We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kandace Creel Falcón. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kandace below.
Kandace, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
In February 2017 my wife and I closed on a country home on twenty acres in Otter Tail County, MN. We’d been living in a small city, a border town between Minnesota and North Dakota, and we were ready for a change. The following fall I was on sabbatical from my job as a tenured Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies. I was working from home, spending my days trying to hammer out a book manuscript. Restless with spending my days alone and with words, I decided to enroll in a visual arts class at the local community college. I was twice the age of the first time college students when I showed up to the first day of Foundations of 3D art class in January of 2018. Having never taken an art class I was nervous, but as a scholar found a lot of comfort on the rhythms of a college classroom. That semester we made wire sculptures, three-dimensional objects out of foam board, cardboard, and clay and learned about the principles and elements of art and design. I was absolutely exhilarated by the process of imagining something in my head and then trying to figure out how to make it solid. While my sabbatical ended in May, I decided I could not give up the joy of making things, pursuing my creative impulses, and expanding my languages of storytelling beyond the methods of writing I had previously come to enjoy. I committed to continuing my studies for an Associate’s Degree in Visual Arts which began my wild ride of going back to maximizing my time management skills. I would leave my house and drive thirty minutes to the community college, study and work in the studio and take my classes. Then, I would clean up my work station and run to my car, drive one hour to the college where I taught and do my professor job for the rest of the day. At the end of the work day I would drive an hour and a half back home to begin preparing for the next day. Two semesters of this juggle challenged my determination, but, it also helped me realize that while I loved teaching, I loved the prospect of making art even more. In the spring semester of 2019 I resigned from my tenured post so I could focus full-time on my degree and shifting toward my arts career. I put all my faith in leaping out of something I had known my whole life, a career as an academic, and trusted the universe to catch me as I went through my artistic metamorphosis. The key that unlocked my willingness to take this risk, was painting.
Kandace, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I firmly believe narrative has the capacity to change the world for the better and this main value guides all of my creative practice. I am primarily a painter and a writer, though as an interdisciplinary artist I use fabric arts, printmaking, painting and writing to create the world I want to live in – one that is equitable and filled with opportunity no matter one’s chosen or assigned social identity categories.
Because stories can be told and shared in a variety of ways I engage my painting and writing as interconnected processes that inform one another. I paint narrative scenes, and I write and share about the process and broader historical context in my twice-monthly newsletter that I send out to subscribers. Because of my background as a former academic, my artistic practice is research based, I spend as much of my time reading, researching, writing, and reflecting as I do painting in hopes of creating compelling artworks that shift how we understand our relationship to each other through better understanding our relationship to our home spaces. Ultimately, my art explores what it means to belong, and I seek out stories that prioritize healing historical harms, particularly challenging the legacies and current realities of sexism, racism, and homophobia.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
Before I was an artist full-time I never fully appreciated the amount of time and energy is necessary to create. I think the number one thing society can do to support artists is to support artists materially. By that I mean, buy their work, share their work with others, and advocate for universal basic income to help artists do what they do best – create. We need time and a feeling of safety to create, so anything you can do individually or through organizations you are a part of to create pathways for artists to create with minimum strings attached, benefits us all.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I used to think creativity was innate and you either had it or you didn’t. This belief was born out a negative comment I received when I was ten by an authority figure who said I wasn’t creative enough to gain admittance into a special educational program. That statement haunted me for a really long time. When I was in graduate school working toward my Ph.D. in Feminist Studies a friend and I would get together on Fridays to just make things with our hands. I began to unlearn that idea that only some people are creative. I know now that all humans are creative, it’s just a matter of finding one’s outlet for that creativity. For some it might be the fine arts, for others it’s cooking or baking, or how they put together the outfits they wear, or how they organize their books on their shelves. There are endless ways to express creativity in our world and cultivating it in whatever form is an important human endeavor regardless of whether you make a living from your creative pursuits.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kjcfalcon.com
- Instagram: @ArtofKCF
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtofKCF/
- Twitter: @kjcfalcon
Image Credits
Kelcie R. Creel
AMS Digital Productions
Daniel Broten
Kandace Creel Falcón