Lenné
Born in Pittsburgh in 1951, Lenné Nicklaus-Ball has devoted her life to art in its many expressive forms. Her creative path began early when, as a child, she was selected to attend Saturday art classes at the prestigious Carnegie Museum of Art. There, she developed a strong foundation in life drawing and representational painting—skills that would inform her landscapes, botanical studies, and portraiture for decades to come.
Nicklaus-Ball pursued her formal education at the Carnegie Institute of Technology before transferring to Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design in 1973. Following graduation, she moved to Los Angeles and worked in the graphic design department of a major supermarket chain. In 1976, she returned to Florida to care for her grandparents, who owned a hotel in St. Pete Beach. Together with her brother and sister, she later managed the family business.
While continuing to paint, Nicklaus-Ball became increasingly drawn to Abstract Expressionism, influenced by the works of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Pablo Picasso. In response to a number of commissioned portraits—many of which requested nude representation—she began rendering her subjects in an expressive, abstract style that emphasized gesture, emotion, and form. In the same year, she also began experimenting with gestural abstraction, often integrating neon light elements into her canvases, adding a bold and contemporary edge to her dynamic compositions.
Throughout her career, Nicklaus-Ball has moved fluidly between fine art and craft. In the late 1990s, she found commercial success with her beaded handbags, and soon after began collaborating with a ceramicist, learning techniques in throwing, hand-building, carving, and glazing. Her curiosity for global artistic traditions was further expanded by a 2004 trip to South Africa, where she was inspired by the decorative art of embellished ostrich eggs.
That same year marked a personal turning point with the passing of her beloved grandmother, Peg Nunn, a charitable and fashionable presence in St. Petersburg. In tribute, Nicklaus-Ball launched The P. Nunn Collection—a body of work that reimagined ostrich eggs as surreal, jeweled sculptures. Each egg is adorned with vintage costume jewelry, pearls, feathers, and found objects, transforming them into fantastical vignettes of underwater worlds, masked balls, and dreamlike tableaux that celebrate whimsy and memory.
Nicklaus-Ball’s work has also found a place in public art. Her butterfly sculpture was featured in the Tampa Bay Tour of Turtles and is permanently installed in North Redington Beach. In 2005, she contributed a butterfly sculpture for a special exhibition and auction at the St. Petersburg Holocaust Museum. A year later, one of her large-scale paintings was included in a collaborative art and poetry installation at Tampa International Airport, underscoring her commitment to accessible, community-centered art, and launching her animal prints on HSN in 2009.
Today, Lenné Nicklaus-Ball continues to live and travel and works in St. Pete Beach, Florida, still continuing her painting, sculpting, Lenné manges to do commissioned art work inbetween traveling around the globe. Many of her art work are reflects of those experiences exploring the vibrant edge between abstraction narrative and personal history.
