April 8, 1987
John Nigh, Student of Life
By Sharon Olmstead
John Nigh is an unusual
student at Penn State, Harrisburg. Until
several years ago he was a high school
drop-out, but , next month he will
graduate with a bachelor's degree in
humanities with plans for an M.A and
Ph.D. Nigh's art and sculpture is
respected in the northeastern United
States and Canada and by students and
faculty on campus. This winter he
exhibited his wood sculpture in the
Gallery Lounge in the Olmsted building.
In an interview in his North
Second Street home in Harrisburg on a
sunny, winter day, Nigh, 33, talks about
his life and his work. He is a Canadian
from Fort Erie, Ontario, a refined,
articulate, gentle man with a soothing
voice. His blue eyes are penetrating, his
hair and beard are a sandy-blonde, and his
words are chosen with care.
Nigh has prepared hot tea,
and his cat, Aloyisies stalks around the
room. He says he has traveled to Europe
four times. On two occasions he lived
there for one year, and twice for less than
a year. "My love for fine art started in
Europe," he says.
While he was in high
„school, he wrote and directed his own
plays and was an advanced piano student.
He is also a poet, writer, artist, wood
sculptor and craftsman, and
photographer. This winter he taught
woodworking courses at Messiah
College, and went to school full-time,
and worked 20-30 hours a week as a
production wood-carver. Nigh says he
enjoys the diversity of life. "But," he
admits, "It's my Achilles' heel."
Nigh is also a father. He
talks about his three-year old daughter,
Leslie, and what she teaches him. "It's a
wonderful education all over again. It's
just trying to see through her eyes,
observe the things that she observes, and
feel that happiness and optimism and
vitality that she has."
He stirs his tea,
occasionally strokes his cat, and talks
about his reserved nature. "I'm not as
quiet as other people think," he says.
British and American cultures are very
different, he says. Canadians are more
reserved, but they are friendly, open
people, while Americans have energy,
bravado, frankness, a willingness to take
chances, and are more experimental.
Nigh says this is reflected
in their art. "I have some. Canadian
friends who are artists who are
wonderfully expressive and imaginative,
but there is a sense of underlying
restraint in their art when you compare it
to the sorts of things that artists in
California and New York are producing.
"I grew up in a culture where
you just did not talk about yourself in a
laudatory way. It was considered
immodest and improper," he says.
His father is a Mennonite
minister and farmer. He was a classics
scholar at the University of Toronto and
a theologian at McMasters University
and was the principal of a private
Christian school. " He' s quite
remarkable," Nigh says.
His mother is an
occupational therapist and head of the
O.T. department in a city hospital in
Ontario. When - his father went on
sabbatical, he took the family to Europe
and the Middle East. His parents are
adventuresome, and they visited every
little historical site down every dirt road
imaginable, he says.
. Nigh is pretty
adventuresome himself. In the middle of
his senior year, he says he dropped out
of high school and worked at various
jobs to earn money, then went to Europe
to live. He calls it his "baptism into
life."
Nigh surrounded by his logs and lumber outside his workshop
He spent several months
living in a small room with a hard bed
on a board in a monastery on the island
of Crete. At the monastery, which was
a self-sufficient community, Nigh says
he learned the art of wood carving as
well as a lot about Orthodox theology.
The bishop would take Nigh with him
as he traveled throughout the island, he
says.
Life in the monastery had
a great effect on him--the ritualism,
symbolism, the traditions in Byzantine
art, the icons and the ceremonies--" The
romance of it all was very compelling,"
he says.
"At that point in my life,
I was very interested in a sort of
contemplative view of life, primarily
through ritualistic means. Ritual led me
deeper into art, a fact that is strongly
Capital Times
reflected in his art, which he says is
quiet, contemplative, and understated.
Nigh learned art and art
history first-hand as he backpacked and
hitchhiked his way around Europe,
sometimes sleeping under haystacks.
"The whole aspect of creativity
is very important to me," he says,
calling himself a passionate amateur
artist. But his sculpture has gone the
furthest in terms of having matured as an
art form and having received critical
acclaim, he says.
Nigh has exhibited his
sculpture from Toronto to Harrisburg,
Houston, Texas, to Long Island, in
Photograph by Sharon Olmstead
Corning, N.Y. and New England; and
locally at Messiah College, the
Harrisburg City Government building,
and at the Doshi Art Gallfery. He says
he has given up on making a living
from his art.
"I just became burned out with
tremendously hard work. - You
compromise your whole reason for being
a craftsman if you have to resort to
mechanistic production methods," he
says.
Nigh says he wants to
continue working as a sculptor. "But I
don't want that cloud hanging over me
that I've got to sell either craftwork or
art to make ends meet." He no longer
does craft shows, he says.
His present goal is to get
an M.A. and possible at some point
Ph.D. to teach studio art and art history.
"The reason for a university's existence,
ultimately, is a sort of sanctuary for
hard free thought..."
"I have always been a little
outside life," Nigh says, quoting an
Edith Sitwell poem which puts in a
nutshell how he has always felt. People
he has loved and admired have fit that
description too, he says.
It is living "a bit on the
fringe," being spontaneous and
susceptible to impressions, sensations,
and perceptions to both positive and
negative things, he says. "You can't do
this if you are sheltered in a nice, safe
cocoon."
"I can see as I grow older, I'd
like more of a cocoon around me--a
comfortable environment. But I hope
that it never becomes a rigid shelter from
the work."
Nigh's photographs have
been displayed on campus. He says a
photographer, like the artist, should be
sensitive to images on a continual basis.
"You can't just pick up a camera and go
out and take good photographs. There
has to be a certain rawness in your
receptivity."
He tries to cultivate in
himself and values in other people a
capacity for taking chances, he says.
"Being a little outside of life is a
territory that involves risk. You're
deliberately rejecting a style of life and
an attitude towards life that locks you
into a routine and a pattern of living,"
Nigh says.
He says that most people
have gravitated into a comfortable life
style, but they have surrendered a vitality
about their personality. He doesn't
suggest violent, imprudent risk, he says,
but a sense of trying to keep alert to the
reality around you--and keep yourself
susceptible to things.
Another quality he values, he
says, is sincerity. "When I sense
insincerity in someone, I tend to
arbitrarily go the other way." He stirs
his tea and pauses.
"Definitely, one of my
strengths is that I love to laugh! I love
humor," he says. His strong sense of
humor has helped him acclimate himself
to society, he says. "I enjoy it when
professors are humorous in class...like
Dr. Hagberg. It's a wonderful, added
spice to the salad."
"I get that from my Dad. He
has one of the best, most subtle senses
of humor I have ever encountered," Nigh
says. "There's never an occasion that he
doesn't have exactly the right story or
joke to tell."
He talks about the
vulnerability of artists which
accompanies the necessary sensitivity for
creating. "Artists I know are tough, and
they're able to take care of themselves,
probably intellectually and emotionally
better than most people." He says you
"toughen up" as you get older. "It's one
of the heavier prices you pay for being
an artist--or even pretending to be an
artist."
Nigh says he wishes he were a
little less absent-minded and more
(continued on pg. 12)
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