“Growing Gray Gardens”

Botany, Flora & Cement Sculptural works by Liz Nichols

Liz Nichols makes art with concrete, plaster, and flowers. Thirteen years ago, she started a career as a cement mason. It is through this work — pouring countless slabs, sidewalks, and bridge decks, that she honed a keen and genuine appreciation for the alchemy-like magic of concrete. These large pours are often brutal, and making smaller more delicate objects within her home is a means for Nichols to reclaim her relationship with the material, in a way that is as soothing as it is personal.

Prior to working as a cement mason, Nichols based her livelihood in gardening. It was the years she spent tending to large and lovely gardens that sparked her love for plants. Now, within her art and her life, she considers the privilege of growing and cultivating a garden of her own; hence, incorporating these flowers, leaves, forms and shapes into her work only felt like a natural step, to pay homage to her source of inspiration.

Nichols is aware of the juxtaposition born from merging two materials that are seemingly at odds — artificial cement, and natural flora. Yet, the harmony lies in the whole picture they create together, as opposed to their distinct compositions. In balancing the harshness of a material like concrete along with the severe demands of a masonry occupation, with the softness and care inherent to the organic nature of plants, Nichols' pieces represent her personhood, motives and passions.

Nichols' artwork blends the tactile and the heavy, corporeal nature of concrete with the grace and sway of a garden. It honors the two trades that she has molded a life out of, and that have shaped much of who she is.

Liz Nichols is a Journeyman Cement Mason living and working in Portland, Oregon. Her works blend concrete and plaster castings with pressed botanicals, and gold and copper leaf. Nichols grows all the plant material used in her work. The intentional combination of concrete and botanical materials honors her background as a construction worker and gardener. Growing up, Nichols was a terrible student in a family where college was presented as the only path towards success. After years of struggling, it was exploring an alternative in the trades that gave Nichols the ability to earn a living wage and to discover the joy of working with her hands. It was also through this occupation that she crafted her identity as an artist. Nichols expresses immense gratitude for all the steps that led her to her first concrete pour thirteen years ago.