Lowel Nickel

Lowell Nickel

Currently I am a gravity challenged geriatric trying hard to make sense of my existence. As my eyes loose focus, food smells and tastes are diminishing, conversations and sounds are often misconstrued my life is not diminished much. I have art and the art making. Mixed up (not confused) media artist, I, my life, its wonders are to be savored, never solved.
P.S. Resumes only stagnate.

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PARTICIPATION

On-site event June 1st

Installation

MINGLE MANGLE

Gallery show, May 13 – June 17:
Asteroid Belt
Interactive ceramic modules (hanging impact/percussion objects). 2023 

When a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, if by ‘sound’ we mean vibrating air, then yes, when the tree falls, it vibrates the air around it. If we define sound as vibrating air, the falling tree makes a sound but if we define it as a conscious experience you would have to have at that moment been in that forest. Let that thought sink in… so in deep space when planets, meteors, asteroids collide, of course no-one is there to experience the impact, there is no air to vibrate to make sound. An answer may seem to be simple: it depends on how we define’ sound’ within a percussion less space. A primary philosophical question if there was nothing conscious, then nothing would be experienced. There would be nothing resembling anything we call existence. No sounds, no colors, no smells, no tastes, no touch, no sense of time, no sense of space.
Phenomenology as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy. Phenomenology has been practiced in various guises for centuries, but it came into its own in the early 20th century in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and others. Philosophy is of a mind rendering art with intentionality, consciousness, and first-person perspective.

“A tree falls the way it leans. Be careful which way you lean” ~ The Lorax

The industrial sounds of this working Los Angeles port does vary and waver. Very often the intrepid sea winds seem to carry that entire port clamor to an unknown elsewhere. This prevailing ocean blown air compresses as it finds its way over the landscape and through the trees… yielding background sounds that freely circulates. By inspection, some of the Points matured trees have a browbeaten bark and ever telling tilt.

Living life out here on Point Fermin the calms and silent times do not go unnoticed. Both natural and manufactured sounds will carry like an invariable turbulence. Sirens of a terminal traffic, harbor and road, commonly echo to compete with the allure of Pacific Ocean. This local is a place, the point and also the end of the road.

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