“This piece here - the inspiration is supposed to be the Kiss,” says Nichols, 58, slapping the smooth white
block of female figure enmeshed in an embrace with her partner. “Constantine Brancusi did his ‘Kiss’ and
Rodin did his - this is mine”.
The figure’s bent arms meet to form the outline of a heart. Nichols created the piece out of French lime stone for
his daughter’s upcoming wedding, but he won’t rush its completion. He’ll wait until his inner artist prompts
him about how best to finish the work.
When it comes to sculpting. Nichols lets his creative muse brew and bubble subconsciously until he’s certain how
to proceed. But his professional day- to-day work as head of Nichols Concrete Cutting in Redwood City calls a more decisive
problem-solving approach.
About two thirds of his company’s business is made up of large construction jobs where his employees must cut through
weighty slabs of concrete flooring or walls. The holes in the concrete allow others subcontractors to get inside the structure
to work on plumbing or electrical wiring.
“Right now we’re on the Bay Bridge project,’ says Nichols, a burly figure with neatly trimmed, wavy white
hair. “We’re all the way up in the tower drilling for new rivets”. Such jobs make up the bread-and –butter
of his business, which he started in 1975.
But occasionally Nichols receives special requests. When towering sandstone columns in the main quad at Stanford University
required earthquake retrofitting last year, Nichols crew came to the rescue by drilling 16” holes through the center
of the posts, which could then be stabilized with sturdier material.
“The columns couldn’t be removed,” explained Nichols. “These were humongous pieces of stone. We
manufactured our own tooling to do the drilling. Your standard bit might not be long enough or too long. That was a great
project”.
As an artist, Nichols also appreciated the care needed for an earlier earthquake safety project at the Asian Art Museum
in San Francisco. “I was actually drilling some of the statuary that they needed to pin to bases, so in an earthquake
they didn’t fall out of the cases,” Nichols says. Wary that the natural oil on his hands might damage the ancient
artwork, he made sure he wore cotton gloves when handing individual pieces.
Nichols inherited his love of sculpting and working with his hands from his late father, respected Pennsylvania sculptor
Joseph E. Nichols. Joseph Nichol’s work has been collected by institutions such as the Reading Public Museum and Kutztown
University - both in Pennsylvania.
As a child, Nichols spent countless hour lingering in his fathers studio where the senior Nichols molded sculpturing portraits
from live models - later cast into bronze. “I liked being in his studio,” says Nichols while his calico cat,
Bella, wraps herself around a pedestal holding his unfinished “Kiss” sculpture.
“My dad was easy to get along with, he was very creative,.” Say Nichols. He first tried his hand at sculpting
when he was about 17, taking as his subject the family’s golden retriever, Butch, whom he caught napping peacefully
in the basement. Today his primitive, ceramic portrait of Butch slumbers eternally on a dresser in a back bedroom of Nichols’s
home.
Shelf and table space throughout the house feature countless works by his father including a bust of Abraham Lincoln and
expressive half-lift size nude who sits with legs folded gracefully beneath her.
Few of the 50 or so sculptures Nichols has created in his spare time remain in his home. He’s either given them away
to friends or they’ve been spirited away by his daughter. Nichols doesn’t mind. He’s more interested in
the works he has yet to make.
In the course of an hour spent sipping on ice water in his shady studio, Nichols listed several projects he has in his
mind. Several one ton and two ton blocks of French limestone, along with chunks of green granite, lie out in the yard awaiting
the day Nichols takes up a stone file and begin the time –intensive process of shaping a solid rock into a human or
abstract form.
“I kind of let things lie around till I get an idea” he says, nodding over his shoulder toward a large standing
piece of limestone on the lawn outside his studio. “I was going to carve a double-life size head out of it, but it
hasn’t reached that yet”
He turns his attention toward a lithe figure fashioned from aluminum foil. He ran out of molding clay one day and grabbed
the first malleable material that came to hand. He outlines plans for a sculpture of a ancient goddess of hunting. “That’s
going to be Diana,” he says. “See the way I have the bow? I was going to have her pointing an arrow and maybe
a deer over there. I hunt, so I could actually get the expression of the deer”.
Who knows? Once completed, Nichols’ Diana may stand sentinel in the back yard sculpture garden he says he’d
like to create. That project, however, may have to get in line behind others on his “to do” list, from repairing
a few of his dad’s sculptures to finishing building his studio.
In the meantime, they’ll all fall by the wayside as he prepares to begin yet another sculpture. The subject this
time will be the talented young son of a friend. Nichols and the boy occasionally get together to sculpt each other in clay
with Nichols acting as an informal instructor.
“He’s going to do my portrait and I’m going to do his”. Echoes of Nichols father’s teachings
will guide him through the boy’s lesson. “I kind of don’t instruct” Nichols says. “I let him
be creative on his own rather than say. ‘This is how it’s supposed to be.’”
Additional Articles:
Daily Pacific Builder
Bashland Builders Press Release
