NICOLE M. BOITOS A portrait of the artist in her own words The pig's head Nicole Boitos used as a model for the cover of the Body Lovers album Read Nicole's Interview View Nicole's Gallery I was born in a perhaps unremarkable part of the country - central Illinois - the single child of a musician father and mother, in March of 1975. Growing up was normal enough, obvious and reliable. I started drawing instantly, as far as my parents can remember, but did not pursue serious study until late high school. Most of my time was spent practicing the piano - a study which was full of potential but only flirted with seriousness for thirteen years. But it was in my high school, which was run by the state university where my father taught saxophone and ran the jazz program, where I found artistic guidance and direction from a handful of wonderful visual art professors. I owe much of my future to these people, for it was they who convinced me of my potential for growth as an artist. So, off I went after graduation to attend The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, a school, at that time, which led the country in the training of serious, disciplined fine visual artists. Overwhelmed by how superior to me most everyone else at the school was, I became determined for the first time in my life to really work myself. I spent hours, days even, copying drawings and paintings, making photo-accurate drawings of their collection of plaster-casts of figural sculptures from the Louvre, and other mundane, tedious technical exercises. It was exhausting, but my progression was equally intense. In a few short years I had the ability to draw like da Vinci or Picasso - but it was all technique and no substance. So, in my third year at the Academy, I began taking night classes at the University of Pennsylvania, making my way slowly towards another degree in Fine Arts. At last I found the balance between the right side and the left side of my brain, and then my work began to possess real substance. The resulting Pastoral Series won me a travelling grant to Europe, which I was able to stretch out for about three months by myself. That was in 1996, and I have yet to get over that trip. The things I saw and shared space with still awe me. I finished my last year at the Academy by the skin of my teeth, just to look towards two more years of part-time school at Penn. Life took over at about the same point, and disabled me from doing much work for about a year and a half. But now, revitalized by the promise of new projects and the completion of my second degree, I have opened the studio door again, pencil in hand.