Arts Directory

About

Artist Bio

Paige Nelson is a graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, California where she became an avid people watcher and learned to talk with her hands. Her pursuit of acting ended at graduation, but her spark for creating had only just begun to catch wind.

In 2003, Paige launched her own decorative painting company, COLOR Outside the Lines. For 20 years she was privileged to work with interior designers and home builders in California, Colorado, Chicago, Georgia, and the Carolinas.

In 2023 Paige recreated herself as a studio artist, applying experience garnered from two decades of painting interiors. Now, in what’s becoming her signature medium, she crafts fiber-art sculptures that challenge the confines of a frame. She is challenged by the construction of each piece; how to fuse grace and movement with structural strength. With her muralist background in walls, Paige is most comfortable with a scale that is larger-than-life.

Her vibrant, whimsical pieces can be viewed online or in person at The Thibault Gallery in Beaufort, SC.

In her community, Paige jumps at the opportunity to “Talk Art” in official capacities, at senior centers and local schools, but most enjoys it when someone pauses at her studio door to watch her work. This often morphs into impromptu art lessons, ponderous conversations about inspiration and technique, and friendships with creative souls of every age.

In the summer of 2024, Paige looks forward to teaching art camps at the Public Works Art Center in historic Summerville, SC.

Artist Statement

Paige is a ginormous believer in the light within, that we all have a certain secret sauce only we can bring to the world. We aren’t perfect by any stretch. Far from it. We are broken vessels: abused and cracked and chipped and scuffed. But the cracks are how our light gets out! How we channel that inner light–how we bring it to the world, we call that ART. It’s a kaleidoscope of poetry, music, dance, color, texture, movement, stillness, darkness and illumination, ever morphing to express ideas, to challenge the status quo, to draw attention to the beauty of our world and its quirky inhabitants.

As such, Paige is motivated by those pesky, middle-of-the-night quandaries: could you create a piece that evokes empathy, the sort of thing that reminds us that every person we meet is also human and thus imperfect? Could you invite the community to collaborate on said piece and could we all stand back and marvel (smile, weep, rejoice!) at what we made? Yes, and yes!!

Paige often comments that she’s “playing in the mud” and “making it up as she goes” because she is. Her style is ever evolving. She works with concrete and plastic, with sharpie and ink, with aluminum foil and repurposed cereal boxes. She sculpts with clay comprised largely from toilet paper fibers (that she makes in her kitchen aid mixer).

With art there is no right answer. Nor proper motive. Or correct technique. That’s kind of the point. Life isn’t propped up by art. Reverse that.