Nick Tobier

Stamps Series at UICA

This special event will take place on Wednesday, May 16^th at 7:00pm at the UICA Theater (2 West Fulton, Grand Rapids).

Nick Tobier is a designer and agitator for the creative use of public space. His work is rooted in the social lives of public places. Nick studied landscape architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and subsequently worked as a landscape architect in private practice and with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation/​Bronx Division. Through individual and collective work, Tobier’s interest in the potential of public places has manifested itself in built public projects and actions in San Francisco, Detroit and New York, internationally from Toronto to Tokyo.

I once saw an elephant walk through midtown Manhattan in the middle of the night. Standing waiting to cross the street, I looked up at the traffic signal, then down at the exit of the Midtown Tunnel where cars generally came careening out. This sighting, for me, provoked a quest for seeking out and concocting events with an air of the unexpected, and the out of place and holds aspirations for me in creating unexpected events. I like to think that my work could be someone else’s elephant.

This event is part of a new partnership between UICA and the University of Michigan School of Art & Design’s Penny Stamps Speaker Series. Established with the generous support of University of Michigan alumna Penny W. Stamps, this series brings respected emerging and established artists/​designers from a broad spectrum of media to conduct a public lecture and engage with communities.