Artist Nikki Leone Reflects on Tufting and the THREAD of Human Connection

“Making utilitarian objects that are also beautiful?! It just doesn’t get any better than that.”

The THREAD of human connection has been a tenet of Nikki Leone’s art career, and certainly, many of those connections were in attendance at The Garage on this chilly fall morning to hear Nikki reflect on her inspiring artistic journey.

That journey began during her senior year of high school in Virginia Beach, when graffiti-writing first introduced her to the art world. Using “Artro” as her tag, Nikki learned not only how vast and nontraditional a “canvas” could be but also how challenging  – albeit empowering – proving herself as “more than just a girl” would be as a female artist.

Nikki first attended college as a soccer player with the hopes of becoming a marine biologist but found herself uninspired and uninterested. Failing out, however, would prove to be a necessary and life-altering reset for the budding artist. Reflecting on her time graffiti-writing, Nikki decided to revisit art, signing up to take foundational art classes at Tidewater Community College. It was during this time that Nikki would discover her calling as a multidimensional artist and tap into her gift for building, sculpting and crafting.

“My still lives just started popping off the canvas, and I knew this is how my brain works – in the three-dimensional. I suddenly found myself expressing everything I couldn’t say verbally.”

Getting accepted into the Sculpture department at Virginia Commonwealth University changed everything. She flourished as a dynamic artist, unearthing new ways to express herself freely and authentically.

While earning her MFA in Studio Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Nikki learned about prop-making and set design, an artform that relies on some of what Nikki does best: envisioning, designing and building. “What’s the worst that can happen?” she asked herself, emboldened by the chance to challenge herself as an artist.

That opportunity would appear unexpectedly in nearby Norfolk, Va., where Nikki became a display artist for Urban Outfitters after having earned her chops, so to speak, as a gallery assistant and museum preparator. After two years at Urban Outfitters, Nikki served as a display artist for Anthropologie in the Virginia Beach Town Center for more than seven years, a role in which she once handcrafted 5,000 paper crabs from toilet rolls she had donated!

Committed to balancing her career with family and motherhood, Nikki sought ways to downshift her schedule. It was in this exploration that she discovered tufting, an art practice she could feasibly take on at home. It wasn’t long before she acquired a home tufting gun and got to work. The rest, as the cliche goes, is history.

Today, as the founder of Poplar and Pine Studios, Nikki designs immersive activations for events and retail spaces. She continues to design colorful and playful tufting creations but has since outsourced their fabrication to award her more time for her personal art practice – a lesson in relinquishing control and in trusting others’ mastery of the process.

Nikki’s commitment to freeing herself from constraints and diving into her curiosity has paid off. She currently has a solo exhibition at Virginia MOCA titled “Rule Breaker,” which runs until Jan. 5. She also has her eyes set on creating larger-scale works, all while continuing to push her artistry in colorful, conversational and community-minded ways.

“Everyone is on a different timeline. I am just getting started.”

Written by CMVB volunteer blogger Valeria L. Palmertree