We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kyllan Maney a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kyllan , thanks for joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I knew I wanted to be an artist at a pretty young age. I grew up in a difficult family situation, the only way I really felt at peace and happy was when I was creating art alone or with friends.

When I was in high school I took a dance class in summer school and would walk by the art room and thought, oh, that would be so great spending my summer creating art. The next year in school I decided to take an art class. I took a general art class and then the next year I signed up for a graphic design class at off campus district technical trade school. I started to learn about the business of art and design in this class. I took two years of this class and thought I wanted to be a graphic designer. The summer after high school I had an internship at the National Museum of Natural History in their exhibits department.

I went to Scottsdale Community College for my first year in college. I had a great drawing teacher who was encouraged me to study fine art instead of graphic design. For the rest of college I attended Arizona State University where I did decide to change my major to fine art with a specialization in Painting.

I also worked at the ASU Art Museum in gallery exhibitions. I feel that was a great training for being the artist I am today, I learned how to properly paint walls, art placement and hanging art, designing spaces, installation, gallery maintenance and deinstallation of exhibits. I also learned from the exhibition artists as well. My favorite and most inspiring exhibit was with the muralist Judith Baca. I was amazed of the scope of her work and how she engaged the community to participate in the murals she was painting. Also, at this time, Rose Johnson was painting murals around the Tempe and Phoenix area, I was inspired by her work and started to dream about being a muralist some day,

For a long time, Murals were a very unpopular idea in the Phoenix area. I would try to get someone to allow me to paint a mural and the response was that people did not want to have them because it made the area seem rundown, I never understood this thought. I had my first opportunity to do a community mural with my students at New School for the Art and Academics. The school received a grant from the City of Tempe to install a mural on the front of our building. For city zoning approval, I did have to attend monthly meetings with the city and the mural concept had to be approved by the city council. I was determined to make sure our mural went up. My daughter was a baby then, I would take her in a stroller to all the meetings. That was about 18 years ago. The city’s process has been simplified to a simple application now.

My first mural as an artist was with another artist, we collaborated a design for Mesa Urban Garden. That project was interesting because we started with a complete vacant lot that was going to be a garden. It is amazing how much that area has grown over the years. Working with another artist was a great opportunity to learn together about how to create and execute a mural. Along with how to work with a community creating an image that they can be proud of.

Since then, I have developed my business on my own. My first notable mural was for The Dhaba in Tempe. That mural was a grant opportunity with the Neighborhood Economic Development Corporation. I first did a Ripple Grant with the Dhaba, but the owner wanted a mural on the side of his building and NEDCO provided additional funding for the mural. This opened a lot of doors for my business.

The next notable mural commission I received was for MonOrchid in Downtown Phoenix. This mural started out as a conversation for the future of downtown Phoenix. I was asked how I would like to contribute and I replied with wanted to design spaces and paint pathways creating communal spaces. With this, I was offered to paint their patio/parking lot area. It started as a ground mural and then the walls were added as the design was discussed further. I designed several ideas and in the end, the business owner, Wayne Rainey allowed me to choose the design I felt was best for the space. This mural lived in the space for several years, but another business is there now and the mural no longer physically exists. I do have great documentation. This mural helped show my complete vision as an artist.

From this I have continued to paint murals all over the valley and last year I painted a mural in Austin Texas for Paypal. Most recently I did a series of murals for Culdesac, which is the first car-free designed community in the country and has received national press. It is exciting to see my murals on national news.

Kyllan , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I consider myself a contemporary abstract artist whose work is inspired by color, biology, nature, and radial patterns. I have painted numerous radial patterns with dots. The murals are inspired by the cross sections of desert plants with a circular design. Recently I have also been designing murals with flowers and plants in mirrored symmetrical designs. I am constantly creating in multiple ways and see art as an act of discovery and new experiences.

My murals can seen on walls throughout the city. I also like to paint murals on the ground. Over the past few years, I worked with the City of Tempe’s Sustainability and Transportation Department creating ground murals on asphalt. We started by creating a prototype ground mural in the parking lot of the Tempe Library for community input whether they would be interested in adding these murals to their streets to help calm traffic and raise awareness to all modes of transportation on the streets. Community members were excited by the idea, which led to an actual street mural. We tested paint, barricading, and the timeline of the project. Currently, neighborhoods can apply for neighborhood grants and have these ground murals for intersections and bike lanes. Last year, I painted bike lanes for the Broadmor neighborhood.

As for wall murals, I meet with a client and find out what the client is looking for. I will have them look at the scope of my artwork and have them let me know what they are interested in. From there, I create designs considering their timeline and budget. I find this approach helps save time for my client and myself. Sometimes clients are interested in another subject matter or want something that is not in my style of artwork, usually I refer these projects to other muralists who are strong in that content area.

I feel this is my point of pride to have artwork on walls that I love and that speaks my artistic voice. I feel my strengths as a business owner and as an artist is being flexible. I am happy to problem solve for clients. Sometimes this takes a lot of communication over time. I like to stay in communication with my clients at all phases of the project and update clients on project progress. I am also very diligent to try to keep projects in the designated timeline. Sometimes there are other factors, such as construction delays or weather, but that is were strong communication comes in handy.

For the majority of my murals, I use Nova Color acrylic paint. I custom mix all my colors. I find their paint to be the most durable and the brightness of the color holds up over time in the Arizona sun. I also try to repurpose a lot of my materials. Anything I can save and reuse, I do. I recycle my paint buckets and storage containers. This makes for more work, but I feel it is a little part I can do to help our environment.

I also try to buy the majority of my supplies, other than my paint, from local businesses. This helps put more money back into our local economy.

In addition I hire my previous students as assistants. I find that hiring them, I help provide a training ground for painting murals and hope they will be muralists in the future.

Overall I am grateful to all the clients I have worked with over the years. I find hiring me as an artist is believing that art can transform a community. This is my greatest passion and pride.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I learned more about the business in art earlier in my career. When I went to art school in college, the theory among most my professors was that professional development was taught only at the Master’s level. So, as an undergraduate I received very little training in the business of art. This has changed a lot over time at ASU, now students have lots of opportunity to learn professional development as an artist as an undergrad.

I had to pretty much learn this on my own and I feel I am still learning. I definitely make this apart of my curriculum teaching my high school students.

The important things to learn as an artist are business skills, making sure you have insurance, how to deal with clients, writing letters of intent and artist statements, creating proposals for clients, managing budgets and time management, all on top of designing and creating,

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My particular goal is to keep creating and diversify what I create.

Starting my business, I was mostly creating interactive art build projects for festivals. Over time I got burnt out on this and wanted to shift to painting more murals. This is where I am at, currently. I have created some other public art projects, creating vinyl art for banners and windows along with designing metal art for the Helios Education Foundation. I would like to expand and do more of these projects.

I am also working on creating new designs and styles in my own body of art. I play a lot with drawing and creating in procreate. Usually my mural styles come from paintings I have already created. I also feel painting on a smaller scale leads to more experimentation and a pathway to new ideas.

Along with this, I have noticed that I need to be aware of my mental and physical health. I try to have realistic timelines for my artwork. I used to work twelve hours a day and sometimes seven days a week in the beginning of my career. This is not sustainable. I still work a lot between my business and teaching. But, I do take breaks between projects. Along with this, I try to eat healthy and take care of my body so I feel well and strong to do the work I need to accomplish.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kyllanmaney.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kyllanmaney/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/muralista1/
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