We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kim Carlino. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kim below.
Alright, Kim thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am an artist based in Easthampton, Massachusetts, and I make paintings and drawings in water-based media, create site specific works, and public projects including murals and painting installations. I also launched the Artist & Place Podcast in 2022 as a way to have long form conversations with artists about the relationship of place and landscape to the work they make.
I am drawn to abstraction as a structure to explore themes of interconnection through juxtaposition of visual elements. I use the interaction of color combinations to create depth and elicit emotion. I’m interested in maximizing a color’s potential and its impact. I combine elements of geometry to create imagined and possible forms that interrogate the surface of the painting to find depth and excavation in what lies beneath while still celebrating the flatness of painting. On the one hand I am employing formal elements, and on the other I am using them to create sites to talk about other things.
Right now I have been thinking a lot about perception and exploring that in my work. I am fascinated by how we see, and how meaning is made or imposed when we “see”. I use color, lines and geometric pattern to disrupt the automaticness and often unnoticed way in which we make meaning from what we see. We are pattern seeking creatures, and I like to exploit that human quality to invite the viewer to move beyond the surface and deeper into the painting. I also like to have a little fun with the viewer as I leave lots to discover when you look closely.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
Fund the arts! Create opportunities for artists to make ambitious and new work. Having fully funded and unrestricted grants, projects, and residencies that create space for artists to have access to shared materials and tools can be the difference in realizing exciting projects. I believe that these opportunities create moments for artists to dream, grow, and be part of a peer community for artists.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
After I got out of school, I had this desire to make big paintings that would engulf the viewer and their periphery! This desire transformed from large works on tyvek to wanting to work directly on the wall. It’s challenging to break into doing murals without partnering with someone for some practice walls to build up your skills with materials & designs on such a large scale. I began by partnering with a local mill owner for my first public wall! I painted a 60’ long by 16’ high wall for my first one, and then I leveraged that project to continue to get more and more walls to build up my experience. Now I’ve worked with all kinds of lifts, surfaces, and materials and have the confidence to scale a design from paper all the way up to a huge building. Painting murals requires an incredible amount of resilience! There are so many factors to contend with: weather, building surface, extended design processes, permitting, and contracts to name a handful of things to think about. Once on site, it becomes an endurance feat in which the mission is completion of the project and you need to be able to roll with whatever happens or comes along. I love it, but it’s been a huge learning curve!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kimcarlino.com
- Instagram: @kimcarlinoart
- Facebook: @kimcarlino
Image Credits
Airfig. Jose Figueroa. (Only for 1st mural image)