Nick Lamia | Blowhards and Rainmakers
May 21 – June 28, 2025
Download the press release here.
View the exhibition checklist here.
View Nick Lamia's Now edition here.
Nick Lamia's exhibition, Blowhards and Rainmakers, marks his second solo exhibition at Planthouse. In this show, Lamia revisits the abstract representations of clouds. For Lamia, clouds are a source of endless inspiration and interpretation. Their limitless variety in form, color, scale, and proportion makes them both exciting and challenging as subjects for abstract imagery.
For Cloud Architecture, a notebook drawing series exhibited at Planthouse in 2022, Lamia employed simple rules, using only graphite and colored pencils for the works on paper shown. These restrictions allowed for a focused exploration of an expansive theme. The streamlined material limitations kept Cloud Architecture directed along a specific avenue of exploration. As he continued to work on the series, he wanted to introduce new ground rules that would lead to various overlooked avenues where he could use different media and techniques in addition to a broader range of sizes.
The cloud-inspired artwork featured in Blowhards and Rainmakers results from some of those explorations. Expanding on his previous exhibition, this show offers new drawings, monotypes, and older screenprints by Lamia. Works include acrylic paintings on paper, cyanotypes, silkscreens, and cyanotype and intaglio monotypes, which are hand-colored with wax pencil and gouache. Each work is related to all the others through their connection to the cloud. The work is varied like its real-life counterparts, each being unique and having a personality. Some are ominous and dark, others light and fluffy; some evoke humor, and others convey seriousness. In this sense, some are blowhards, and others serve as rainmakers.
Nick Lamia is an award-winning artist whose work includes drawing, painting, printmaking, installation, and sculpture. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and residencies at Wave Hill, The MacDowell Colony, the Robert Blackburn Print Workshop, and the Triangle Artists Association. The inaugural Bronx Museum Biennial included 500 of his small-scale drawings in 2011. Recent solo exhibitions include Cloud Architecture at Planthouse and The Tailwaters Project at the AVA Gallery in New Hampshire, where proceeds went to supporting the Greater Upper Valley chapter of Trout Unlimited and their ongoing effort to protect and restore coldwater fisheries and watersheds.
