About Nicole

HEY HI HELLO

I’m Nicole Zappala—an artist, experience designer, facilitator, and community builder exploring creativity as a way back to ourselves and to each other.

I make art you can look at, wear, walk into, participate in, and sometimes completely change.

My work moves between painting, mixed media, participatory experiences, temporary spaces, community gatherings, and creative work with organizations. The form changes. The impulse underneath it doesn’t: create something that makes people feel, notice, connect, wonder, or see what’s possible a little differently.

I believe creativity is something we practice—not something reserved for people who call themselves artists. And increasingly, I think of creativity less as making art and more as participating in what happens next.

So much of my work is about creating the conditions for that participation: lowering the stakes, loosening our grip on getting it right, getting out of our heads, and making enough room for curiosity to take over.

Sometimes that means covering a giant canvas in paint with a group of strangers. Sometimes it means making something under blacklight, turning an empty storefront into a temporary creative world, gathering a neighborhood around art, or giving a group of leaders a completely different way to experience themselves and each other.

The art matters. But what happens around the art matters just as much.

My Story

I didn’t take a straight path here.

Before becoming a full-time artist, I spent more than a decade working in technology and startups across product development, user experience, brand strategy, communication, culture, and client implementation.

A lot of that work came down to a very human question: how do you help people understand where they’re going, feel connected to it, and move through change together?

At the same time, I was slowly finding my way back to creativity.

I reconnected with my inner artist in 2018 after moving back to San Diego. What began with art classes and exploring North Park’s creative community became a regular practice—and eventually something I couldn't imagine not building my life around.

For a long time, I thought these were two different parts of my life.

I don’t anymore.

The same questions keep showing up in both: What helps people participate? What makes us feel connected? What happens when we don't know the answer? How do we make space for another possibility? What can we create with what is already here?

When I went looking for studio space, a series of dead ends brought that last question into focus:

What if I stopped waiting for the right space and started creating with what was already here?

That question became The Rainbow, my evolving studio and experience-space concept that temporarily brings creativity into underused spaces before their next chapter begins.

But it also became a much bigger philosophy for my work:

We have more to work with than we think. Sometimes we just need to see it differently.

Today, I bring together the worlds I once thought were separate—art, experience design, community, organizational culture, play, and human connection.

I make things. I make spaces for other people to make things.

And I’m most interested in what becomes possible when we make something together.

A few things I'm proud of

2025 — San Diego Magazine, Pioneer in Art & Design
2024 — Best of San Diego, “Mess Hall” (still possibly my favorite title I’ve ever received)

What I keep
coming back to.

Curiosity over certainty.
Process over perfection.
Participation over observation.
Presence over performance.
Making over waiting.

Creativity isn’t a perk. It’s infrastructure.

And I want to build more of it.