Nic Nicosia is an internationally-recognized artist who recently returned to Dallas after ten years in Santa Fe. Nic gained notoriety in the early eighties as one of the leaders of the staged photography movement. He has been selected for the Whitney Biennial twice – once for his photography and once for a film. He has also been selected for participation in Documenta, the Kassel, Germany-based art exhibition which gathers the best of the art world for site specific works every five years. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, amongst many others. He has been the recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston hosted a 20-year retrospective in 1999 which subsequently travelled to other venues; and in 2012, a major retrospective of his life’s work was published by the University of Texas Press. Nic is represented in Dallas by Erin Cluley Gallery.

I recently sat down with Nic at his home studio where we discussed growing up in Dallas, studying filmmaking, being part of a movement, the changing art world in Santa Fe, the willingness to continue to try new things, and the measurement of time.