Sandy Hook’s Adam Niklewicz At Silvermine—

A Symbolic Look At One

Artist’s Past & Present

By Shannon Hicks

Everything has a meaning, every symbol means something. Artist Adam Niklewicz believes this and incorporates it into every piece of the fine art he produces. The Sandy Hook resident’s latest efforts are currently on view in one of the five galleries at Silvermine Guild Arts Center in New Canaan. Mr Niklewicz, an award-winning artist, was recently named an artist member of the guild’s board of trustees.

“Signs: Installations” presents visitors with ten works by Mr Niklewicz, nine of which are presented in the gallery space the exhibition continues to occupy until April 22, and one in the art center’s main reception area.

 The works in “Signs” are sparse, yet full of meaning. The first work that will catch the eye of most visitors will be “Descending Man, Ascending Man,” a 48-inch round piece of acrylic on board hooked to a rotating device. On the front of the work is a simple graphic of a male figure. The rotating device then turns the circular piece fairly slowly but constantly, so that at one point the figure appears to be right side up and a few minutes later it is upside-down.

“People can identify, I think, with the eternal cycle of life,” Mr Niklewicz said of his work. “Sometimes we feel down, but if you are patient hopefully you will feel good again.”

Although he moved to the United States from his native homeland of Poland nearly 18 years ago, Mr Niklewicz’s voice is still very thickly, yet handsomely, accented. When he and his wife arrived in the US in 1983, they landed in Mobley, Mo., and Mr Niklewicz could not speak English. He learned the language at a local junior college. He then went on to study illustration at Washington University, a private college in St Louis, for two years.

Mr Niklewicz is proud to call America home today, yet equally proud of his nationality and its bearing on his entire life. “Signs,” he has said, is the result of his reaching back to his childhood, a look over his life so far, and especially a look at his experiences as an immigrant.

“As an immigrant, you can never be fully integrated. You still talk little bit different, and even though people are accepting and wonderful with me, I still feel as sometimes an intruder,” he said.

All of the works in “Signs” have a personal meaning to Mr Niklewicz, who is a commercial artist for a number of magazines and authors (his work is featured on the cover of the April 16, 2001 Business Week). Most have a direct link to his experiences as a Pole. All were created specifically for the Silvermine show; work on the series began in February 2000.

“Frozen River” was one of the least expensive installations Mr Niklewicz has made to date, but will become one of the costliest to remove from its space later this month. The piece consists of eight-inch nails that have been hammered into the floor, following the shape of Bug River, which runs along the Poland-Russia border. There is a small map on the wall above the nails on the floor showing the river’s trail, and it is exactly what Mr Niklewicz has replicated on the gallery floor.

Mr Niklewicz was born and raised in the town of Zosin, which is marked with an arrow on the wall map. At the corresponding point on the floor stands a sugar lamb, a baked clay piece covered in sugar in the shape of a lamb that was sculpted by Mr Niklewicz.

(The expenses for Mr Niklewicz will incur when he pulls the nails out of the gallery’s floor and then must replace the wood his artwork was nailed into.)

“Untitled” is perhaps the most complex work in the show. The idea was to create something that would remind Mr Niklewicz of mother. The artist found an old-fashioned sewing table at a local Goodwill store. A friend of his, Don Messer, then built a small drawer into the existing table front into which Mr Niklewicz then added spools of thread, pin needles, thimbles — the sort of accoutrements that would be found in such a work station.

At Silvermine, the table has been set up so that it is hanging about four inches off the floor thanks to a device also created by Mr Messer. The installation had obvious connections to Mr Niklewicz’s childhood. It also suggests immigration, travels, and the movement of people into different spaces — specifically, going into different countries and someone else’s spaces.

A piece of thread runs from the drawer of the sewing desk onto the floor, across the gallery floor, then through two adjoining galleries, through the reception area and even outdoors onto the art center’s sidewalk, where it rests around its wooden spool. The white thread has been covered with a thin layer of epoxy in order to hold it in place, and many walk right over it without even noticing.

When gallery visitors inadvertently stepped on and broke the thread during the show’s opening reception, another symbol was born.

“It’s incorporated into the work, I think,” Mr Niklewicz said. “Some of my ties with the old country have been broken. You forget places, friendships sometimes end, you don’t feel like returning to the old places every year… it’s natural.”

While the majority of the works in “Signs” have to do with Mr Niklewicz’s past, one has a direct connection to his life today. Mr Niklewicz has lived in Sandy Hook since 1993. He and his wife, Grazyna, and their daughter, Hanna, a junior at Newtown High School (who, her father says, “has picked up [his] love of art”), live in a house that is right on the water of Lake Zoar.

From their home, the Niklewicz family can view a small island within the lake. From afar, and with a little imagination, the island’s side profile looks like an alligator. “What I Saw at the Lake,” envisioned in 2000 and applied to the wall at Silvermine, is a green painting of that island/alligator.

“I don’t have a prepared statement for each thing,” Mr Niklewicz said recently while walking though his show. “So much can be read into many things. There are so many symbols people can notice on their own. I don’t know what everything means.

“This show is conceptual art,” Mr Niklewicz continued. “It is not a matter of aesthetics. The importance is in the meaning, the symbolism of everything.” For that reason, the idea that the sewing table in “Untitled” is not an exact reproduction of the one his mother once used is not a worry to the artist. He was more concerned, he said, with the idea of a table his mother could have used.

His fine art is extremely important to Mr Niklewicz, for a few reasons. He has a talent that should be appreciated, for one. (It is certainly worthy of notice, as the Society of Illustrators and American Illustration Gallery have both honored him with Awards of Excellence.) His work sometimes has layers of meanings that are better understood when viewers take the time to read the descriptions that accompany most pieces.

His non-commercial art is also very important to him because it is by the same person who has done covers and inside illustrations for Newsweek, Time, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Washington Post, among other instantly recognizable names. Mr Niklewicz has also done dozens of book covers, including work for the likes of Doris Lessing and Salman Rushdie. Within one year of his May 1989 move to New York City, he was commissioned for more than 30 book covers.

Many people have trouble grasping the concept that a person is capable of fine art and commercial art that is all done with skill and of quality, backed by talent. Adam Niklewicz is living proof that it is absolutely viable.

“Signs: Installations” is on view at Silvermine Guild until April 22. For directions or gallery hours call 203-966-5617 or visit www.silvermineart.org.