We recently connected with Karen Maness and have shared our conversation below.

Karen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful project of my life has been working with the Art Directors Guild Archives, Regan Arts, and The University of Texas at Austin to chronicle the contributions of motion picture scenic artists from early cinematic history to today.

Richard M. Isackes and I co-wrote The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop, RegnArts 2016, revealing monumental paintings and gifted scenic artists hidden within motion picture history. The lessons learned from the discipline of these illusionists empower The University of Texas at Austin students today. I advocate for physical painting fluency to strengthen student visual communication across digital media platforms. Through research and the practice of direct painting, I am honored to pay forward the techniques and history of cinema’s premier motion picture artists. At UT Austin, students can access original motion picture backdrops from iconic MGM and 20th Century Fox films, including North by Northwest (1959) and The Sound of Music (1965), through Texas Performing Arts’ Hollywood Backdrops Collection.

Karen, 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?

Exposure to Southern California freeway muralists of the 1980s, the immersive-built environments of Disneyland, and Mexican and Chicano muralists in San Diego’s Balboa and Chicano Park seeded my desire to become a large-scale painter and join the conversation with this lineage of artists. Theatrical fabrication spaces, with their giant vertical paint frames and paint decks, led to a lifelong career in theatre and a respect for the power of collaboration with other designers, artists, and the audience themselves.

The ability to create what we wish to see and feel in the world is the most rewarding aspect of being an artist. Shaping experiences, ideas, and spaces is an honor and privilege. Art becomes a player in the memories of others, taking on new meanings and interpretations long past the moment of creation, becoming part of our collective culture.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Developing a simultaneous studio practice and career in American theatre shaped my interest in the connections between individuals, their environments, the passage of time, and the potential for dynamic change through moments of interaction. Painting and visualization are how I unpack my lived experience. My theatre practice and academic research have palpably influenced my studio practice. I create works for people to live with and share their life stories.

Art and Business can work together to build a better daily experience. I excel in solving problems by collaborating to create new, unique work and practices to transform spaces. Case Study: McCombs Business School Mural 2019. The problem/opportunity – “What one sees daily affects your life, performance, mood, creativity, and productivity.”

Working with a team of UT Austin students in collaboration with The McCombs Business School, we transformed a workspace on campus from a dark, oppressive corridor to a feeling of openness, calm, and distance. Each office now has a private view with an atmospheric sky that changes dramatically over the day as the sun, cloud cover, and weather patterns shift, creating a space conducive to new ideas and productivity. Mid-painting, our team discovered a note in the window of a McCombs staff member whose office faced outward from a window. “The job of an artist is to offer a sanctuary of beauty to an ugly world” – Jeff Goins. “Thank you for turning our offices into sanctuaries.”

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

The books in my current list of influence and growth are Tiny Habits, by BJ Fogg, Mastery, by Fred Sanders, The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein, and How Big Things Get Done, by Ernest Cline.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.karenmaness.com, www.theartofthehollywoodbackdrop.com
• Instagram: @karenmaness
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karenmanessartist/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-maness-5237746/
• Other: Links 2023 Edition of The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop – https://theartofthehollywoodbackdrop.com McCombs Mural Article – https://finearts.utexas.edu/feature/news/new-mural-created-fine-arts-team-transforms-dreary-wall-colorful-skyscape Hollywood Backdrop Collection – https://hollywoodbackdrops.org Good Dad Studios – https://glasstire.com/2023/07/02/new-70-studio-art-complex-opens-in-austin/

Image Credits
1. Photographer Ashton Bennett Murphy 2. Photo Courtesy ADG. Photographer Denis Welch 3. Photographer Ashton Bennett Murphy 4 . Karen Maness 5. Karen Maness 6. Karen Maness 7. Karen Maness 8. The University of Texas at Austin, Photographer Daniel Cavasoz 9. Photography courtesy of Phillip Thomas Inc..