We recently connected with Kristi Klein and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kristi, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

There are many days I wish I had started my career as a creative sooner, mostly just because I love what I’m doing now. However, I also try not to live my life with regrets. I’m a big believer in timing and think that certain things begin and end for you at different points in your life for a specific reason. Now that I’ve lived so much of my life, I’m able to approach my work in a much different way, then say when I was in my early 20s. I truly believe there is so much value in an artist drawing from their own experiences and bringing that to their work. A lot of my work is inspired by my childhood growing up in Los Angeles in the 60s/70s. I know any work I would’ve created back then would be a lot different that the work I’m creating now as I’m able to look back on things differently, seeing what’s changed or perhaps not changed today for better or for worse. To me, art is a lot about perspective, and I think my later start helped me know more about what I wanted to say through my pieces. There’s definitely a confidence that comes about when you’re older that I certainly didn’t have back then. I’ve always loved art and dreamed of being a creative in any capacity, but life things such as motherhood and needing to be financially stable always took precedence. The older I get, the more I realize the importance of being able to invest in yourself and go back to the things that bring you the most joy.

Kristi, 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?

Art and creating have always been a huge part of my life since I was a kid. Even during periods of my life where I wasn’t actively seeking to be an artist or to make money from my work, I was still finding ways to create in my everyday life. This was something ingrained in me from my early childhood. Growing up in Culver City in the 70s, I spent a lot of my free time enrolled in after-school activities such as painting and ceramics. Fostering creativity in kids was such a huge thing back then that I find to be missing for kids today. Without smartphones to keep us occupied, the way we had to have fun and interact with the world around us was much different. In a lot of ways it was so much more free without the pressure of feeling watched or needing to justify something with a post. We could really just be and let our minds wander. Art became my main way of expressing myself.

I then went on to study at the University of California, Berkeley in the early 80s. I went into college with my major undecided, truly having no clue what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. It was such an exciting time in my life where I felt like the possibilities were endless but the possibilities also overwhelmed me in the sense that I had always felt like there were so many things I wanted to do in my life. How could I choose just one and also know that I was choosing the right thing at the same time? It only took me a little while before I decided on Art History, going back to my first love from my childhood. I had a lot of plans back then, but of course life and reality always get in the way. I went on to pursue a few different careers, such as wardrobe styling for films in the 90s. The options and idea of new experiences was of course always weighing on me, making it hard to commit to just one thing. I then got married and started a family. Raising my beautiful daughter, Cameron, became my first priority.

As she grew up and went onto college, I found myself wanting to create again. Around this time, I had started collecting vintage magazines, books, and other ephemera that reminded me of my childhood in 60s and 70s Los Angeles and had all of these wonderful, vibrant images in them. As all of the things I’d collected started to pile up, I began to start thinking of ways on how I could somehow repurpose them into something new so that others could enjoy them as well. That’s when I started creating my collages and loved the way I was able to make new meaning out of old photos and ads by cutting them up and arranging them with other pieces. I started posting them on social media in late 2021 and it’s quickly grown from there. I recently found a collage piece I’d made when I was around 7 or 8 years old while digging through a box of old stuff in my garage that I hadn’t looked at in years. Little did I know at that age that it would be a medium I’d go back to so much later in my life.

All of my pieces are created using images from vintage magazines and ephemera that I’ve hand cut and curated. I spend a great deal of time sourcing vintage materials at flea markets, antique stores, and online. I’m always on the hunt for new things to use in my work. My pieces are mainly inspired by my childhood in Southern California, specifically Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s. The one thing I love about collage is that despite the fact that a lot of the images I use are old or well-known, there’s always something new to say based on how you put them together. It often feels as if there are endless combinations on how to arrange a piece, and some works take weeks or even months to finalize. Yet, there’s something thrilling about finally feeling like I’ve cracked the right combination.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I love the freedom that comes with being a creative. I usually begin a piece with a specific idea or vision in mind, but oftentimes I find the end result turns out completely different than what I’d first imagined. I’m continuously being led in new directions and I’m always surprised by the way my work evolves from when I start working on a new piece to the completion of it. There’s never just one way to put a piece together, which can be frustrating but also exciting. I usually try several different combinations before I finally settle on what I intuitively decide is the right one. There’s this sort-of serendipitous aspect to working as an analog collage artist. I’m often looking for specific images but since I don’t do any digital manipulation of any kind and only use pieces that I hand cut from vintage sources, I can’t always find what I have in mind in the right color, size, shape, etc. in the materials I may have at that time. However, looking for one image will sometimes lead me to stumbling onto another, which may end up changing the entire composition or theme of the work. To me, there’s beauty in the uncertainty of going through that process each day as I work.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Don’t be afraid of failure. I think society conditions us to avoid failure at all costs and a lot of the time we don’t even attempt to do things because we’re worried we won’t get the result we want. However, being a creative takes a lot of trial and error both in creating your work and in getting it out there. When I first started, I was terrified of posting my work on social media. As an older person, I really didn’t know the landscape and it took a lot of getting used to how everything worked. I knew it was essential to getting exposure in this day and age, but I’d be plagued with doubts every time I went to post. What if people don’t like it or it doesn’t get enough likes? I’d be ruminating so much, I’d want to go and delete the post right after I’d posted it. It was getting ridiculous to the point where I had to tell myself to just keep going with it and not have any expectations. In not having any expectations, I was surprised to see my work start gaining some traction, which I wouldn’t have otherwise had if I hadn’t put myself out there in that way. I was told by someone once that true artists all have a fear that their work is terrible. There’s an inherent care in wanting your work to be the best it possibly can be. I’ve just learned that you can’t let fear like that consume you and prevent you from doing what you love. I’ve surely let that stop me too many times in my life. Really, the worst that can happen is that you learn something new for the next time you try again. The older I get, the more I realize I never want to stop learning.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daysgonebycollage