Gallery Stories Miniature, March 2026: Nina Nielsen

In this mini Gallery Stories episode, discover the stories behind Nina Nielsen's art exhibition up at Storefront Art Projects here in Watertown. Take a listen then go visit the gallery and experience the art yourself!

To see images of some of the pieces mentioned and more details about the show, go to www.littlelocalconversations.com/episodes/gallery-stories-mini-march-2026.

Transcript

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Matt 0:07

Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode, I sit down for a conversation to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This episode is a little bonus Gallery Stories episode. I'm going to call it a Gallery Stories Miniature. Last month I released an episode for February and March where I talked with five different artists and galleries about shows going on in Watertown. And there's another show that's going on that wasn't up yet when I released that episode, but it's going to be done before I was planning on doing my next Gallery Stories. But this one is a great gallery in town as well, and has a well-known local figure, Nina Nielsen. So I definitely didn't want to miss this one. So here's a little Gallery Stories Mini with Ellen, who runs Storefront Art Projects, and the featured artist Nina Nielsen.

Ellen 0:55

Hi, I'm Ellen Wineberg of Storefront Art Projects at 83 Spring Street in Watertown. Next door to Drive-By Gallery. This month until the 28th of March, we're showing Nina Nielsen of the esteemed Nielsen Gallery in Boston. Nina paints. She does beautiful abstract, emotional, evocative, and textural, and spiritual paintings that everybody gets a different feeling and idea about when they're looking at. We have 12 of her pieces here right now, and Nina.

Nina: 1:28

Ask on, Matt.

Matt 1:31

So first thing is, who are you? It sounds like you have, you know.

Nina: 1:35

I am a human being like every other human being in the world. 

Matt: 1:38

And so you have a broader connection to the Boston Arts scene for, you’re not new to the scene, right? 

Nina 1:44

No. I'm known, fortunately or unfortunately, for having the Nielsen gallery for 46 years on Newbury Street. We began showing Japanese woodblock prints, and then we followed with German expressionist prints from the early 20th century, and then we followed with French prints and drawings from the early 20th century, and then moved, as I say, I jumped off the deep end into the water of contemporary art and had a great time. Don't regret a moment of it. However, been there, done it. And we closed it in about 2009, and I've been painting ever since. 

Matt: 2:23

And had you been painting before then, or was that a delineation for you?

Nina: 2:26 

I had been painting on vacations a little bit, but basically the gallery took up most of my time, which is why I closed it eventually, because I thought as one grows older, one should pay attention to oneself.

Matt 2:41

Let's talk about the art you have here today. So does this collection have a title or is there a theme around it?

Nina 2:47

I put no titles and I have no theme. They're all called untitled. They're numbered, as Ellen will tell you. And Ellen is fantastic, by the way. I have to put in three cheers for her. And it's a very funky space, and I love it. And she has a studio behind here and so you should come and look at her work also when you come and look at mine. But for most people, what they want is to see paintings through the rational mind. They want to see something in the painting. Well, my paintings are not about something. They are an attempt to go to another level, not even attempt. You either go there or you don't go there. And they are to explore a mystery which I think none of us ever can explain. However, hopefully the paintings hold mystery about them and each person has to come to them by their own path or their own experience in life. 

Nina: 3:43

For instance, we go and back and see a Fra Angelico painting or a Pollock painting. You have to learn not to look for something in it, but to ask the question of why, not how. Not how the painting was done, not the texture of the painting, or you know, sometimes I'm called a sand painter, which I sort of shiver about. Because it's just one of those things that the painting is calling for, but it's not because I like to use sand and it's all about the texture of the painting. That is a how. The question is why you paint. And that you can see.

Matt 4:22

So why don't we take a look at a few of these paintings? I know I've seen this one featured in the show on the online stuff.

Nina 4:29

Now that reminds everybody of Aborigine art. I had no sense of doing an Aboriginal painting. Okay.

Matt 4:37

So for people who are listening, trying to describe this. So it's this textured painting, first of all. So there's some type of material that is on the canvas and then painted on, and then there's these almost what look like paths weaving through a background. Do you want to talk a little bit more? That's how I can describe it so far.

Nina 4:56

You see, that's why people associate that with an Aboriginel painting, because they have what's called the walkabout, which is getting them into a larger space or a sense of time than they have in their normal everyday life. Okay. And so the walkabout is based on recognizing being part of nature and something larger than oneself. Go on, Ellen.

Ellen 5:24

I think it looks like a snaky road through the desert.

Nina 5:26

A snaky road through the desert. See, that's good. Okay. But what is a snaky road through the desert? That is the question.

Matt 5:34

And it's almost these white dots through that almost look like footprints. You could interpret it as footprints going through the paths.

Nina 5:39

Exactly. One has to see something, and one sees usually something which is about one's own life and one's path through life. And the question is, what makes that meaningful, that path through life? And that's the question, that's the bigger question. And that may be the question that brings us all together.

