Nicole Banowetz is a Denver(USA) based sculptor who makes sewn inflatable sculptures and delicate assembled forms. Nicole’s work is inspired by the natural world. She addresses human qualities and relationships using the imagery she finds in the animal, plant, mineral, and bacterial worlds. She has made made installations inspired by bacteria, parasitic fungus, viruses, radiolaria, rotifers, horses, and rhinos. All these forms she recreates in soft inflatable sculptures, which she designs and sews on her sewing machine. Inflatables have power. They draw an audience in by promising the familiarity of childhood, a jumping castle, and the wacky waving man on the corner. The inflatable is familiar, soft, and comforting giving viewers the security they need to enter a space immerse themselves and become curious. With this curiosity comes a questioning state of mind. My work creates a unique combination of the familiar and the strange which allows viewers to question the world around them. Nicole has lived and worked internationally creating artwork in India, Italy, Ireland, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Poland, and England, and showing work in large international exhibitions such as The Amsterdam Light Festival, Bad Art's Hot Air in London, Open Art in Sweden, and PASSAGES INSOLITES in Quebec City. She has taken part in environmental residencies and exhibitions in California, Colorado, Connecticut, and Finland. Her largest installations to date were shown in the Denver Art Museum, The Famous Hardware store in Arkansas, and Wonderspaces in Arizona and Pennsylvania. She is in the permanent collection of the Denver Children's Museum, Meow Wolf Denver, and the Denver Zoo in the US, The Amsterdam Light festival's Light Art Collection, and Kids Awesome Museum in Taipei, Taiwan.