A-SIDE / B-SIDE
Dear Reader,
I’m sending out a little note to share some news and reflections about my art show that is currently up at Casa Nueva in Athens, Ohio.
Let’s start with the news:
The show is called A-SIDE / B-SIDE and it’s a series of textile works and watercolor studies. If you’re near the area, the show is up through October 6th, so there’s still time to check it out in person. If you can’t make it IRL, you can see it virtually on my website. Most things are listed for sale (if you’re interested in purchasing something, please reach out!). Below is the Artist Statement I wrote for the show.
A-SIDE / B-SIDE ARTIST STATEMENT While seemingly disparate and unrelated, the two sides of this show (paintings and textile works) are very much connected—primarily through process and a commitment to near-daily devotion. The watercolor studies were born out of a period in 2024 when I was attempting to reconnect to my painting practice after a hiatus. In my 38 years of living, I’ve learned that consistent, daily practice is the best way for me to build meaningful habits. But for me to commit to doing something daily, the bar has to be very low. When I committed to painting every day during this season of life, the only bar I set for myself was “brush touches paper every day.” The point wasn’t to make a masterpiece. The point was to find time each day to pause and process the swirl of my interior landscape by noticing something outside of myself. The point was also to remind myself how much I enjoy moving paint around on paper! Some days I only made one small gesture with my brush. Other days I painted for hours. The paintings in this show are a selection from this time of tending. They are small poems about devotion and the beauty in the everyday. This devotion to daily practice carried into my work with textiles. The fabric studies were mostly all made over the summer of 2025 in the lead-up to this show, during the early morning hours as the sun was peaking through. A phrase I once heard, ”A little bit of something is better than a whole lot of nothing,” was a mantra for me as I reminded myself that each day, my only goal was to cut up some fabric, sew it together, and just see. In moments of stuckness or time-scarcity, I’d add helpful constraints, challenging myself to work small and only use two fabrics. With an emphasis on play, juxtaposition, and experimentation, these textile works are expressions of my attempts at “lightening up” while digesting news, memories, grief, and the combination of sadness and anxiety that seems to bubble up when I set down one creative practice to focus on another (can’t do it all all the time!). Which is the A-side and which is the B-side? I don’t know! I suppose you can decide for yourself if you’d like, but I’m not sure it really matters :) Nicole Musgrave September 2025
Now for the reflection:
It feels fitting to write this reflection at the outset of fall, since my summer was very much defined by making new work and prepping for A-SIDE / B-SIDE. My birthday was June 9th and immediately after that, I started a routine of waking up around 5:30AM to sew for anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours before my workday. I’m a morning person anyway, so this was not a big adjustment (although, it was a bit strange when my body regularly called me to go to bed before the sun had set on those long summer days).
About two weeks in, I started to crave more physical space. I’m lucky to have a spare bedroom in my home that I use as my sewing room, but it’s very small and not conducive to the tornado-like sprawl that happens when I’m in creation. So I decided to turn my big, spacious living room into my studio space for the summer. I fully believe this extra physical space helped me conjure and vision and realize new works. But it also meant that I was living among the chaotic mess of my art practice all summer, which wore on me near the end.
I really appreciated having this dedicated time to create a body of work with a specific goal in mind, and to observe the ebbs and flows of my creative practice. Some days were filled with ease and delight, while others tied knots of frustration and anxiety. I listened to a number of artist memoirs and books about the creative process while sewing to help remind myself that the magic happens when I show up, regardless of how I feel about the work.
Throughout this summer of making, I spent a lot of time stressing about whether or not I’d have enough work to fill the space where the show would be hung. I don’t have much experience showing my work, so I don’t yet have the best sense of how much space my art takes up on a wall. I worried about whether I could show both paintings and textiles, or if that’d feel weird. And I stressed about whether any of it was good enough to show at all. There was lots of worrying and stressing! And it primarily came down to anxiety over how I’d be perceived by others (how chill and cool and novel of me!).
Luckily I have a lot of really supportive people in my life who helped me ride the waves of insecurity. My coach encouraged me to put pieces in the show that I didn’t like or that I was unsure about, just as an experiment to see what it’d feel like. This seemed like a pretty harebrained scheme to me at first, but I’m sometimes a harebrained person so I said “yes” anyway. As the weeks and months went by, the pieces I had in the “bad-but-show-anyway” pile started to grow on me, especially as I began to see them in conversation with the other works. I also started to care a little less, my perfectionism shifting more towards a “fuck it, who cares” attitude as my deadline ran toward me.
In the end, I had plllllllenty of work to fill the space. In fact, one of the top things people remarked at the opening reception was, “Wow, there’s so much!”, which of course led my stress to momentarily swing into worrying that there was too much, that it was somehow grotesque (brains are so silly, you just have to laugh!). Also, some of the works that I was unsure about and almost didn’t put in the show were the first ones to sell—I guess the artist isn’t always the best judge of their own work ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. And it turns out, there was nobody there who chastised me for hanging both paintings and textile works on the walls of a small-town Mexican restaurant for an art show.
The opening reception was the sweetest and most fun, and I’m so grateful for all of the amazing friends and family and community members who came out. It felt really validating to see everything up on the walls and to see people looking at and talking about my work. I received a lot of really sincere and kind feedback, a few people even telling me that they welled up with tears looking at a piece. I really loved the experience of sharing my work in this way.
Bringing A-SIDE / B-SIDE to life was a big experiment that taught me a lot. I hope to show my work more in the future, but hopefully I can take some lessons-learned from this time around to reduce some of the friction (like, maybe instead of showing 42 pieces, I can have a show with 10!). I’m looking forward to taking a break this fall from disciplined making. I’m looking forward to putting my living space back in order and finding joy in cooking again. And I’m looking forward to dipping back into to my painting practice once the wind-down feels finished.
Fieldnotes:
My pal Len Loomis recently opened a DIY art space in Chauncey, OH called tend space. There is currently an open call for exhibitions.
I’ll be at the next Living Traditions Athens event in Stewart, OH on 10/11. I’ll be showing some quilts alongside my pals at the Federal Valley Resource Center quilt group, and I’ll be demonstrating how to make a mini quilt without the use of a pattern. Come on out!