Matt 6:00

So what is your process for making a piece like this? So the texture and then obviously the conception of it.

Nina 6:06

Well, I paint in oil paint. But it's a very simple thing. There's a medium I use so that the oil paint dries more quickly. But I don't have a preconceived process that I'm going to use. I put a mark on the painting and then that mark on the canvas will tell me something and bring up something that directs me, hopefully, to where I don't know I'm going. Because if the painting doesn't surprise me at the end, to me, it's not worth anything. So I worked many years on some of the paintings.

Matt 6:43

So do you want to take me through an example of a piece here that had that kind of process to it? You started it, left it for a while, and came back.

Nina 6:53

That one, that one we were talking about has it. That one has it. That painting is to my grandmother. At the end, but not at the beginning. I didn't make it to my grandmother, but when it was finished. My grandmother came from Germany and she was Jewish. And she visited the United States in 1936 to see my older sister, who was a baby, and said to her husband, my grandfather, who was not Jewish, maybe we shouldn't go back to Germany. And he said, Ah, that Hitler, he will never amount to anything. He's so stupid. And they went back, and she got stuck in Berlin for all the war. Four of her siblings got eradicated. Just she and her youngest brother were left and they came here after the war. 

Nina: 7:40

So I painted that painting, and for some reason it reminded me of her. She loved flowers, she loved plants, she was a wonderful person at growing things. And there's almost like a face in the middle, you can almost see that, but it's not. It's very abstract. So it's I think beautiful at the same time as there's somehow these things coming out of it which are sort of tragic. And that's what she was. She basically raised me after the war, and she came in her 70s and raised us. So it just, a lot of that painting for some reason when it was done, just reminded me of her. So who knows why? You know, that's what I'm saying was the mystery of all things. I do not know where these paintings come from.

Matt 8:26

So this piece that we were looking at here, it's got almost a close-up of a flower, again on some type of textured background, and then in the middle is a splash with droplets coming out of the side that you could interpret, like you were saying, as many different things. Given that whole story you just told, that adds obviously another layer to it. So I guess to kind of tie it all together, when people walk into this show, how do you want them to experience it? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to think?

Nina 8:53

Well, when I was in the gallery, we had many, many shows, obviously, every five weeks. I would hang the shows, and the important thing for me was to have the paintings be the conduit, sort of like an icon in which you walk through to something else. And I would often have very, very interesting conversations with people about the paintings, because that would make us have a conversation together, which we shared. And sometimes I knew more about them than the person they lived with, because the paintings were the conduit to a mystery, which we shared. But I would come from it from my direction, they would come from their life, but what they were saying would open up my eyes to another way of looking at it. And that was great.

Matt 9:38

Great. Well Ellen, do you want to wrap up with the exact details of the show?

Ellen 9:43

The gallery is open Thursdays and Saturday, one to four, and we're done on March 28th. 

Matt: 9:49

And if people want to find out more information, where should they go? 

Ellen: 9:52

Oh, look on our website, storefrontartprojects.com. Or on Instagram we are at storefront underscore art underscore projects. Thanks.

Nina: 10:04

Thank you, Matt. 

Matt: 10:05

Yeah. Thanks for sitting down to talk.

Ellen 10:08

Matt, you are a natural. Your voice is relaxed on the podcast. I listen to lots of podcasts, and yours keeps me listening because I believe you.

Matt 10:16

That's, well, thank you. 

Matt: 10:21

So that's it for my conversation with Nina and Ellen. Again, Nina's work is up through March 28th. And you can find more information at storefrontartprojects.com. All right, so that's it for this Gallery Stories Mini. There are still a couple of shows from the last Gallery Stories episode that I did that are up and running at the TILL Wave Gallery and at the gallery on the second floor of the Watertown Library. If you want to find a lot more information about those, go back and listen to the Gallery Stories for February and March. I'll link that in the show notes as well. And if you want to just listen to all the other episodes I do from one-on-one interviews to local government updates to live podcast events, head on over to LittleLocalConversations.com. You can find all the episodes, sign up for my weekly newsletter to keep up to date with everything going on. 

Matt: 11:03

And I want to give a few shout outs here to wrap things up. First one goes to podcast sponsor, Arsenal Financial, which is a financial planning business here in Watertown that is owned by Doug Orifice, who's a very committed community member here in the city. And his business helps support busy families, small businesses, and people close to retirement. So if you need help in any of those areas, reach out to Doug and his team at ArsenalFinancial.com. I also want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council, who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast. So I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at WatertownCulturalCouncil.org and MassCulturalCouncil.org. And a couple more shout outs to promotional partners. First, the Watertown Business Coalition. Their motto is Community Is Our Business. Find out more about them at WatertownBusinessCoalition.com. And lastly, Watertown News, which is a Watertown focused online newspaper. It's a great place to keep up to date with everything going on in the city. Check that out at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.