Nikki Sheppy wears many hats around UPPERCASE. She’s a subscriber, a contributor, and an entertaining party guest. Nikki was profiled in issue #9 but, since she is our thirteenth subscriber, we asked her to share more with us.
Subscriber Profile: Nikki Sheppy
How are you creative in your daily life?
I dabble in cake-baking, doodle on napkins, and compose palindromic poetry (in which the word “the” never appears because I spurn interjections that make me seem too Canadian).
What are you most curious about?
Beautiful or unexpected forms. I like poetry, maps, data graphing, and architecture. I like abecedaria, altered books, and the sculptural potential of new paper and textile technologies.
What is your most prized possession?
Access to the world. I’m constantly grateful for the fully functioning faculties (motor, cognitive and sensory) that allow me to explore what’s out there. I think this is so basic and necessary that many of us take it for granted.
What is your favourite letter of the alphabet and why?
Usually, it’s Q – a smooth face with a single pubescent whisker; an O that forgot to shave; an R&D developer for the British Secret Service, slyly packing an arsenal of deadly gadgets: quirky amphibious cars and quinine-tipped darts. But today I prefer Z, a letter with a lot of razzle-dazzle, a zany gonzo journalist unafraid to veer boozily into the most improbable reaches of a story, taking every s-curve like a zed.
What is your favourite colour?
Cherry red – Visceral, as deeply satisfying as the fruit itself, bloody, not for the faint of heart, and the main contender in so many of those brisk plaids of the fifties.
What is your preferred creative tool?
Language. Its plasticity, its resistance, the coy, coltish way in which it refuses to let me write like wunderkind Karen Russell. The alphabet contains only 26 letters. How hard could it be?
I hope you are as inspired as I am by all the different perspectives that UPPERCASE exposes us to. I love rubbing virtual shoulders with people and coming away with a new way of looking at things. When I read the information subscriber Dan Barry sent in about his first solo exhibition in Europe the phrase ‘drippy babies’ stood out. In my world, it often means a mess that I need to clean up, especially since my one-year-old has taken to drinking out of the dog’s dish. Fortunately, I have a new frame of reference based on Dan’s alluring work.
