Yarn Outside

Executive Producers: Tom Grahsler, Alex Lewis, John Myers
Producer: Alex Lewis
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Engineers: Charlie Kaier, Al Banks, Tina Kalikay, Adam Staniszewski
Production, Sound Design and Mixing: Rowhome Productions
Tile Art: Justin Nagtalon
Theme Song: SNACKMFTIME by SNACKTIME

Special thanks to Michaela Winberg, Michael Olcott, Sarah Moses, Mike Shiffler, and Kayla Watkins.

Art Outside is a production of WHYY.

STREET NOISES]

BYSTANDER: I’m up in that window and I saw it..
NICOLE NIKOLICH: You saw it in that window?
BYSTANDER: Going down I thought it was paint
NN: You did? Oh that makes me so happy

NN: Someone just came up to me and said that they saw this from a bunch of feet away, and that they had to come up and say that they loved it ’cause they saw I was working on it.

CONRAD BENNER, HOST: So like that’s kind of the beauty of creating in a public space, huh.

NN: Yeah, exactly and I mean, my favorite thing about art in the public space is that a lot of people I know are intimidated to go into a museum or a gallery or maybe just internally feel like they don’t belong there, they don’t fit in, they don’t look like the artist. And out here, like anyone can be walking by and the art is for literally anybody. So you don’t have to know about it. You can just stumble upon it.

CB: Art outside, if you will.

NN: Exactly!

[THEME MUSIC]

CB: This is Art Outside, a podcast from WHYY about the art of our public spaces and the people who create it.
I’m your host Conrad Benner, and for the last 14 years I’ve been documenting these works for my blog, Streets Dept.
In this episode, the first of our brand new season, I sit down with Nicole Nikolich who goes by the artist name Lace in The Moon. We talk about how learning how to crochet changed the trajectory of her life, the relationship between making art and mental health, and what this all has to do with Taylor Swift.

[CARS DRIVING]

CB: So I’m here with Nicole in Love Park, a public square and tourist attraction in the heart of Center City, Philadelphia right near its big, central fountain. And we’re standing in front of a huge blank plywood canvas that’s painted hot pink.

NN: So I am about halfway done through this mural. So, the drag queen is completely done and to the left of her are two white ballot boxes that are halfway done. I still need to add the legs to them and a little bit more detailing, and then to the right of her is going to be a giant, blue voting box that will have a long blue curtain that I’ll make over the next couple days, and I should be completely installed by Thursday.

[MUSIC]

CB: If you’re listening to this podcast you probably know that Streets Dept. not only talks about art in the public space, but we also curate public art projects.

To The Polls is a project I’ve been curating since 2018 with local artists and Mural Arts Philadelphia. It’s all about getting people to think about why voting is an important value to them and their communities.

I’ve known Nicole for a few years now, she’s a really thoughtful person who makes incredible art out of yarn.

[STREET NOISE]

NN: So, a lot of times when I tell people I am a crochet or yarn artist, they immediately think of blankets or sweaters or hats and what I do is, what we’re looking at now is, you could say it’s a similar style of a blanket. It’s almost as if you, I crocheted a giant blanket, but then took a cookie cutter of a drag queen and put it right on top. I crocheted that cookie cutter of the drag queen. So it is a cutout piece of a woman with a dress.

CB: To craft this fabulous voting drag queen, Nicole spent a few days in her studio crocheting the different parts of the mural — sometimes with four different balls of yarn all at once. Now that she finished those components, she’s brought them out to Love Park.

NN: And I’ll be installing them on the wall, and typically how I install is I have a couple tools; I have my industrial sized hot glue gun, and I also have a staple gun.

[STAPLE GUN SOUNDS]

CB: And I know when I reached out to you to participate in this I was really excited. We’ve worked together before, but never on anything around voting, and it took you a minute to come to this idea. Where were you originally and how did you get here?

NN: I don’t know. It seems really heavy this year and at first I had thought about something, you know, kind of like a little bit more dark and serious and political. And instead I decided to kind of go a different route. I wanted to kind of like spread joy and do a more positive message. I’ve been playing around in my mind with the idea of like 1950s and ’60s motifs just in my art practice in general outside of this project, and so I was really getting inspired by old voting booths.

CB: Nicole’s talking about the voting booths before touch screens and buttons. Instead they have levers and little paper ballots.

NN: So I was researching a bunch of those imagery, but I wanted to juxtaposition it with an image of like this larger than life drag queen. And I think that, you know, that topic is really at the forefront of a lot of people’s minds when thinking of voting.

CB: Nicole is referring to discrimination against not just drag artists, but also trans and queer people generally speaking across the country.

