bio
Nicholas Cladis is an artist based in Iowa City, IA. He has taught hand papermaking, installation, relief printmaking, and related courses at the University of Iowa Center for the Book (US) and Fukui Prefectural University (Japan). He has also been a visiting artist at several other institutions, non-profits, and craft schools in Japan and the United States. To Nicholas, the empowering, uplifting, and transformational act of making paper by hand generates essential connective points to history (time), community (people), and ecology (place).
Nicholas lived and worked for many years in Echizen, Japan—an area with over 1,500 years of papermaking history, thriving craft industries, and a long-running contemporary paper art event—and he continues to maintain strong ties with the community there. His relationship with Echizen and his Japanese language skills have inspired and enabled Nicholas to facilitate an array of cross-cultural arts exchanges, exhibitions, and workshops.
Nicholas is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Japan Foundation NY, Andy Warhol Foundation, Stanley Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts, Iowa Arts Council, Iowa City Public Art Advisory Committee, and Fukui prefectural government, among others. Nicholas’ artistic output includes social/community engagement, site-responsive / experimental space-making, and an attention to — and appreciation of — craft in a contemporary fine arts context. He is the founder and director of Iowa Art Field, a biannual festival that showcases site-responsive art at alternative spaces in Iowa City, Iowa.
Nicholas is currently a Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Japan in cooperation with the Echizen Washi Cooperative and the University of Fukui, and administered by the Japan-U.S.Educational Commission.
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These are meditations on time.
Deep time, ecological time, cultural time, personal time, end of time.
Providing space — space for contemplation and togetherness.
A space for reading. A space for searching.
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