Courtney Nichelle Coble

Courtney Nichelle Coble

Courtney Nichelle Coble is a Virginia-based contemporary sculptor, multidisciplinary artist, and founder of Couture Underground, LLC. Working primarily in transparent epoxy resin, she creates wall-mounted portrait sculptures embedded with objects selected for their symbolic, personal, and cultural meaning.

Chains, flowers, medications, crayons, devotional symbols, tools, game pieces, and other familiar materials become visible evidence of the experiences people carry beneath the surface. Through these objects, Coble explores identity, mental health, resilience, faith, cultural memory, labor, care, transformation, community, play, and belonging.

Her signature body of work, Mind·Full·Ness®, is conceived as a Living Vault of human experience. Across an interconnected collection of 112 sculptural portraits, a repeated facial form provides visual continuity while each interior remains materially and psychologically distinct. The collection functions as both an archive and an evolving system—preserving individual experiences while revealing the relationships that connect them.

Coble’s process begins with an idea, memory, social condition, or embodied experience and the selection of materials capable of carrying its meaning. Objects are arranged within a cast facial form and suspended through carefully controlled layers of epoxy resin. Transparency functions as both technique and metaphor, allowing internal structures to remain visible without reducing them to a single explanation.

The work is designed to reward both distance and proximity. From across the room, each sculpture registers as a human presence. At close range, its embedded materials become evidence, metaphor, and narrative. Rather than prescribing a fixed interpretation, Coble creates space for viewers to bring their own memories, associations, and lived experiences to the encounter.

For Coble, “couture” signifies intentionality rather than excess. Every sculpture is one-of-a-kind, meticulously constructed, and never reproduced. Material experimentation, craftsmanship, and conceptual rigor operate together, allowing beauty, tension, vulnerability, resilience, and hope to coexist within a compact sculptural field.

Coble’s work has been exhibited and published internationally and is held in private collections. In 2026, SUN [FLOWER] CHILD received First Place in HMVC Gallery New York’s Freestyle 4.0, and Coble was named a Highly Commended Artist in the Winter 2026 Homiens Art Prize. Additional recognition includes 3D Special Recognition from Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery and Merit Winner recognition from Upward Gallery. Her work has also appeared in juried physical exhibitions, international publications, artist interviews, editorial features, and contemporary art registries.

Coble lives and works in Virginia, United States. Through Mind·Full·Ness®, she continues to build an enduring record of what people carry, conceal, endure, transform, and become.

Each work exists as an invitation—deliberate, layered, and open—allowing meaning to emerge through presence, proximity, and personal recognition.

2026 — First Place

HMVC Gallery New York, Freestyle 4.0

Awarded for SUN [FLOWER] CHILD

2026 — Highly Commended Artist

The Homiens Art Prize, Winter 2026

2026 — 3D Special Recognition

Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery

16th Annual Figurative Exhibition

2025 — Merit Winner

Upward Gallery, Identity