Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Morgan Kemp. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Morgan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?
I feel like the go to analogy would be that being an artist is a roller coaster ride full of highs and lows, but after a recent trip to the ocean the best way I can describe it is more like treading water in the sea. There are times where you can float and just be. You can look around and see the beauty around you, you can take a deep dive and discover something wonderful. But sometimes you have to fight the current, or get thrashed by a wave. Sometimes the visibility gets so bad you can’t see past your feet. Sometimes after all that struggle, you get too exhausted and you look at the people in the safety of a boat and you think, “man, that has to be nice, maybe I should hitch a ride?”
This past summer I was beginning to feel like I needed to get on a boat. I had just graduated with my master’s in fine art(which was a brutal experience), I had been running my art business for four years, and I was just feeling…drained. Art academia almost decimated my confidence and joy in being an artist and I took the summer off from making anything. I continued my other passion of whitewater rafting and guided for my fifth season. I spent the summer talking to strangers in my raft about my life. When I told them I just graduated from grad school the usual response was “congratulations”, when they find out it was for art there is always a level of concern, and skepticism. They always endearingly inquire “what will you do now?” What I wanted to say was I DON”T KNOW CHERYL, KEEP MAKING ART AND PRAY, but instead I found myself needing to feel responsible, like it was time I finally put the daydream down, and I would say I was looking for jobs in the custom fabrication industry around town. My customers would be at ease that I had a realistic plan, and I started to feel at ease too. When my raft season ended, I did just that, I applied all over for carpenter or welding jobs. I got some interviews and one of my interviews went very well, the schedule was set, the job expectations made, the PTO discussed, my seat on the boat was open, but it just…didn’t feel right.
When I think long and hard about what I want in my life, it’s freedom. Freedom to create what’s in my head, to make my own schedule, to flow with the seasons. Being an artist is terrifying and beautiful all at the same time. You have to wear your heart on your sleeve but have thick skin. You have to be sure of your choices but also fluid to change. None of it makes sense and yet all of it is great. I’ve realized that I am truly my happiest when I am rafting on a river, swimming with sharks, and making my art. I’m sure I will have more moments where I wish the regular job boat throws me a lifebuoy, but in the end I think my decision will always be to stay in the water.
Morgan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Morgan Kemp, I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas but now live in Bozeman, Montana. I have a bachelors in mechanical engineering and a master’s in fine art. I genuinely just love getting to create things with my hands and putting the ideas in my head into reality. I am a welder, a painter, a printmaker, a screen printer, a paint carver, a cement worker, a muralist, a wood worker, a graphic designer, and who knows what else! I am self taught in everything aside from the welding, I just geniunely love learning new mediums and have a bad case of “I bet I could do that”. My work is heavily influenced by wildlife and nature, I am obsessed with sharks(I just did my whole thesis show on them) but being in Montana I have also become influenced by the wildlife up here, horses and western culture. I’m currently working on a collection of sea creatures combined with cowboy aesthetics, it’s absolutely silly and I love it.
A few other tidbits about me:
I have been a raft guide for five years and counting
I’ve become obsessed with free diving primarily with sharks
I quote the Grinch and Fantastic Mr. Fox more than I should
I’m a desert rat at my core but love being in the mountains with my honey and two dogs
I love shed hunting, shelling, and drying flowers
I thrive in chaos I’m pretty sure because I’m either a gremlin or that squirrel from Ice Age reincarnate
I’ve been running my art business for almost 5 years now(which is wild to me) and it’s primarily 2D work and apparel. Most of my sculptural work is for public art or installation purposes. I also do logo, branding, and mural design on a commission basis. It honestly blows my mind everyday that people enjoy my work and even more so that people want to buy it and put it in their homes. It is always my goal to create art that is beautiful, brings people joy, gives them a good laugh, or moves them to action.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
A great way to support is by networking on behalf of your creative friends, if they’re anything like me they’re very bad at talking about themselves, so share their card, throw their name in for a project, suggest them to a client. It always means the world to me when I have a someone reach out because their friend told them about me, not because I paid for an ad and was on their page but because a real person saw my value and wanted to share, it just makes my heart so full. But also the bare minimum is check in on them, being an artist or creative you don’t get to clock out from your job. Most people only see the 1% of what we do: the finished product. But there is so much else involved and it can be overlooked most of the time. Having someone validate that our effort is seen and we’re doing okay means so much. I don’t know about anyone else but my brain feels like their are 300 squirrels running the show 199 of them had too much espresso, 50 of them lost their nuts and are trying to find them, the other 50 don’t know where the extra nuts came from, and one just really wants to take a nap. So yeah, just check in on your creative friends, take us on a walk, distract the squirrels for a little bit, and tell us we’re doing great.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
One word: PINTEREST. We all know that, against what we want, we have to show up online in some capacity. Social media is an absolute temperamental beast of a tool for creatives and I have spent far more time than I would like trying to create posts, reels with trending audio and all that hoopla praying to the algorithm that it gets some traction. Pinterest has been the gift that keeps on giving and anyone in the creative space should be getting in there because it is far more kind than social media. I have pins that I made two years ago still generating traffic because Pinterest is a search engine not a social media platform. If you do anything for yourself in developing your marketing strategy put Pinterest as numero uno on that list!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.awildthingsart.com
- Instagram: _morgankemp
- Other: https://www.pinterest.com/morgankemp/
Image Credits
The photos where I’m in overalls were taken by the wonderful Danny Temme