A Student’s Perspective
My very last semester teaching Galleries Practice at TMCC was during the pandemic. My student, Taryn Trapani wrote this introduction to my work:
As an artist, Candace Nicol uses an array of mediums in her work. The coalescence of printmaking techniques, painting, photography (and sculpture, too!) overlap and converge with color, texture and line in a collaboration of mixed, experimental beauty. With her appreciation of the interconnectedness of everything, she elevates relationships: human and environment, human and animal, human and human. Garlock came to the realization later in her career as an artist just how much her environment showed face through her art. As a native Nevadan, there are glimpses of the bright, flashing lights of casinos and dry, cracking desert ground in her work. The male nude is another prominent feature and she encourages the viewer to ponder the conflicting notions of desire forever-present in Nevada’s culture. With much of the focus on the female nude throughout the history of art, Garlock gives voice to the contrary. She writes, “my multilayered compositions posit engaging questions to viewers regarding relationships, social identities, and societal issues surrounding the female gaze.” She considers the male’s interaction with their own stereotypes, and “how they are trained to act, play, and love.” In her ongoing series ORNA, she overlays prints, using a technique called collagraph, where subsequent print plates are made from an existing print. The result is an energetic network of color, movement, and feeling exhibited through swirling lines and tumbling, overlapping silhouettes.
Her statement: “Humans have an instinct not to trust, to look upon another with a lens of self-preservation. But, at the same time, we seek understanding, connection and love. There is a beauty - a vulnerability within each of us and there is always hope that we can find the relationship that we most desire.”
Garlock's mentorship in student advancement, both artistically and professionally, as well as her engagement and participation in community events makes her a true ambassador of art, and to the developing artist. She draws inspiration from the collaboration of those around her, through the interplay with students, and has several ongoing projects. Garlock is a member of Southern Graphics Council International and is a board member for Rocky Mountain Print Alliance. A renown printmaker whose work has been shown nationally and internationally, she has received multiple awards including the Nevada Arts Council Artist Fellowship in 2009 and an honorable mention in Printmaking Today, a review of fine art printmaking in Abruzzo, Italy. Nicol’s work can also be seen in 100 Artists of the Male Figure by E.Gibbons.
