Following on from my last post, we hear from Nicole Scribbel a visual artist from Wolverhampton who is contributing to the literary landscape of the city by leaving word play all over the streets of Birmingham. Her “Spontaneous Art Shows” are a type of mysterious street art that is deposited for passersby to glimpse, or take home and enjoy. In an exclusive interview with Best Believe she explains how her passion for words and lettering started at a young age.
During school I developed my own style of handwriting (quite possibly influenced by the music I was listening to, and the records I was buying at that time). It was a subconscious thing and looking back now, I realise it was my way of expressing myself.
Around the late eighties to mid nineties, I would spend time admiring the graffiti that was happening in my area and would often doodle out my own words three dimensionally in different styles. Heavily into music, I would also listen carefully to lyrics and scribble them down on record sleeve inners in order to try and decipher what the artist was trying to say.
Later down the line, after some formal training as a “Fine Artist”, the battle of not wanting to be moulded into a pretentious Art Twit with an A, and undoing a wee bit of confusion, I have reversed back ten to fifteen years, working with letters and words once more.
In my eyes, letters are line drawings, and in day-to-day life we use these alongside signs, shapes and symbols to communicate with one and another and they help give us guidance. And depending on who we are and where we are from, they may differ slightly.
My Slogans or “Word Art” are an attempt in some cases to communicate with people and make people think and re-asses their priorities in life but also a form of self-expression for myself. It’s where I am able to release my frustrations and celebrations.
Words are powerful, and by even reading a single word, it can trigger many thoughts and/or images in your mind.
I currently adapt well-known nursery rhymes into thought provoking statements, which perhaps reflect the more serious side to my personality. In contrast, I also make my own rhyming slang as a more humorous way of communicating my thoughts. For me personally my work acts as a kind of diary, as it documents certain moments in time.
And as Sister Corita Kent once said “I am not brave enough to not pay my income tax and risk going to jail. But I can say rather freely what I want to say with my art.” And this I can relate to.
