Daily Inspiration: Meet Noah Nobley

Today we’d like to introduce you to Noah Nobley.

Hi Noah, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
This project has been over four years in the making, and it has been my attempt to explore novel representations of endangered species, their ecologies, and the simultaneous fragility and robustness that our natural world affords. I think there are some concepts that stick in our minds easier when they’re put into physical form – when there’s a real, tactile object in front of us that embodies what the concept was pointing at. That’s what I’ve attempted with these pieces; to allow the medium to have a voice.

Each piece is made by weaving one continuous thread into thousands of overlapping lines. While one individual line of thread or one individual animal may seem fragile and insignificant on its own, even a few thousand of them overlapping and interacting in the right way can be enough to sustain something robust and beautiful. Much like an ecosystem in good health, each piece can only exist as an interdependent whole, every line physically connected to all the others by nature of being the same thread.

This series is dedicated to the individuals and organizations doing the hard work of embodying this spirit of conservation. I’m not an artist by training, and I never expected to be doing something like this professionally. It’s a joy to be able to point in their direction with my work.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There will always be a dozen good reasons to stop pursuing something difficult.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I make everything that goes into my pieces, including all the woodworking for the frames. I don’t have any particular specialty, but these pieces take a bit of patience, so I suppose I lean into that. I work with a variety of hardwoods, and developed a steam-bending process to make these circular frames with as little wasted material as possible.

I focus my work on species that are either directly endangered or whose environments are threatened/shrinking. For each of my pieces I choose a nonprofit organization that works on behalf of the species depicted, and a portion of the sale from that piece will go directly to that organization. Check out my site if you’d like to read more about the work being done by these organizations.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://under4000.com