As MARN’s HUB Director, Nicole Shaver manages key daily operations in support of all initiatives across the organization including the communications for membership correspondence and centralized information at the MARN ART + CULTURE HUB. She is committed to the artistic community in southeastern Wisconsin, regularly exhibiting and joining together area creatives.
In addition to her work with MARN, Nicole is also an artist in residence at Studio 224, a collaborative printmaking and photography space in Port Washington. She is also a founding member of the Rural Midwest Artists Cooperative, a new group of Midwestern art folx organizing and exhibiting together.
Based out of her rural studio in Saukville, Nicole creates artwork that is inspired by ideas of place and belonging. She researches different geographical sites and employs them as metaphorical compasses to create landscapes combining reality, fantasy and memory. Her sculptures are geologically and industrially influenced; a conglomerate of natural and man-made, plastic yet polished, navigating a space between a banal rock and a sublime ruby.
Nicole received her BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MFA from the University of Iowa. She has attended artist residencies in Colorado, Iceland, North Carolina, Ohio, Portugal and Vancouver. She was the artist in residence at the Dome House in 2022 doing her typical – running, drawing, photographing, biking, drinking, laughing, collecting and connecting.