Nick Fagan’s Southern Comfort
Finding the ‘sincerity in banal objects’
BY ANDRE VAN DER WENDE MAR 9, 2022
Fine Arts Work Center visual fellow Nick Fagan knows the power of a good, weighty blanket. The bright colors and soft textures are a balm for troubled minds in turbulent times.
“Lately, I’ve been interested in found blankets, especially crocheted ones,” says the 30-year-old Virginia native, who has scoured thrift stores Cape-wide and beyond in search of his trove.
“I like the idea of using sincerity — the raw, nostalgic, sincere — and I think these blankets denote that for me,” he says. “I’m looking for a specific palette: ’70s colors like burnt orange, white, and brown, with a real mustiness to them — that weird sense of nostalgia, the feeling of instantly hitting a basement.”
Fagan says that he is interested in the “identity of things,” and the “sincerity in banal objects.”
“I usually think of these crocheted objects as gifts,” he says. “They’re not utilitarian. Someone usually makes it and then gives it to somebody. I’m trying to talk about my own sincere issues through that.”
Nick Fagan in his studio, with Mother Vessel in the background. (Photos by Agata Storer)
