We were lucky to catch up with Will Kasso Condry recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Will thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
I’ve learned my craft from observing and practice. Drawing was my first love as an artist. Comics and cartoons were my early inspiration. I drew every day. I would draw in school during class time, weekends while I watched Saturday morning cartoons, basically all the time. My mother would say it was the only thing that kept me still. I drew pictures out of National Geographic magazines, encyclopedias, you name it. It was an obsession. By middle school I started to paint, but it wasn’t until high school that I started to use acrylic and oil paints. It was during high school when I developed a passion for painting large scale.
Knowing what I know now, I believe I could have sped up my learning process by reading and delving into the philosophy and process of art more in my early years. I was focused primarily on the result and not so much of what it took to get there. I wasn’t really interested in studying other styles, in fearing that I would start to become a copy of someone else. I have come believe one of the best things an artist can do is to study other creatives, their philosophy of why they do it, and what they had to go through to become the artists they are. You can’t become great without studying the greats.
My most essential skill has always been my curiosity. I will seek, pursue, and find the meanings, answers, and codes to become better at my art by any means necessary.
I’ve always turned any obstacles, or challenges, thrown my way into opportunities. I’ve endured a tremendous amount of racism, classism, and the need to constantly defend my authorship and talents as a Black man growing up in economic poverty within the inner city of Trenton, NJ. As a child, I was nominated by my 6th grade core teacher for the Mayor’s Award for Art Achievement. However, my nomination was withdrawn by my art teacher because she claimed I wasn’t the author of the submitted work. I didn’t understand this, yet I persisted and continued to make art no matter what. In high school, I was accused of cheating during an art competition because my work was of such a high caliber that the judge didn’t believe I created it. I know this because my art teacher asked for feedback and was told this. These are just a couple of examples of obstacles that fueled me to press on. Those experiences angered me. But again, I didn’t let this deter me. I used it as fuel to keep working. I always had to fight for my place in this art game and prove people wrong. If you don’t use the anger as fuel, it will eat away at you like a cancer. Drawing and painting come easy to me, navigating other people’s low expectations of me as an artist and everything else that came with it was hard.
Will, 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’m an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, mostly known for large-scale murals. I’m originally from Trenton, New Jersey and have been living in Vermont for the better part of 9 years. My artistic career, which spans over two decades, includes graffiti writing, street art, community murals, exhibiting, and teaching. I started painting murals in high school and have been doing so professionally since 2003. I’m also a fine art painter and illustrator. Drawing is, and always will be, my foundation. Fun fact, while I may be a professional mural artist, I’m also a commissioned illustrator for album covers, craft beer labels, and flyers for Hip Hop events. If I had to pick one medium to do for the rest of my life, it would probably be traditional drawing/illustration. For me, drawing well is the essence of painting well. One day I hope to write and illustrate children’s books.
These days my focus is primarily creating murals and public art to foster community-building and sense of belonging. In 2020, my wife, Jennifer Herrera Condry, and I established a family arts business called Juniper Creative Arts. We are award-winning for our work with local organizations, schools, and communities to foster creative expression and connection. Through workshops, community activities, immersive art experiences, and the healing arts we work with youth to explore their creativity, empower personal expression, and transform challenge into opportunity. Our community murals shape vibrant spaces to reflect the diverse voices and stories within each community. To be completely honest, prior to 2020 there weren’t a lot of opportunities for Black artists in the public art sector here in Vermont. Juniper Creative is unique in what we do here. My wife and I have a foundation of 40 plus years of combined experience as community organizers, administrators, facilitators, educators, and creatives which makes us strong social practice entrepreneurs and business owners. We intentionally sought to diversify public art and iconography in ways that express Vermont’s aspiration to be more inclusive and welcoming to all members of its communities. To that end, we paved the way for other artists of the global majority to travel on, to be seen, and to have their cultural and identity-based art be accepted in other public art initiatives across the state of Vermont.
