Artist encourages others as she was encouraged

Laura Nuchols, 52, is a sgraffitist. It is a term that means to scratch at a top layer to expose the layer underneath. It can be used with many media but is most commonly used on pottery. “I remember doing it with ink and crayons as a kid,” said Nuchols.

She grew up in Moses Lake with a stay-at-home mom who integrated arts and crafts, drawing and reading into their daily lives. When she was 9, her mother’s friend, Ruby Helmbolt, encouraged Nuchols to paint and gave her lessons. At 15, Nuchols, her siblings and her mother moved to Spokane.

She has been in the Valley for more than 25 years. Before putting down roots, she spent time in San Francisco as a sauté cook and baker, then moved to Durango, Calif.

“I tended to move on,” she said, “never keeping a job longer than a year.” A wanderer of sorts, it wasn’t until she decided art was her calling that she dropped her anchor.

She studied art at Spokane Falls Community College. Her pottery teacher, Margaret Gregg, now retired, inspired her. “She taught the basics, but then allowed her students to take off on their own.”

Nuchols married and had two girls – Meagan, now 18, and Emily, now 23.

“I began my career as a potter, creating functional objects in organic shapes and abstract design and colors. As my roles in life have changed, so has my art,” said Nuchols. She moved on to round shapes with simple designs and then to more precise and delicate designs, using white porcelain overlaid with blue slip as her basic medium. She also does enamel etchings on tiles in an array of sizes. Her pieces can take more than 40 hours.

When her children were young, she volunteered at their school, Trent Elementary. She encouraged scores of children to be creative. Her small group projects moved on to a venture that included every student, administrator and architect who worked on the renovation of the school. The final product was 561 tiles incorporated into 22 murals that decorate the hallways.

It wasn’t always easy to get her “students” to express themselves. The theme was a self-portrait or self-reflection, meaning how they saw themselves. While many painted faces on the tiles, others chose places or objects. One girl fancied herself a flower garden, and a first-grade boy saw himself as a volcano. The volcano-boy had a very hard time depicting himself. “He was tearing his hair out, literally,” said Nuchols. After some time, she decided to dump black, his favorite color, onto the tile and his volcano emerged. “It was almost like the volcano released him.”

One teacher could not begin his tile until he made one representing a teacher he had as a boy who told him he was not good at art. Once he rid himself of that memory by making it “concrete,” he was able to move on and create his own tile.

Nuchols continues to help others find their creative outlet while exploring her new interest in using her sgraffito techniques on metal plates. As a full-time employee at Spokane Art Supply, Too in the Valley, she is constantly directing others toward the proper tool to be used for any given medium.

She has shown at galleries in and around Washington and her work has been featured in the pages of Handbuilt Ceramics and Wheel Thrown Ceramics. Her work can now be seen at the Art Spirit Gallery in Coeur d’Alene.