wishful thinking

Sandra and Dave Nichols, working as nic & sloy

November 2022 – January 2023

Sandra and Dave Nichols’ exhibition, wishful thinking, was a collection of paintings and mixed media studio work mostly created since 2020, but with select works dating back to the mid-1980’s. The artists, working collaboratively under the pseudonyms “nic” and “sloy”) create new interpretations of archaic myths and customs using combinations of painting, found objects and fragments of language. 

The Nichols' artistic journey began in the late 1970s when they met at Chemeketa Community College where Dave was a student and Sandra was on the faculty teaching English and creative writing. Over the past thirty-five years, this husband and wife team (using the pseudonyms “nic” and “sloy”) have transformed their playful love of art into highly inventive and imaginative artworks.

Dave is mostly a self-taught, multidisciplinary artist. His brilliantly colored paintings are sometimes based on old photographs of his family and friends, at once contemporary in their materials yet nostalgic in their subject matter.

Sandra was born in Bellingham, Washington, in 1943 and raised in Everett, some sixty miles to the south. She received her BS and MAT degrees at Western Oregon University in English and Education, respectively, and her MFA degree from the University of Oregon in poetry. For many years Sandra wrote poetry and poetic fiction, but in the early 1990s began to make drawings and paintings based on words, phrases, and text configured into patterns. She passed away in Salem on May 9, 2022. 

wishful thinking was generously sponsored by Bentley’s Grill and the Salem Convention Center.