Nicola’s art has ranged broadly, from small wearables to objects and installations of industrial proportions. She draws inspiration from shapes, textures and rhythms in the natural world. Recurring forms such as cocoons, waves, crystalline structures and spirals are commonly appropriated as symbols for human needs and emotions: self protection, persistence, connectedness and perpetuation. Her work often contains oblique references to such themes. With a fine sense of irony, her concern for the underlying vulnerability of humanity is worked out through the hardest materials of nature: its metals and gemstones. Indeed, the interplay of fragility and durability sometimes provokes a gentle determination to make the materials behave in unnatural ways, to set form in opposition to material.