The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In pursuit of beauty, artist finds human connections
Nico Meyer is a structural engineer who specializes in carbon retrofitting existing buildings, mostly for seismic upgrades. He is also an artist. It isn’t a hobby, he says, but “more like a pursuit.”
Meyer’s artistic inclinations surfaced early, when he was growing up in Temecula, California.
“It all really goes back doing things with my dad,” Meyer said. “At some point, he bought a welder, and we would mess around and take scrap material and make something cool out of it. So I guess in a way, I’ve always been making cool little stuff, doodling and drawing.”
These days, creating “cool little stuff ” goes beyond doodling and drawing to something more complex.
When he’s not working on his day job, Meyer can be found in the garage of his Mira Mesa home or in his larger studio on property owned by his father, John Meyer, who worked in city planning and redevelopment before retiring. At the studio, surrounded by computers, 3D printers and machinery that shape his larger-thanlife art pieces, Nico Meyer says he feels at home.
This summer, he installed a large-scale sculpture at Nashville International Airport as part of the Skylight Exhibition. His sculpture — a 3D representation of trefoil knots — hangs high above the airport’s Concourse C. The competition was a partnership of Arts at the Airport, the Bonnaroo Works Fund and the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival.
Meyer’s work as an artist relies heavily on mathematics — patterns, shapes and repetition.
But he’s well aware that more often than not, his work will have to stand on the reaction of viewers.
“I definitely know that for many, it will be just a cool object for people to enjoy on its own,” he said, “at minimum, something that will force them to stop and think and see something beautiful and interesting.”
Mary Grissim, curator of Arts at the Airport, said it’s working.
“When people walk down the concourse, the large majority are looking down at their phones. Nico’s sculpture makes people look up! I have literally seen passengers stop dead in their tracks to look at the suspended artwork and the people behind them are blindly bumping in to them and then they look up.”
Meyer said that, to him, art “is an avenue to explore myself and find a connection.”
“You make beautiful things to get people to pay attention to it. It’s either beautifully sad or beautifully happy, but it still has beauty to it.
“That fact that you can improve someone’s life with art, that’s powerful.”