BIO
Alexander Nixon graduated from Stanford University (BA, 2000), where he received the prestigious Nathan Oliveira Award for painting. In New York City, he filled his sketchbooks with ink drawings of subway riders, while producing monumental scale map mosaics of New York City in his studio. He started making bamboo sculpture when he moved back (2018) to his hometown (Tampa, FL) to teach art history at the University of Tampa (he has a master in Art History from Brooklyn College and from NYU). Teaching art history, especially the Classical World, inspired him to explore sculpture, an artform he had never tackled by hand, and made the discovery of his lifetime: bamboo.
History
About four years ago, Alexander stumbled onto bamboo as an artistic medium. He wanted to create huge, outdoor sculptures that felt like they belonged on, blended with, the landscape; something more organic than marble or metal. His first effort was a giant chair made of Cherry Laurel, which Florida insects gobbled up in about six months. Bamboo was a better alternative; not only does it grow all over the place in FL, it has no pests! Over months, then years, Nixon’s imagination bent, twisted, split, and wove bamboo to his will, turning it into ginormous mythological beasts like unicorns, giant butterflies, and centaurs. His early promising efforts have evolved rapidly into him becoming a master of and having a monopoly over a brand new art form, invented from scratch.
Process
Nixon collects bamboo from neighbors, strangers, businesses, wherever and from whomever, and bamboo grows so quickly they are happy to have him take what he needs. Next, he transports the bamboo to his art studio, where he splits the bamboo into long pieces that he rolls into coils to store for later usage. He categorizes the bamboo according to size, flexibility, durability, etc. and uses each category for a specific purpose. He starts by making the skeleton, made of solid rods of hard bamboo; next, he uses thick strips for the muscles and tendons; last, he weaves an outer layer of “skin,” and fine tunes everything until it looks spectacular. Everything is 100% bamboo. He has invented a wide range of techniques to connect everything together into durable, beautiful, and one-of-a-kind masterpieces.
The sculptures are enormous, but incredibly light-weight; one person can lift Nixon’s giant unicorn. This means they are easy to move and won’t hurt anyone.
Nobody taught Nixon how to do what he does; he learned everything by trial and error, through perseverance on rainy days, bitten by mosquitos, fingers full of splinters and cuts.