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

Alright, KC thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

One of my earliest memories is asking my mother for paper and pencil to write. She said, “What you do isn’t writing; it’s drawing.” I was around 4.

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 back background and context?

Looking back, it actually surprises me that I managed to stay in art/design since I was a kid. I was an anomaly in my family, and there was no support or role model for my dream of being an artist as an adult. I grew up next to a dairy farm in Vermont, the oldest of 4 kids born within 4 years, although the last two were a BOGO – identical twins. My parents were busy with us and their careers as a high school teacher and a nurse. There wasn’t much money and we were pretty much free range when we weren’t doing chores or school. I was taught to think for myself [which my mother said she later regretted when I chose art school and rejected the Catholic church].

I’m introverted and was very socially anxious because [I now know] I have ADHD which makes social stuff challenging, although I didn’t get a diagnosis until much later. In elementary school, I spent a lot of time drawing stories for myself, mostly of a colony of wolves and rabbits living in harmony. I also used my drawing skill as a kind of social passport – even if I didn’t have many friends, at least the toughest kids left me alone after they saw me draw. I vaguely remember going to a summer art class in our town of 12,000 people, but I didn’t receive instruction otherwise. In high school, there were two art teachers – one was undeniably crafty [she had the kiln] and the other was fine art focused [eccentric stuff in the classroom, little direction of any kind]. I was pretty much aimless in that class.

In the 70s, my high school directed kids either to college or vocational tracks. Vocational was where the fun stuff was, like auto shop, wood shop, and print shop. I had taken mechanical drawing in junior year and had excelled, to the surprise of the entirely male class and teacher. For senior year, I signed up for print shop. I had to get special permission since I was labeled college bound, and took the class, which I loved. We learned bookbinding, letterpress, offset printing start to finish and rudimentary typesetting. It reinforced my determination to go to art school.

I had no idea what a portfolio was, or how to make one so that killed the idea of ”real” art school. My mother wanted me to go to nursing school, but I resisted and she compromised with me. I went to a community college as an art major. Their freshman program was excellent. I used very little of what I learned at the four year school I went to after that, but have used a lot of what I learned that first year. My second year I headed to Boston [to my parents’ intense dismay] to a state art school as a fine art major, but I switched programs due to money and my desire to stay in Boston. I eventually earned a BFA in illustration.

I had very little idea of how to actually go about creating an illustration career, so I built on the part time pasteup jobs and random illustration projects I had done throughout college and got a job at a boutique ad agency. Very boutique – me and my boss. I learned a great deal working there. I had facilitated the introduction of computers to the agency and worked in Photoshop I and Aldus Freehand. We thought we were hot because we had a modem [external] on our Mac Quadra.

Much to my surprise – I never intended to be an at home mom – I ended up leaving when my oldest child was born in 91. Youngest child was born in 94. My then husband worked a lot and had outmoded ideas about shared labor so I had no time or energy for anything. I didn’t even draw for 6 years – so long, that I wondered if it had left me. I did random projects here and there – design for a school group, illustration for a web designer, house and pet portraits for extra money – but basically I spent time with my kids for 9 years. I went back to work in 2000 when I divorced their dad, and my first job was in the production department for an independent weekly newspaper. I got back up to speed in Photoshop, Illustrator and Quark Express, then took a job as an assistant art director at a city magazine. I learned a lot about publication management and design. From there I went to another boutique ad agency as a senior art director and had a blast for about 2.5 years, until the downturn of 08 hit. I was laid off and took a job in the marketing department of an architectural firm – any port in a storm. My kids’ father wasn’t a part of their lives and financially, this entire period of time was very anxious. Working in the construction industry, which includes architects, contractors and engineers, was a major cultural shift for me – I was no longer a profit center. However, I learned a lot about working effectively with people who had very little respect for my job / profession. I thought “WTF” a *lot* but I learned. The one thing I liked was that the industry values age and experience, which is unique, in my experience.

I started painting again in 2010 – nights and weekends, as I could – and became somewhat obsessed when my youngest moved in with friends. I spent pretty much every minute thinking about work I was doing or wanted to do. I showed work in a cooperative gallery and made some sales. At the same time, my positions in the construction industry ate my life. Hours were long, people were intense, and there was often travel. My worst week was 65 hours between 8 am Monday & 5 pm Friday. I took a totally unrelated, low stress job with normal hours not long after that, and basically played office until the pandemic. I had seen the layoff coming and had Plan B lined up. Unfortunately, a merger eliminated the new position. At the point, my husband told me that it was financially possible for me to stay home and just paint. I was stunned. I’d planned to have day jobs as a designer for another 14 years.

So now I’m a full time painter. Right now, I’m painting in oils after abandoning acrylics about 4 years ago, and the shift has been a challenge. I’m not sharing that work anywhere. While I was in the gallery, I’d listened to advice/opinions I should have ignored and took a detour that didn’t help my painting so my focus at the moment is getting back to working just for me. I have work in progress that’s simple and [hopefully] beautiful and other work in progress that’s not either of those things. I still do pet portraits, but for more money and only as it suits me. I do freelance graphic design for clients who value my work.

I decided to participate in this interview because when I was much younger with young kids, I knew no one like me who aspired to be an artist. At the time, the internet was in its infancy and so the available role models just weren’t visible to me. I met an artist at a talk she gave in my town in the mid 90s, but made the mistake of assuming she had kids [such was my immersion in my life plus I was young]. Her condescending reply was something along the lines of ‘no serious artist has kids’. It stuck with me. At this point, I follow artists who do have kids – at least one does portraits with her kids in arms and at her feet – and I’m so impressed with their focus and happy for them that they have the belief in themselves to work anyway.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

At this point, my goal is to figure out how speak up about the things which bother me. Right now, there’s so much to choose from. I admire the artists working in the 1930s [for example and because we see a rise in fascist ideas & figures] who fought back against the rise of fascism in the world with their work. Finding one’s voice takes time and work, so that’s where I’m at now.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I’d just started my career as a designer/art director when I made the entirely unexpected decision to stay home with my older child. I wasn’t raised to make that choice- my mother worked – and it was never part of my game plan. I stayed home with my kids for about 9-10 years, when I left an abusive marriage. I hadn’t done much work at all, and hadn’t kept up with any programs. When I started my career, I used Photoshop 1 and Aldus Freehand a bit. In the year prior to my exiting an abusive marriage, I’d acquired disks for Illustrator and Photoshop, and I learned them while the kids were in school. After the divorce, I’m a single mom with a part time job at an independent weekly paper, so I set my mind to getting a better job, which I did. With each position, I made more money and learned more about myself, how to work, working with others, marketing, and design itself. When I reached my goal – senior AD at a small ad agency, I was content. Loved my job, I won a few awards, it was close to home, I was hot shit because I was a profit center, my Creative Director was generous. And then I got laid off in January 2008. I ended up taking a job in the marketing department of an architectural firm.-the only position I could find. Architects were the only professionals recognized by the firm – my group was ‘support’ and/or ‘admin’. I ended up having basically a second career of 12 years in that industry, where I did well. Won a few awards, and it funded my painting habit.

I never gave thought to what I was actually attempting to do: rebuild an abandoned career 10 years on, with two school age kids, no family support, little support from the ex, and not much money. And I did it – even shifted my career focus when circumstances dictated.