NN: But I think often times so much trans or queer art can be really heavy and it can be a lot to swallow and I just wanted to kind of create something that’s a lot about queer joy. And I mean, trans people and drag queens were also still existing, obviously, back in the 1950s and ’60s. So just this idea that maybe this image that I’m creating could have even existed back then sounds beautiful or it could even exist now.

CB: And it don’t even think you need to be like a news junkie to have heard the fact that like there are city councils and state representatives and governors and mayors all across the country trying to ban drag. It’s wild. There’s just this, unimaginable attack on this art form that’s been around for forever and forever. So I really appreciate that this is how you approach this project. I think it’s really powerful and as you’ve seen, even people coming up relating to it in a really beautiful way. It’s way gayer than I remember it looking in the design.

NN: Yeah, because in the original design, it had a different dress too.

CB: That’s good. Is it fun to make big ass gay art in the public space?

NN: It is. Well, when I was making it, I was like, “Oh, this is like, this is really gay.”

CB: This is capitol LGBTQ plus!

NN: I was like, yeah. I was like, “I haven’t made something this like gay in a minute.” (Laughter)

[MUSIC]

CB: Next on Art Outside, how Lace in the Moon got started and what does Taylor Swift have to do with it?

CB: Nicole grew up in Northern Virginia and was always drawn to art and making things. But she told me she didn’t have a clear picture of what a creative life looked like.

NN: How I grew up is, and I think this is no fault to anyone in my life or anything like that, but I always thought that you are either going to be a famous artist in a museum and make a lot of money, which is really hard to do and really rare, or you’re gonna be a struggling artist who makes no money. Those were the kind of two extremes, and I never really knew that there was like this huge gray area in between.

CB: Like a working artist lane?

NN: Yeah. And like maybe that just flew over my head, but in conversations with people since becoming an artist and all this, that is something that, like, when I say that to people that like you can be an artist and make money at like so many different points. It’s like a light bulb goes off. They’re like, “Oh, what?” But yeah, so throughout college I majored in art. Then quit that because I was like, oh, I’m never gonna be a great oil painter or whatever like that. And then I actually ended up majoring in fashion merchandising. But throughout my life, I’ve always struggled with anxiety, depression, you know? I could pinpoint that, where that started as we all have, you know, stuff that happens in our childhood. But it really came to a head when I was about 25, 26. So after college I moved to Philadelphia to work for a major fashion brand here, and it was my dream job and it just unfortunately was not everything I wanted it to be.

And I was going through, you know, I was new in a city. This was about a year into being in the city. Didn’t know anyone when I moved here, just like going through a rough patch. And something that had happened was, you know. I like to dabble with, you know, drinking, drugs occasionally. And I went out with my friend one time and we were doing some psychedelic drugs and she ended up leaving halfway through and I had just, I was alone and I had a really, really bad experience. And I was alone at home and I just felt like there was no point in life. Like, what am I doing? I got like in this loop in my head and it lasted for like 24 hours. I called my mom, I thought I was going crazy and I ended up in the hospital.

CB:: Oh wow.

NN: I was fine, but, you know, in between this time, you know, I was gonna go start going back to therapy, get back on medication. But the doctor that I was seeing in between me starting that was like, you know, you should really, like, let’s go to some other outlets besides drinking and drugs for, you know, calming your mind. And a doctor, I don’t know who it was, but had said that crochet was really good for your mental health.

So I went home and I went on YouTube and I just tried to teach myself how to crochet. I taught myself over the course of like two weeks and something about. There was a couple elements that like really clicked. It was all the beautiful colors of the yarn, the textures of it, and the fact that you have to use both hands. It’s a lot of counting. You have to really be present in the moment. It was really good as just like making my mind stop almost like a meditation, and it just like really clicked for me. I was like, this is great, and I had no, no like goal of it being a full-time job or anything like that, but I was just like, I really enjoy this.

And around the same time I was really like getting to like be really inspired by the art community and culture in Philadelphia. You know, we’re the mural capital of the world, we have Mural Arts and the street arts scene is just so cool. Besides murals, of course, if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you know, we have wheat paste, graffiti, people put up ceramics in the street, you know, absolutely anything mixed media in the streets. And I had heard about yarn bombing before and specifically ishknits, who is no longer in practice, like specifically when I started. So now we’re in like 2017. I think maybe she was still putting up a little bit of stuff, but she wasn’t really active.

But a person who I got really inspired by was London Kaye, a full-time yarn bomber who lived in New York City now lives in LA who’s just doing really fun pop culture stuff in the streets. So for people who don’t know what yarn bombing is, it is when you take crochet pieces and you go out to the streets and traditionally it’s when you wrap yarn around bicycles, poles, chairs. And it’s there out in the public for people to smile. Maybe it beautifies a rundown place, an abandoned area.

