Dan's Cover Artist Nicole Appel Creates a Thoughtful Patchwork

The June 14, 2024 cover of Dan’s Papers features “Religion and Science” by artist Nicole Appel. Here, her team tells us about her unique Patchwork Portraits series for which the cover art was created, her inspiration for the featured patchwork and her upcoming projects.

Shelter Gallery Discusses Nicole Appel

What inspired Nicole Appel’s Patchwork Portraits series, and what does she enjoy most about creating these patchworks?

Nicole Appel’s “Patchwork Portraits” are a form of non-traditional portraiture that represent people not as their faces but as the things that they like or care about. She is what’s known as an “outsider artist,” with no formal training and unschooled in the history and conventions of the art world as a social institution.

For Appel, as it sometimes happens, language acquisition and social interaction have always been challenging. Ironically, she is the sweetest of souls and adores people. Drawing, not words, was the mode of communication that came most naturally to her. Her “Patchwork Portraits” have their origin in birthday cards that she made when she was little for an extended family of imaginary friends. These always included drawings of birthday presents — the things that they liked or cared about.

What did the creative process of “Religion and Science” entail, and how does this patchwork work as a form of portraiture?

“Religion and Science” is dedicated to Father Gregory Telemachos Stamkopoulos, the presiding priest at St. Spyridon in upper Manhattan, the church of Nicole’s dear boyfriend Alex. Father Gregory is also a scientist and professor with impressive credentials. His research interests include neural networks, digitalization and artificial intelligence. Defying commonsense preconceptions, Father Gregory is the personification of the compatibility of religion and science.

History is replete with such figures including such luminaries as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Pasteur, Heisenberg and LeMaitre. The drawing functions on a personal level referencing Thessaloniki, Father Gregory’s hometown in Greece, and St. Spyridon’s Church, but also, on a universal level, referencing grand Biblical and scientific creation schemas, including references to the Garden of Eden and the Big Bang.

Appel’s work is blissfully oblivious to distinctions between the art world and the everyday world, the high and the low, and the sacred and the profane. Grand images of “Microwave Background Radiation” go slumming with lowly “Quantum Hugs” beer cans, while “Burning Bush” fireworks flash in the storm clouds over “Noah’s Ark.”

What originally drew Appel to art, and what does she find rewarding about being an artist?

As it is with all children, before the adult world manages to put out their fires, Nicole Appel was always an artist. However, in Nicole, the fire never stopped burning. Birthday cards for imaginary friends morphed into increasingly elaborate cards for friends and relatives, and eventually into “Patchwork Portraits” — standalone drawings of the things people like or care about, created as gifts and as expressions of her love for them.

Nicole is oblivious to notions of fame and fortune, but at age 33, she is a highly successful artist, with a long and enviable record of sales. Appel’s works are represented in important collections nationally and internationally, including the collections of the Museum of Everything, Rebecca and Martinez Eisenberg, and Brian Donnelly, aka KAWS.

What is one artistic goal that Appel hopes to accomplish this summer or this year?

This past May, Appel hiked the hilltop villages of Tuscany, from Montepulciano to Sienna. Followed by a week in Florence, and a week in Venice. She funds her passion for adventures around the world through the sale of her artwork. Every adventure is commemorated with a drawing which she dedicates to all the fine people shemeets along the way. Their names appear around the perimeter of the drawings.

She’ll complete her “Hilltop Villages” drawing this summer.

Care to share any closing thoughts or information about Appel’s upcoming exhibitions or projects?

KAWS is an avid collector of Appel’s work and plans to lend work from his collection for a retrospective of her work at the Andrew Edlin Gallery. Be sure to make the pilgrimage to Pittsburgh to see the critically acclaimed show KAWS + WARHOL in celebration of its 30th anniversary at the Andy Warhol Museum. It’s on view now through January 20, 2025. Visit warhol.org for more information.

To inquire about Nicole Appel’s art, contact Rachel Carle Cohen, owner/director of the Shelter Gallery, via 646-360-0690 or info@shelternyc.com.