025 The Trying Times, Anonymous Society, Redding, CT
2021 Moments Witnessed, Five Points Annex Gallery, Torrington, CT
​
Two Person Exhibitions
2025 Acts of Beauty (with Katie Bassett), TrailerBox Projects, Bethel, CT
​
Select Group Exhibitions
2026 Toys and Games, Trailer Box Project, Bethel CT
Fortune Cookie Project, Still River Editions, Danbury CT
2025. Make/Believe, The Stairwell Space, Bridgeport, CT
Summer Exhibition, GTown Arts, Georgetown, CT
Alt TXT, Field Projects, New York, NY
Hill Blocks View, Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven, CT
2024 Warm Embrace, The Canopy Gallery, New York, NY
2023 Windows to the Inside, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
2022 Open Door 17, Rosalux Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
The Will to Change: Gathering as Praxis, Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, CT
The Will to Change: Gathering as Praxis, Connecticut College, New London, CT
45th Annual Juried Show, Ridgefield Guild of Artists, Ridgefield, CT
Light of Day: Rejects Reconsidered, Lodger Gallery (Online)
2021 Art in the Face of Hard Times, Mandell Gallery, West Hartford, CT
Season of Hope, The Meetinghouse Gallery, Ridgefield, CT
2020 Give Us the Vote (Virtual), ArtsWestchester, White Plains, NY
New Haven Open Studios, New Haven, CT
Ridgefield Suffrage Centennial, Ridgefield Town Hall, Ridgefield, CT
Rituals of Resistance, Urban Collective, New Haven, CT
48th Annual Juried Show, Mark Twain Library, Redding, CT
43rd Annual Juried Show, Ridgefield Guild of Artists, Ridgefield, CT
2019 Dreams, Rene Soto Gallery, Norwalk, CT
Sanctuary Cities & the Politics of the American Dream, Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven, CT
Exhibition, Dacia Gallery, New York, NY
2018 Give Us the Vote, ArtsWestchester, White Plains, NY
2016 Creative Mischief, National Academy Gallery, New York, NY
HONORS & AWARDS
2023 James Bernard Haggarty Scholarship.
2023 The Canopy Artist Residency, NYC Crit Club, NYC, NY
2019 Artist Residency, Dacia Gallery, NYC, NY
2018 Opportunity Grant, ArtsWestchester, White Plains, NY
EDUCATION
2017 Figurative Oil Painting, National Academy of Art and Design, NYC, NY
2000 BA in Radio TV Film, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI
1995 Visual Arts Program, Perpich Center for Arts Education, Golden Valley. MN