Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kathy Ross. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kathy, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I’ve managed to be self- supporting, self employed since 1978, always by making something you could loosely call art. A balancing act: doing work that needs to sell for part of the day (afternoon, evening) — doing work that is strictly what I want to make, saleable or not (morning.)

I did soft sculpture for years. Some of it became my bread and butter work,
while I was making ceramic or bronze sculpture in the other part of my life.

I used to send a couple hundred empty sewing needles to my mum in Toronto every week or two and she would send them back threaded. I figure she threaded 70 K needles for me.

In retrospect some kind of miracle that I never had to have an actual J.O.B.

I’ve exhibited and sold art in galleries, juried shows, museums, shops, the Pike St Market, art festivals, retail, wholesale, online, offline

I have always worked in multiple mediums and pursued multiple marketing or exhibit venues. So at one time I was making dolls and selling them wholesale, making paper mache sculpture for art festivals, and selling bronze in galleries.

Compared to alot of venues, there is quite a bit of scope for invention in a retail art festival business. As long as I dont go too crazy. There are things people at art festivals cant stand. Dragons yes. Snakes no. Blue yes. Green no. Three arms maybe. Three heads no. DO NOT MESS WITH THE HEAD. Plus no blood and guts and no political commentary. Strange isnt it, because : TV. Right in the living room. Murder and mayhem. and the news

Ive been getting social security for 7 yrs now. A monthly art grant, or maybe my first ever regular paycheck. It hasn’t changed my art practice except now I can make whatever I want to make now. I have time to make all the snakes I want. Green. With three heads, Vomiting, at a queer anti-war march. I’m specializing in large unsaleable installation art.

Kathy, 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?

—Dont you think that some people are born with creative talents but most people aren’t ? NO!
—Art museums and art history are dominated by class-privileged white men. Don’t you think this is because they make better art? NO!
—dont you think the sign of a real artist is consistent attention to one cohesive vision? NO!
—-don’t you want to make a significant contribution to art history? NO!
—well then, what is art all about for you?

Here’s what I think — Art is by its nature free and equal. Even if the culture pretends only some people can make art. And bases this theory on class race and gender bias. No matter what ridiculous hoops you have to jump through to exhibit or sell your art, and when you peel back all the bias, all the commercial transactions, you can just know that art at its centre is a free zone where no rules apply. And how utterly rude to cram hierarchy and judgment and exclusion on top of creative energy. Which is some of the best most healing, most rewarding energy in the universe.

So if somebody is knocking at your front door with a sales pitch about promoting your brand, you can just slam the door in their face and go right out your back door into the limitless free wilderness of your imagination.
And this is exactly what I am trying to protect and promote and share.

Of course, I’ve managed to be self- supporting, self employed since 1978, always by making something you could loosely call art. (for more on this see answer to your next question)

But I am getting social security the last 7 yrs, which I think of as my monthly art grant or maybe my first regular pay check. But this hasn’t affected how much time I spend in my studio. I still make art all day.
Art is always really just a long drawn out conversation and that hasn’t changed. I still want to have that conversation.

I want to exhibit but I don’t need to do art festivals any more. It never was all about the commercial transactions anyway. I’m interested in exhibiting in non-commercial art spaces, or museums.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I grew up in a monocultural art desert, on an apple farm 130 mi E of Toronto. They did have art classes but it was like — newsprint with tempora paints with one or more basic colours missing. I was never exposed to 3-d media, not even clay. I discovered sculpture when I was 18, by carving a bar of ivory soap with a nail file. I dont mind that I wasn’t encouraged to go to art school, but it would have been good to have been exposed to a few more art materials along the line. I used what I could, but — clay would have been nice.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

A TIME WHEN I HAD TO PIVOT: 2025

Yup its worrisome alright. Though my nice little life hasn’t changed much. Yet.
But through the transparent walls of my tiny safe bubble, I can see the warplanes out there, the rising water, the rubble, the threats. WAr doesnt bring peace. The oligarchs suggest cake but of course there is no cake.
I’m still constructing globes, islands, trees, villages, figures, adorned with tin text strips, old rhinestone jewelry. But now the world is on fire. Or soon to be underwater.
In my studio, I bring monstrous war imagery over from the doom side and decorate it with dolls eyes, typewriter parts, rusted chain saw blades, rhinestones. I put frilly beaded dresses on guns. I send cakes and china teacups to the doom side, fill them with fabricated bombs, blood, flood, fire.
I’ve always been too small to have any faith in my power to change anything. I can only tell stories about it. No way of changing anything if you won’t look at it.
In May, I’m setting up an installation in a big window space at FOgue Gallery in Seattle: “Outside the Bubble/There is no Cake”

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ktins.com, vimeo.com/kr3d
• Facebook: Kathy Ross 3d
• Youtube: @kathyross1613

Image Credits

Uli Johnson
Dave Berliner