We recently connected with Kelly Russo and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kelly, thanks for joining us today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your career and how did you resolve those issues?

How do the tides move inside your person, and do those translate to your senses as being acceptable to the world? The words we speak, the things we make, the paths these tides traverse to come from within, do they make sense to the self once…out? Do they have to? I recently released a lot of potential commissions worth a useful amount of income because something in me had shifted. The clients, thankfully, understood, as I told them the truth. I don’t know how to translate my mind presently, and would like to arrive at a place where maybe their perceptions aren’t what matters. To not arrive at objects, but at perhaps mapping some personal landscape of emotions, interactions, daily thoughts. I think it’s important for me to have the space to change – to change my mind. And to allow my art to ebb and flow with the tides of my growth. I am eternally grateful to the collectors and people in my life who give me that grace.

Kelly, 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?

I make from memory and for dreams. I deeply miss things. So I aim to re-create some visceral semblance of a memory – to revisit places I can no longer visit. To create places I’d love to be in…

The upbringing I had was split between my mom’s suburbia which was surrounded by cars and architecture and her beautifully tended flower gardens, and us all going to my dad’s more swamp-oriented family members-vegetable gardeners, hunters and gatherers. The week was home – flower planting, street playing and regular life. And I remember on the weekends going to my grandparents’ in Morgan City- sometimes hunting and fishing, cleaning the game and then preparing the garden vegetables for our meals. Everything was done in order and synchronicity and with respect for the process and environment. We used accurate tools, perhaps because my grandfather was a doctor who was accustomed to a precise way of doing things. I suppose I inherited some of the interest in tools for my art. My mother is also a precise person, so it was reinforced. My dad – a dreamer…so that makes sense for me, too.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I am driven to connect with myself, what I’m capable of, and my environment, what it’s capable of making me feel, and to be surprised by my connections with others. And to give something back to those things in turn.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

If people would support the artist’s freedom to make what they felt rather than what would be bought, I think we would arrive at a beautiful and more desirable, unexpected outcome. As an artist, I’m scared to make something which will just sit around. Shame on me and maybe, on capitalism.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Kelly_renee_russo_works
• Facebook: Kelly_Renee_Russo_Works

Image Credits
All images credited to the artist.