FINDING
HER MUSE:
NICOLE
OCKMOND
COMBINES
MUSIC AND ART
By Dean M. Shapiro
Music and art have always gone
together, existing side by side, often interchangeably.
Nicole Ockmond is a prime
example of this artistic symbiosis.
A talented guitarist and vocalist, as well
as a visual artist, Nicole performs her
music and paints some of New Orleans’
top musical artists, including herself.
Her colorful inventory of locally-based
musicians on canvas now numbers about
half a dozen and is growing steadily. And,
with two CDs to her credit and more in
the planning stages, she keeps herself
immersed in both art forms, even while
holding down a full-time job in the retail
field.
How does she do it all? “I really love
what I do,” she answers.
For Nicole the seeds for her musical
talent were sown when she was very
young. Born and raised in New Orleans,
she moved to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
with her mother after her parents
divorced. As she recounted, “My mom
owned a health food store there and she
was taking disadvantaged teenagers under
her wing. She played piano in church and
she had a little band she got together to
give the teenagers something to do. They’d
come over to the health food store and jam
every Friday and Saturday night to keep
them out of trouble.”
Taking her inspiration from this, Nicole
soon discovered her own voice and she
picked up the guitar at a young age. Her
propensity for creating visual art began
to kick in not long afterward. Her mother
remarried a military man and the family
frequently relocated from one army base
to another.
“Because we moved around a lot it was
hard to make friends so I had my drawing
and painting to occupy my time,” was how
she explained it.
Eventually returning to New Orleans,
Nicole attended and graduated from
Dominican High School, then went on
to attend LSU and the University of New
Orleans where she majored in art and took
classes in acting. But, facing the onerous
task of having to pay for her own education,
she joined the Army National Guard
which, after her eight-year stint, footed
the bill for her return to UNO.
Again majoring in art, Nicole came to
the conclusion that, “This is not going to
make me a living” and she left UNO to
work for a high-end apparel liquidator
in Metairie. “I was always interested in
clothing design and clothes, so I worked
for them and was always doing my music
on the side,” she said.
Her musical interests were buoyed
while she was in the National Guard and
her drill sergeant gave her some words of
encouragement. “We sang in formation
and he told me, ‘Wow, you have a really
great voice. You should do something with
it,’” she said. “So when I got back to town
I got involved with a band as their singer.
We sang a lot of blues and so I did that
for a while. And when that fell through
I wanted to do my own thing so I got
involved with Ultrasonic Studios.”
Under studio heads, Dave Farrell and
Steve Reynolds, she interned there and
“learned all the ins and outs of the studio
operation. Then I started recording there
and producing my own songs.”
The result was her first CD, “In My Head,”
a collection of 12 original compositions that
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