I’m most proud of my versatility and mastery of different mediums. I put 150% into everything. I live to create and create to live. My life and family are centered around my creativity. Art is life and there isn’t much separation for me. I take no short cuts and go into each project with the ambition like it’s my last. I’m blessed to be able to work with my family. To date, we have engaged with thousands of youth and community members to create over 40 murals located in schools and on public buildings across the state of Vermont.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Relocating from New Jersey to Vermont was the biggest pivot in my career and personal life. I have to take it back to 2012 when I founded a community arts nonprofit called SAGE Coalition. At SAGE, we organized and implemented inner-city beautification projects, murals, and Hip-Hop initiatives throughout Trenton, and I received numerous awards and recognitions for this work. By 2015, funding was drying up and my community initiatives were getting co-opted by larger community development and arts-related non-profits in the area. By this time, I was consistently fighting to maintain my organization and intellectual property. I wasn’t painting as much, and when I did, my work suffered from lack of focus and direction. I spent more time navigating the politics of the non-profit sector and less time creating. I was so depressed, and I needed a change. I spent the summer of 2015 in California looking for inspiration and tried to figure out how to get the life back in my work. By 2016, I’d reached a creative ceiling in NJ. I was in a dark place, and this was showing up in my art. I always say, “an artist’s work will always tell the truth about them.” My then girlfriend, now wife, convinced me to come to Vermont for a fresh start. I wasn’t completely sold on Vermont at first, even after I moved here. But it was Jennifer who told me if I plant myself here and really give it 100%, opportunities will show up for me, and they did, big time. I got out of my own way and opened myself up to stepping into the unknown.
I was invited to do a TEDx talk at Middlebury College in the fall of 2016. I then served as the Alexander Twilight Artist in Residence at Middlebury College during the Winter and Spring terms of 2017. As part of this residency, I painted murals, engaged with students, and led creative workshops at the newly established Anderson Freeman Resource Center. I also mentored a studio art major interested in learning large-scale mural production, who has since gone on to teach art and create murals in Chicago. By 2018, I started teaching courses in the Winter Term program at Middlebury College on the origins and politics of graffiti and street art, and in 2019, a course on the elements of hip hop culture through the professor of the practice program.
I came to realize that teaching college courses also took me away from my creative practice and I was eager to get back into the studio. I also missed painting on the streets. Around the same time, my wife was ready to leave her decades long career in higher ed and we were exploring her career pivot as a fulltime herbalist and my creative partner. That’s when we talked about developing Juniper Creative as a mural arts business. However, the pandemic happened so we started an ecommerce site to sell my art prints and my wife’s herbal remedies, while we continued building the mission and branding of Juniper Creative as a mural arts business. Our daughter, Alexa, came home to finish out her last semester of college. She joined us in Juniper Creative and apprenticed under me, alongside her mother, in large scale mural production. By the summer of 2020, we started to get our first public art commissions as Juniper Creative, and we distributed herbal remedies out to folks we knew in cities on the front lines of the protests happening. I also used the time we were quarantining to illustrate a body of work that became a solo exhibition in 2021 called “PPE: Patient, Pandemic, Enlightenment”, and in 2022, the winning portfolio for the inaugural Vermont Prize, which “celebrates and supports the best visual art being made in Vermont today.” This past summer, I was awarded the 2025 Herb Lockwood Prize in the Arts celebrating “artistic excellence at a level that inspires other artists and enriches the community.”
I’m grateful I listened to my wife’s advice 9 years ago. She’s intuitive like that. I’m proud of myself for being open to that major move in my life. I wouldn’t change a thing. I like to say “go wherever your art takes you.”
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist to me is being able to create the life I’ve always wanted. I wake up and make art. Be it drawing, painting, or writing even, as long as I’m doing something creative, the universe opens doors for me. I’m blessed. Being a fulltime artist and earning a living from my craft is what I’ve always wanted to do since I was a child and I never wavered. I had some hiccups along the way, but that comes with anything. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, with the people I’m supposed to be with, living fully in my purpose. It’s only up from here.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.junipercreativearts.com/
- Instagram: @willkasso; @junipercreativeartz
- Other: PRESS:
State of the Arts
https://www.pbs.org/video/kassos-journey-swhfpt/Middlebury College
https://www.middlebury.edu/announcements/news/2018/02/j-term-scenes-origins-and-politics-graffiti-and-street-art-videohttps://www.middlebury.edu/announcements/news/2019/05/middleburys-first-hip-hop-course-grounds-students-roots-and-practice
The Trentonian
For Will ‘Kasso’ Condry, it’s from Trenton to Vermont, with love – and beer (JEFF EDELSTEIN COLUMN)
Art New England
Stuck in Vermont
Vermont Public
https://www.vermontpublic.org/vpr-news/2021-08-14/i-see-myself-in-her-creating-representation-in-new-afro-pollinator-mural-in-burlingtons-old-north-endhttps://www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2023-02-05/this-vt-family-is-turning-buildings-into-their-canvas-for-bright-and-majestic-community-murals
Image Credits
Isora Lithgow Creations
Shane Rumrill
Alexa Herrera Condry
Will Kasso Condry
Jennifer Herrera Condry
Ali Kaukas