ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a social practice artist working across visual art, performance, and live composition, with a focus on community engagement and collective experience.
My work explores the dynamic between individuality and interdependence. Drawing from principles of positive psychology such as empathy, curiosity, collaboration, and positivity resonance, I design creative frameworks that invite people into shared acts of expression, reflection, and connection. I am particularly interested in how simple, accessible artistic gestures can open space for presence, play, and mutual recognition.
A significant focus of my work is in collaboration with military Veterans. This connection is both professional and personal. My father was an Army Veteran and an artist, and his life and work continue to shape how I understand creativity, service, and expression. Through long-term partnerships and creative programs, I create non-clinical, arts-based environments where Veterans can explore expression, agency, and connection on their own terms. This work also invites the broader public into deeper understanding by creating opportunities to listen, engage, and reflect.
Many of my projects take the form of temporary, site-specific invitations that encourage public participation. These works often center joy, curiosity, and lightness as entry points, while creating room for deeper awareness and connection beneath the surface.
My largest and most sustained work is SPARK! Creative Lab, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit I founded to support artists in developing socially engaged work. Through SPARK!, I collaborate with artists and communities, including Veterans across Oklahoma, to build environments that foster wellbeing, connection, and shared understanding. The organization is committed to paying artists fairly while expanding access to meaningful creative engagement.
My practice is informed by lived experience, including navigating complex trauma, which has shaped my commitment to creating spaces that are grounded, human, and responsive to the needs of participants. I approach this work with care, clarity of boundaries, and a belief in each person’s capacity for expression and connection.
I continue to grow this practice by developing new models for collaboration, deepening community partnerships, and contributing to the evolving field of social practice and arts and health.
BIOGRAPHY
Nicole Poole is a producer, curator, artist and educator working across the field of art and public engagement. Born in Oklahoma City, Nicole studied, lived and worked in NYC (1995-2016) and Paris (2010-2016) prior to returning to Oklahoma.
Nicole is the Producing Artistic Director of SPARK! Performance Ensemble, a facilitator for the Creative Catalyst program of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at UNCSA, is the Owner and Curator of the O. Gail Poole Collection, and a producer and advisor through her company, Maverick Arts, LLC. She serves on Oklahoma Contemporary’s Performance Committee, as Board Secretary (2020-2022) for OKC Repertory Theatre and as a member of the Watermill Council for Moulin/Belle in Dordogne, France.
Previously, Nicole served as the North American Liaison for Art Ludique, le Musée (Paris), from 2013-2015 and again from January 2019 until March 2020. There she assisted as an interpreter, art handler and assistant to the curatorial team in Paris before moving into overseeing strategy for introducing the museum’s entertainment and pop culture-based exhibits to the United States. From 2018-2019, she taught for Oklahoma City University, creating curriculum and leading interactive courses in the Department of Philosophy’s general education course Arts & Human Values for students from diverse cultural backgrounds.
As an artist, Nicole has performed widely between NYC and Western Europe, and has held residencies in Woodstock (Byrdcliffe), Paris (Union des Musiciens de Jazz), Marseille (La Minoterie), Sweden (Tiviloihüsset), Milan (Verdi Conservatory), Madrid (Centro Cultural Adolfo Suarez;) Tours (Le Petit Faucheux); Bordeaux (TNT) and Belgium (Royale Academy International AKDT), among others. She has worked as a live composer, performer and instructor in Soundpainting, a sign language for live composition created by composer Walter Thompson, since 1997. As one of only a handful of theatre artists worldwide certified in its use, Nicole attends yearly international thinktanks to advance the language for performance, composition and pedagogy across disciplines, and regularly collaborates with composers, musicians and performers from 35+ countries. She has taught the language widely, from Belgium to Vassar, to students ranging from kindergartners to professional artists.
She is a core member of the Walter Thompson Orchestra, a Founding Member of the international ensemble Kollecti’F, and a regular guest artist for the Soundpainting Orchestra de l’Union des Musiciens de Jazz (Paris). She has worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company and its founders John Barton & Sir Peter Hall (Tantalus), contemporary composer Anthony Braxton (Irondale), and composer and Chevalier des Arts et Lettres François Jeanneau.
Nicole is also an award-winning narrator for audiobooks, with more than 250 titles for both independent authors and commercial publishing houses Recorded Books, Tantor Audio, Deyan, John Marshall Media and Harper Audio. Her curation of the O. Gail Poole Collection, a vast catalogue of her late father’s visual art, has been viewed in Paris (Galerie Arludik), Arezzo (Casa dell’Energia), and Oklahoma (Oklahoma Hall of Fame, Myriad Gardens and the Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of Art). Her own visual art, through the handle @wordsmiff405, has generated an underground following and resulted in her being the founding recipient of the Paseo Arts Association’s 2020 Inspirational Influencer Award.
Nicole received a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre/Performance from the University of Oklahoma. She attended the Art Students’ League of New York, the Alliance Française and earned UNCSA’s Creative Catalyst certificate for artistic leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Documents: Performance Resumé ; Curriculum Vitae
