An interview with 2025 Artist Resident Nick D’Alessandro ahead of his group show opening on September 4, 2026 at Chicago Artists Coalition. This spotlight series aims to serve as an intimate introduction to our residents and their work through a Q&A-style interview. Interview originally conducted on July 1, 2026 by Dana Randall, Communications and Alumni Relations Manager at Chicago Artists Coalition.
Q: Do you have any common themes running through your most recent works in progress?
A: My practice centers around planned obsolescence, whether that’s in portable electronics, clothing, or just generally. Right now, I’m investigating fast fashion and the excess material that spills out of the current model.
I’ve spent some time visiting historically significant textile mills near my hometown, specifically in Lowell, Massachusetts, and those surrounding areas, where the Waltham Lowell system was introduced, which caused some of the first major labor reform movements. Many of them have been “museumified” and are no longer functioning mills, but have been pretty meticulously preserved. I think that has been somewhat informing my modes of making.
Over the past year or so, I’ve been making work on a lap-sized table loom, after some attempts to find more naive methods of cloth making. I tend to employ methods of degradation and preservation in my work. I just had a show open, Universal September, at Prairie in June that was an investigation of these opposing processes in a focused way.
A lot of my work comes from meditating on my own decay, preservation, mortality, and then this irrational obsession with entropy and either creating or trying to prolong an object’s obsolescence with destruction or conservation.
Q: How has your work evolved since being in the CAC residency?
A: I think it’s developed a sort of confidence that wasn’t there prior. Talking to a wide variety of people in the field and the community at large has been really helpful to validate the time I’m taking to make the work. I’ve learned to make work for the sake of the work itself and to prioritize the time and space to make that happen. It’s been validating to talk to people who encourage that.
Q: What are some of your biggest artistic influences? Where do you find inspiration?
A: I have a laundry list. I’ll try to say it slowly. Eva Hesse, Smithson, Robert Gober, Margiela, Jun Takahashi, Raf Simons, Rei Kawakubo, Alexander McQueen, Lutz Bacher, Gus Van Sant, Roni Horn, Michael E. Smith, Beatrice Bonino, and Roger Hiorns are all at the front of my mind right now.
My friends, a lot of exhibition catalog archives that I’ll look through and just find groups of artists in group shows. Books from the thrift store, books I buy, my phone, Instagram, the street, everywhere.
I’ve been really into Eva Hesse and how she’d make objects she’d call “test pieces”, which were more material experiments than anything. They hearken back to this idea of the work never being finished, and she was often presenting the work in a way that she or someone else could pick it up and keep working on it.
I think that is something I’m really interested in: the rejection of finishedness and cleanliness in the work. I’m kind of constantly making “test pieces.” I rarely and have never really regarded my work as precious. I suppose in staying in line with planned obsolescence, it’s often comforting to know that the things I make will be destroyed, or decay on a different timeline than myself as the maker.
Q: Tell me about your favorite mediums. What about them speaks to you?
A: Any material that is used in more industrial contexts. So I’m really interested in cotton, polyester, nylon, silk, and wool, which most fabric is made of, and then finding materials in my natural environment. I reject hyper-manufactured material, and put a big emphasis on provenance when I’m determining material.
A lot of my work is not complete without its material list.
Q: Do you have a favorite time of day to create? How does the time you find or choose to make influence your practice?
A: Whenever I can. I’m really restless, always have been, and get antsy if I don’t have a busy day. I’m in the studio pretty much every day, whether that’s to make clothes, work on larger projects, or rearrange. Sometimes I find that exhausting myself and then looking at the work can give me clarity or help me make more intuitive, rash decisions. Otherwise I’m pretty precarious and methodical.
Q: In keeping with our values, one thing we want to do is cultivate a community of knowledge-sharing. What is something you would encourage other artists to learn about? What is something that made a difference in your career?
A: Spending time looking at Exhibition catalogs. Contemporary Art Library, ARCHIVE.pdf, monoskop, aaaaarg, any site that digitizes publications. Looking at runways as exhibitions has been really generative for me. Walking and getting time away from the studio, having a studiomate or a close friend that you trust to talk shop with, always making something. And then I try to always be humble, talk to everybody, reject all creative hierarchy.
Q: Do you have a personal philosophy relating to your practice or your life?
A: I have some sprawling small quotes that I’ll just read. I don’t want it if it’s pure. To be destroyed is to be purified. I am lucky. The more you share, the less you need. Oblivion is Freedom. Manipulate material, but let it act according to its own dynamic. Contaminate always.
Website: nickdalessandro.net
Instagram: @nicckkd
You can view Nick’s work at his group show opening on Friday, September 4, 2026 from 5-8pm at Chicago Artists Coalition alongside Sebastian Bruno-Harris, Rob Croll and Van Payne, curated by Taj Richardson.