We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carrie MaKenna. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carrie below.

Carrie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I make artwork to remind people of their interconnection with each other, nature and the universe.

The interactive experiential exhibit I put on at the Lakewood Cultural Center titled Enter The Universal Circle, was one of the most impactful experiences of my career. I created a journey of exploration through time, seasons, elements, moon phases and our solar system. This exhibit and artwork represented a quantum leap forward for me as an art-maker, curator, exhibition designer, and presenter.

It was a culmination of 30 years of interest, study, practice and teaching about the Circle as a unique Universal Pattern and Spiritual Resource. The Circle is found at the center of many spiritual traditions including the Native American Indian Medicine Wheel, Celtic Stone Circles, Buddhist Tangkas and Hindu Mandalas among others.

This was my impetus to conceive and create the Enter The Universal Circle interactive experiential exhibit. I had already begun incorporating the Circle as a primary subject in my paintings, and this was the opportunity to fully explore the Circle as a Universal form.

We experience the Circle through the cycles of a minute, an hour, a day, month, year, decade, a lifetime. These are marked by the rotation and orbit of the Earth around the Sun, and the Moon around the Earth.

This exhibit was designed with the intention of activating the entire space including the ceiling and floor. I drew upon my over thirty years of study, teaching and practice of the Universal Circle to create 32 new pieces of artwork to add to the dozen that already existed during three months, all while recovering from hip replacement surgery.

Additionally, this was the first time I had the support of others who saw my vision, understood it, brought skills, talents and ideas to the project and to show up to work with me to manifest it and even make it better than I imagined it could be. It was a powerful experience that I will never forget.

Additionally, several historic astrological events also took place while I was creating the exhibit. My husband and I drove to Wyoming to witness the Great North American Solar Eclipse. And on the day the exhibit opened, the space probe Cassini made its final plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere to burn up. Conincidence? Perhaps!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

Art is literally in my DNA. My great-grandfather was a commercial sign painter with his own company in downtown Denver at the turn of the century. He was also a plein air fine artist who would take his easel and oils into the foothills to paint small canvases. He would bring them back down to 17th St., known as the Wall Street of the West, to sell to the bankers and lawyers.

My grandmother, was also very creative and made a lot of hook rugs using her own designs. My mother pursued a variety of arts including painting, stained glass, screen printing and mosaics while I was growing up. Both my sisters also pursued careers in graphic design and made fine art as well. The most amazing thing is that we have quite a lot of all their artwork on the walls in our home.

I was fortunate to grow up in an arts-oriented household. I took ceramics, painting, and jewelry-making in public school. Against my family’s wishes I snuck into the Art Department at Colorado State University and took graphic design because you could ‘make a living at it.’ I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art (BFA) in graphic design, with minors in painting and ceramics. I pursued a career in graphic design and quickly moved into management, while continuing to create artwork and exhibit in group and solo shows.

I studied and taught a variety of world spiritual practices that nourish my art-making to this day. I co-founded a weekly, meditation and personal enrichment group in which I regularly included art-making exercises. I left the corporate world for a Masters Degree in Art Therapy from the Naropa University in Boulder CO. It combined my three greatest interests: psychology, spirituality and art.

I always had my studio at home until my husband, Craig Rouse, and I moved to a block of artist studio/gallery spaces where we stayed for nine years. I was a founding member of Inspire! Arts Week Lakewood, an annual week-long, city-wide, celebration of the arts, which won the Governor’s Award for Downtown Excellence.

After we moved our studio home again, I was invited to mount a solo exhibition at the Lakewood Cultural Center. I conceived and created my Enter The Universal Circle exhibit. I had already begun incorporating the Circle in my artwork, and this was my chance to fully explore it. I activated the entire space including the center of the room, the walls, ceiling and floor. At the same time I also organized a home studio tour for Artists living and working in the City.

My husband and I moved into studio/gallery space the 40 West Arts District in Denver. I co-founded D’art Gallery, an Artist-owned contemporary gallery in the Arts District on Santa Fe Dr.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Some level of pivoting and risk-taking is pretty much how most anything is ever achieved. I’ve found embracing change with a clear intention has most often led to unexpected and rewarding outcomes. The first art-related risk I took was in my first year of college when I basically snuck into the art department against my family’s wishes and wound up having a fascinating and eclectic artistic career.

Another big risk was to quit my corporate job to pursue a Master’s degree in Art Therapy. Yet another was to take studio and gallery space in a row of storefronts that I thought sure would only be for a year but wound up lasting nine years.

It would be impossible to recount all the risks large and small that I’ve taken in order to get where I am today. But the most recent was to co-found the artist-owned D’art Gallery in 2019 in the heart of the Arts District on Santa Fe, that managed to survive and actually thrive during the pandemic of 2020, and this year we’re celebrating our third anniversary.

This doesn’t even touch on the micro-risks that occur every day in the act of art-making from the choice of materials to subject matter. Over the years I’ve worked in quite a lot of media and styles. Over the years I’ve worked in quite a lot of media and styles. In the last 15 years I have settled on highly textured canvases and a select palette of 20 liquid acrylics. Using these materials I can create abstracts, portraits and landscape alike.

It’s a huge risk to put one’s work on display for public scrutiny. I have several series that I’m continually working on including Bare Trees, The Universal Circle, Atmospheric Conditions, and Circles of Love. Some years ago I found a quote from Georgia O’Keefe that has been helpful to me most of the time, “I have already settled it for myself, so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me a creative life is all the time. It’s how I see, think about and feel the world around me. There are two aspects of the creative life that are most rewarding. The creative process of making the work itself, and sharing it with others.

Firstly, although I have a BFA most of my artistic growth has occurred in my 30+ years of practice while exploring techniques, materials, processes, and style.

I’ve always leaned toward acrylic paint because it dries quickly. I wanted to get more paint on the canvas at once than I could with paint in tubes. I mentioned this and my husband casually said, “Why don’t you use liquid paint?” It was a huge breakthrough.

I developed a specialized palette of twenty colors of liquid acrylics and experimented with a lot of ways to create texture. I use a thick acrylic paste on the canvas then add additional elements like dried paint and found objects before I add layers of paint.

When I’m working I enter a meditative mindset. I lose all sense of time and space, so I’ve learned to set an alarm every couple of hours.

I may have an idea or direction to begin with, but I quiet my thoughts and have a conversation with the artwork. I let each piece have a say in what it becomes. If I’m struggling, I know I’m thinking too much.

Secondly, I enjoy telling the stories about my process and work to people who are interested. I find it especially rewarding when people tell me they experienced or learned something from viewing my artwork. And I love learning about what they see that I haven’t thought of.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.artscarriemakenna.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artscarriemakenna/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarrieMaKenna
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carriemakenna/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=artscarriemakenna

Image Credits
Carrie MaKenna Craig Rouse

Suggest a Story: CanvasRebel is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.