CB: Bombing is a term that might throw some people off. Why is it called bombing?

NN: I think maybe it’s called bombing because all of a sudden, you know, an artist puts it up rather quickly. All of a sudden it’s there one day. And then whether they take it down, whether it gets taken down by someone, whether, whether it gets weathered, it’ll disappear maybe just as quickly or sometime. I’m mean, kind of, that’s what I’m assuming. I don’t know the exact like history behind it.

CB: It comes from graffiti.

NN: Oh okay it does? I feel like maybe I should know that. So, yeah.

CB: But that’s why it’s called yarn bombing. So you’re going through this like depressive period. You’re out of the hospital. They’re recommending crochet. How long did it take you to be in this practice before you started to feel differently?

NN: Yeah, so. Something that I’ve learned over time. So basically I was, I was picking up crocheting and I was doing it, you know, just for myself. I started putting up tiny little pieces around the neighborhood, nothing big.

CB: Oh so like almost immediately after starting?

NN: Maybe like a couple months.

CB: Oh wow.

NN: Yeah. But it was like, what I was putting up would just be like, a couple inch flower on a railing, like very small things or like wrapping bike posts, like I was doing your traditional yarn bombing. What I do now is more mural-like yarn bombing or crochet installation art. But within a couple months and for about a year and a half, I was just doing it slowly. Nothing like too big, just really for me, a hobby. And then something happened where like kind of, serendipitously that I was doing for fun that really kind of caught like media attention. And after this event happened I was like, oh, like I think I have a knack for catching people’s attention, maybe like there’s something here. And this is a story about Taylor Swift.

CB: Taylor Swift stuff blew up.

NN: Yeah.

CB: And you got to become best friends with Taylor Swift. No. Maybe, but..

NN: I’d like to think so.

CB: How did that project start How did you, what did it look like to people, you know, to explain to people what it was, and then why did you do it?

NN: Yea so this, like…

CB: And Taylor Swift for those who don’t know; musician, singer, songwriter.

NN: She’s kind of indie under, you know, if you know, you know.

CB: If you Google her something might come up.

NN: So,, this was, you know, about a year and a half into my artistic endeavor, whatever. And this whole incident is what caused me to quit my full-time corporate job and start working at a restaurant part-time, and pursue my arts.

CB: This whole incident is the, wait what do you mean?

NN: So basically, I’m a Swiftie, you know, I’m not like a die, die hard. This story might make it seem like that, but you know, whatever. So Taylor Swift coming to town 2018 and I’m like, “Oh, like I want to keep doing yarn bombs, what should I do? Maybe, you know, it’s timely, I’ll do some of her lyrics, put them around the city.” So I put up three different quotes around the city and I put up one on Kelly Drive under like a bridge, and it says, “You’re so gorgeous.” It was one of her lyrics, you could stand in it. You could stand under it, take a selfie, whatever. So a journalist was running by one day for the Philadelphia Inquirer and was a Swiftie and clearly, you know, put two and two together and reached out and was just like, you know, “What is this? I know she’s coming to town. Is this related?” And I was just like, “Oh, I just decided to put this up,” and she was like, “Oh, is this like, you know, does this, is this affiliated with her at any, at any part?” And just like as she was talking, like a light bulb went off in my head and I was like. “Yeah. You know, I’m, I’m trying to get her attention and meet her,” like, I just made this up.

CB: Oh wow.

NN: I was like, oh okay.

CB: I never knew this part.

NN: Yeah I just like made this up on a whim. I was like, “Yeah, actually I’m gonna put up two other quotes and you know, maybe they’ll see.” Because something about her at the time is she would meet fans before and after concerts.

CB: You decided this in this moment?

NN: Yeah, no I’m not kidding. And after it, I got on, I started texting all my friends in the group chat. I was like, “Guys, you need to assemble online and start like posting this everywhere.” So they started getting on Reddit and Instagram and all this stuff.

CB: Oh, ’cause the Inquirer story came out.

NN: Yeah, that story came out. So they were reposting it, all this stuff. So I posted two other yarn bombs. One was right outside the Art Museum and it said, “I want your midnights.” And I kind of made like van Gogh-y type of motifs. And the third one was right outside the stadium that said, “Don’t blame me. Love made me crazy.” And then Newsweek picked it up. And well, the Philadelphia Inquirer, there was a whole color spread in the paper and then Newsweek picked it up and it just like kind of blew up online. So we hadn’t heard anything from her team whatnot, so we went to the concert early and because we found out that like her team will like pick people if you go early. So I went and bought so many copies of the Philadelphia Inquirer and I turned the page into necklaces and we all wore it around our neck. I know it sounds like I’m a crazy fan, which I guess maybe I am.

