Daily Nodes Day 22 2023/UnravelBroken 2021

Dec 4

In 2016 I was invited to participate in a group show where we randomly picked three words to establish a theme, sort of a contemporary Dada gesture. The words "Whole, Phantasmagoria, and Duality" gave me the chance to create some new iconography illustrating my frustrations living with Multiple Sclerosis. I started to draw little pen and ink pieces in my sketchbook to use as illustrations in a sculptural book that would be shown. One of the icons came from a male nude drawing that I had visually stabbed with a needle. This pin prick was symbolic of many things: Pain, Terminus (the end of the Male Nude series), artifact and specimen collecting. It began to appear in a lot of work afterwards. After 2019, the sculptural work also included a broken grid that was created from old shredded prints. The grid, unraveling, symbolized the loss of control. I think it also represented the loss of memory and the gaps in thinking.

A fellow printmaker had introduced me to a Jelaluddin Rumi Poem about Body Intelligence:

Your intelligence is always with you,
overseeing your body, even though
you may not be aware of its work.

If you start doing something
against your health, your intelligence
will eventually scold you.

The throbbing vein
will take you further
than any thinking.

Observe the wonders as the occur around you.

Do not claim them. Feel the artistry

Moving through, and be silent.

From “A Year with Rumi” translated by Coleman Barks.

In April 2023, I suffered another MS attack. The Rumi poem was reminding me, it’s time to listen to my body intelligence. I began to draw each night that I experienced. The following morning, I wrote about the image. The “Daily Nodes” drawings and the journaling were exercises in healing, both with eye/hand coordination and writing. A node is a point at which lines or pathways intersect. The metaphor of connecting points develops in my daily art journaling. In this, I am recording my healing process after a major Multiple Sclerosis (MS) attack that has left me with ongoing debilitating symptoms.

Candace Garlock

As an artist, Candace Nicol Garlock 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. She writes, “my multilayered compositions posit engaging questions to viewers regarding relationships, social identities, and societal issues surrounding the female gaze.”

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. She draws inspiration from the collaboration of those around her, through the interplay with students, and continually is organizing collaborative projects. A renown printmaker whose work has been shown nationally and internationally, she has received multiple awards including the Reno Tahoe Artist Best in Sculpture/3-D Artworks in 2022, Best of Show and Best in 2D Mixed Media in 2023 and Best in 2-D Artworks in 2024, the Nevada Regents’ Creative Activity Award in 2017, the Nevada Arts Council Artist Fellowship in 2009 and an honorable mention in Printmaking Today in 2008, 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. Her work is included in many prestigious collections including the Kinsey Institute, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, Nevada Arts Council, and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.

https://candacenicolgarlock.com