Inside Out

On a Monday morning in early June, Nicole Storm arrived at the Creative Growth Art Center in downtown Oakland, California. Light poured in through broad windows that faced the street. Nicole put her jacket and lunch away in the closet and then selected a large piece of cardboard from a stack in a hallway. A staff member helped her secure the makeshift canvas to an easel and set out her paints and markers. She chatted with some fellow artists and then explained to me that she is starting a new project, after having finished a few paintings last week. Nicole refers to her artistic process as “taking notes.” It is a way for her to organize the events of a day, although the results never look like a typical archive or journal. She creates bright washes of color that provide a glowing background for lines and shapes that appear like an indeterminate form of writing. Nicole records what is going on around her with marks that may initially seem impulsive and spontaneous. But they are the culmination of a well-honed practice, undeniable creativity, and decades of sustained work.

Nicole was born in 1967, during what her mother, Diane, refers to as “the tail end of the Dark Ages,” when someone like Nicole, who has Down syndrome, would almost certainly have lived her entire life in an institution. At that time, Diane recalls, “I sent away for some information about Down syndrome and what I got was bleak. The life expectancy was twelve years. Fifty percent of people were dead before their fifth birthday. So I threw that stuff in the trash and decided to do it my way.”