CB: It sounds like you’re trying to take advantage of, of…

NN: Of an opportunity?

CB: Of an opportunity! Yeah, smart.

NN: Okay. You know what? Exactly.

CB: You’re a business woman.

NN: Thank you. I’m a business woman. So we’re walking around like with these on our neck and a golf cart comes by and it stops. And it was like are you…

CB: And it’s Taylor Swift?

NN: It was like, no, it’s not Taylor Swift. She wouldn’t be around there. Come on. And these two girls are like, “Oh, are you the yarn bombing girls?”

CB: They had heard about you.

NN: They had heard about you. And they were like, “Okay, like let me get your IDs, whatever. Here’s some passes.”

[MUSIC]

So we get to go meet her before the show. And I know this is crazy. And so we go backstage, we meet her. She was like, “Oh my gosh, like I found out about you because my mom texted me pictures of your work. She saw some articles or whatever, all this stuff.” And so it was just like a really special moment and because me and my high school friends, you know, we bonded over Taylor Swift growing up and so it was cool they all got to come with me.

CB: Did you give her one of the necklaces?

NN: I didn’t give her one of the necklaces. It was a really like whirlwind of emotions.

CB: Quick, yeah.

NN: I was like so embarrassing. She was like, “Tell me about your art.” And I was like, “It’s, It’s just wholesome” and I’ve never said the word wholesome in my life. And afterwards I was like, I’m so embarrassing. But, so after that experience, it was just a really fun memory. And I was like, you know what? Maybe I have a knack for grabbing people’s attention. And I was just fed up at my job and I was like, you know what, I’m gonna work at the cafe across the street from me, Cafe Lift, shout out. They hired me without having any restaurant experience. And so after that I started working there, you know, 25, 30 hours a week, and I just started cranking out yarn bombs. And that’s when kind of people started hiring me. You started writing about me and I started getting paid gigs.

CB: So this attention that you got…

NN: It gave me confidence.

CB: Gave that confidence to quit because the corporate job, I’m guessing aside from like pulling a lot of your creative energy is also time, just you’re 60 plus hours a week, I’m sure.

NN: Exactly. It was time.

CB: So you’re like, I’m gonna work at a restaurant, a café, coffee shop. 30 hours a week and then try to make this art thing happen.

NN: Yep. And I didn’t have to commute. The commute was a two minute walk.

CB: Oh, great.

NN: So that was cutting out on my time. You know, there was like a month where I was doing all three jobs because I was just worried about money. You know, I was taking a huge pay cut, but it was fine. I just, you know, cut down on my expenses and it’s literally fine.

CB: Did participating in this Taylor Swift series also encourage you to create other series? ‘Cause, and correct me if my memory is wrong, but I remember right after that you started doing this series of artworks that really addressed your mental health journey. You did these flowers of a like, sort of a, a flower that had wilted turning back to life right around that Lift Cafe area. And you did a few around mental health, and that’s when I remember being like, wow, this is really cool what you’re doing. I love the whole idea of a theme and using this bright, colorful, yarn art form to talk about something that was as serious as mental health. And then unbeknownst to me how it connected to your personal journey. Was that the next thing you did?

NN: So mental health is definitely a theme. LGBTQ issues is a theme and just like pop culture lyrics, cheeky things are a theme.

CB: Pop art?

NN: Pop art, yeah, sure, that made people be like, “Oh, is that a little Pokemon made of yarn?” Like, you know, something like that. But yeah so this piece that you’re talking about is, I think the first piece that like we connected on and was my like largest piece to date at this point. It was in the Spring Arts area. What are they calling it? Eraser Head now.

CB: It was Eraser Head before. Now it’s Spring Arts, Callowhill is right there, Chinatown is right there. It’s kind of at the intersection of a bunch of neighborhoods.

NN: Yeah it was the underpass right by the Rock Gym over there.

NN: So I made three giant flowers. I would say the tallest one was 10 feet at this time, and one was like dying wilting pedals on the ground. The second one was, you know, as if someone watered it and it’s slowly coming back to life. And the third one is, you know, a fully blooming, bright, healthy flower. And when I would talk about it, I’d say you could be any flower at any point. But remember, you can also become any of the other flowers at any point. And that is when kind of like you wrote about me on the blog and I remember I kind of like started like picking up in followers at that point. People saw that and that’s when I got some of my first like backyard commissions.

