We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kimberly Reed-Deemer a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kimberly , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
The most meaningful and personal project I’ve devoted myself to is my IRON TRIBE oil or gouache series depicting the metal sculptors of New Mexico Highlands University’s art foundry. My interest in and passion for painting the sculptors of NMHU’s art foundry began after I attended one of the art department’s Iron Tribe Conferences, an iron pouring event that draws metal sculptors from all over the country and overseas. The first evening of the conference is the night Performance Pour, a choreographed spectacle of molten metal and fire to which the public is invited. I was hooked. My first painting of the Iron Tribe followed shortly thereafter, an action scene depicting the charging of the furnace with fuel, or ‘coke.’ For a figure painter, the Iron Tribe has it all; people in motion, color, fire, energy and excitement, all in an environment of interesting material and textures. The iron artists truly are a community, or ‘tribe’, in the fullest sense. I have come to know many of the foundry sculptors I’ve painted, and it has been a fascinating experience becoming acquainted with their world.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I grew up in a small town northwest of Chicago. I attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago, eventually continuing my education at Northern Illinois University. After leaving NIU, I worked in portraiture and landscapes, focusing on charcoal, pen and ink drawings, and watercolors.
In 1993 my travels to the Mexican Yucatan not only generated a series of ink and watercolor compositions of Maya ruins, but also motivated me to return to school to pursue a degree program in anthropology. While earning my degrees I worked in scientific illustration and was hired by world-class paleontologists to produce illustrations of major fossil discoveries, including illustrations published in The New York Times, Newsweek, Popular Science, scholarly publications, and featured on network television news.
Upon moving to New Mexico in 2004, and freshly inspired by the cultural and natural landscape of the area, I returned to fine art full time. My current body of work includes distinctive interpretations of Southwestern subjects such as Native American, Baile Folklorico, and Flamenco dancers and musicians, as well as evocative landscapes in oil or watercolor with ink, and an ongoing series of the IRON TRIBE metal sculptors of New Mexico Highlands University’s Art Foundry. Probably nearest and dearest to my heart is my IRON TRIBE series. As far as I know, I am the only painter who has made artists making art the subject of an ongoing series. With the world in such a state of chaos and despair, I think people are desperate and hungry to see some indication that we can work together in harmony, camaraderie, and sheer joy, and that is what I find happening in the IRON TRIBE community of metal sculptors.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
The iron sculptors of New Mexico Highlands University’s art foundry call themselves a tribe, and I have come to think of my series of oil paintings depicting them at work as an ethnography in paint. The Association of Qualitative Research defines ethnography as:
“Originating in anthropology, this term traditionally refers to a practice in which researchers spend long
periods living within a culture in order to study it…”
Having trained in anthropology as well as art, I tend to think about the universals that make us human in spite of our cultural and individual differences. I respond to what I see around me, the people I observe, or other aspects of my environment. I am interested in real people immersed in doing real things, which is why I am drawn to the NMHU foundry artists. What I choose to paint is still determined by my own responses to what I have experienced and what I observe, so there is some degree of subjective interpretation involved. Even so, it sometimes takes an ‘outsider’ to see what is residing below the insiders’ level of conscious awareness.
The iron artists truly are a community, or ‘tribe’, in the fullest sense. A tribe is a unit of human social organization based on a number of factors, but generally social or ideological unity and common cultural practices create the group cohesion. I have come to know many of the foundry sculptors I’ve painted, and it has been a fascinating experience becoming acquainted with their world. In this way, I have been allowed to become a ‘participant observer.’ I have made it my mission to document the Iron Tribe through the medium of paint rather than the written word as ethnologists do.
While my first painting of the Iron Tribe was a group action scene depicting the charging of the furnace with fuel, after attending a number of iron pours I also began to focus in on the sculptors as individual artists. During iron pours there are stretches of time in between bursts of activity, and I find these down times where the sculptors relax and interact, regroup and recharge, or lose themselves in contemplation of their art as interesting as the action. Artists making art is proving to be an endlessly fascinating subject for my work.
An iron pour serves several important functions. Generating and exhibiting the final products, the finished sculptures, is obviously the goal, but foundry sculptors are extremely “process” oriented, and the pour itself is a powerful social ritual with great or even greater salience for these artists. Unlike other types of artists who can work in solitude in their studios, much of the art foundry sculptors’ work requires the group. The success of the pour (and the safety of the pour) depends on cooperation and trust. The Tribe is a diverse structure, involving sculptors of all ages, and both men and women active in a very demanding process that requires strength and responsibility as well as intellect and creativity. There are seasoned elders mentoring mid-level sculptors, and inexperienced novices, including the children of some of the sculptors, so in that respect it is also the passing of ritual, knowledge, and method from one generation to the next. The IRON TRIBE is an inspiring microcosm of what people can be and do at their best, and I believe we need to see more of that.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
My story on resilience is as much about the resilience of someone who was very close to me as it is about my own. My oldest brother and 12 years my senior, Gary Reed, was a successful and well-known artist in Hawaii for over 40 years. He saw my interest in art when I was a child and mentored me in art from an early age, guiding, teaching, even pushing me to keep working. In 2014 he was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease ALS, an incredibly brutal disease that gradually but inevitably robs its victims of muscle control, which in addition to near complete physical paralysis, leads to a progressive crippling of self expression, autonomy and identity. He succumbed to that horrible condition in 2015, and it was a tremendous loss on so many levels. He was able to continue painting for a while, but one day put down his brushes and announced that he had completed his very last painting. Knowing how much he loved his life as an artist and that he had put everything he had into building his lifelong career, I know it was a decision he made with great courage and sadness. We were able to communicate for a while by email when his voice was no longer functioning and speech was not possible, and he was still advising and interested in what I was doing up to the end. His ALS journey made me realize that while we all seek professional success, and there is nothing wrong with that and I strive for that, the true gift is to be able to get up each day and do the work that we love, whatever that may be, regardless of the outcome, and regardless of whether the results are considered “successful” or not.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.reed-deemerartstudio.com/
- Instagram: @kimberlyreeddeemer1