CB: How do you feel about the fact that an artist’s career goes up and down. It’s very market driven. It’s a million things. Where are you right now with stuff?

NN: Yeah, so I love talking about my journey and we were talking about it and I’ve had a great experience being an artist and this is like the only thing I wanna do and I’m, I literally wake up and I can’t believe that I get to do this every day, and some days I don’t wanna go to the studio. Like I don’t want to crochet, like I cannot think of a single thing that I’m inspired by. And this year that’s kind of stretched out over like months a little bit. I’ve had a slower year, which has been fine, like financially. I’ve also bought a house this year, and I’ve wanted to spend some time nesting and we bought a fixer upper, so I’ve been doing a lot of projects at home. But I’m like struggling a little bit because, you know, crocheting used to be this thing that helped my mental health that was a hobby. That was something I did to get away from the work and it’s now my full-time job. So that’s something that I get a lot is like, has it taken away? Do you still love it? And I do still love it, but it is not anymore the thing that I go to, to relax for the most part. Sometimes, you know, if I wanna make something for my house or whatever, I have a fun time doing that.
So this year I’m really trying to like find new hobbies to like find that again, I’m doing a lot of gardening. I’m like craving being outdoors. This weekend I signed up, I treated myself, for an outdoor adventure, survival class where I’m just going out in the woods for three days with an axe and a tarp, and I’m learning survival skills. Like I’m trying to like invest in that kind of stuff right now because I just like need a little break. Like it’s just like a lot sometimes to be your own boss, marketing, photography, coming up with the ideas, crocheting them, negotiating just all the things. I still want to do it and I think I’m just trying to figure out what’s next. And I’m also, you know, I met with my mentor who’s, Sean Lugo, who is gonna be on this podcast. I met with him last month and I was just crying. I was like, “I don’t know why I can’t just like go create.” And he was like, “I know this feeling like this is just artist depression.” He was like, “I felt this after my first solo show.” And he was like, “Last year you made your first big body of work.” And I agreed with him. I was like, I did something so personable and now I feel like anything I make has to be amazing or it has to be like the next idea. But you know, he’s been, he’s like, “You just gotta keep creating.” And you know, he’s just, he’s a great mentor for me. So like, I’m getting out of it. But you know, I still go through it, you know, I think I’ve had a great career and like I’m still struggling sometimes.

CB: I bet you a lot of small business owners and artists might be able to relate to that. This idea of like, you got into this art form because it was a hobby. It kept your idle hands busy, if you will, and it brought you joy at the end of the day. And then when it becomes how you support yourself, it gets really complicated, really fast, and it seems like, you know, you’re so early in this journey. What is that up and down and dry and wet cycles? Like, what is that like to live through?

NN: Yeah, it’s a challenge and I’m gonna keep doing it. If it ever becomes like, oh, I’m starting to struggle with money or whatever, I’ll just get a second job because I never want to like start resenting the art because I can’t pay the bills. Like I want to always like still like love what I’m doing, whether that means taking longer breaks and making money somewhere else at some point, I’m not there right now. But yeah, just this year I’ve just needed to take a little bit of a longer break and I’m hoping that I’ll come back rejuvenated and like inspired and I like already feel that I’m starting to get there.

CB: Well, Nicole Nikolich, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

NN: Thank you so much.

CB: This was all a joke that we didn’t actually

NN: We weren’t recording.

CB: This was really wonderful. Thank you so much.

NN:Thank you.

[MUSIC]

CB: Next time on Art Outside

I know we’re really like romanticizing this street right now but I really feel like I’m on Sesame Street where it’s like; [Laughter] Small town, everyone knows each other, there’s a cast of characters.

MICHELLE ANGELA ORTIZ: Exactly. There is. But I feel like there’s gossip and then there’s stories and then, you know, it’s like Sesame Street but then, like Philly style [Laughs].

That’s next on Art Outside.

[THEME MUSIC]

This episode of Art Outside was produced by Alex Lewis.

Our associate producer is Bibiana Correa.

Tom Grahsler is our executive producer.

Art Outside’s production, sound design and mixing is by Rowhome Productions. Rowhome’s Executive Producers are John Myers and Alex Lewis.

Our engineers are Charlie Kaier, Diana Martinez, Tina Kalakay, Adam Staniszewski and Al Banks.
Our theme song is SNACKMFTIME by SNACKTIME. Our tile art was created by El Toro, aka Justin Nagtalon.

Special thanks to Michaela Winberg, Michael Olcott, Sarah Moses, Mike Shiffler, and Kayla Watkins.

I’m your host, Conrad Benner.

Art Outside is a production of WHYY. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.