We recently connected with Wren Cox and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Wren, thanks for joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
In second grade I wanted to be Pocahontas or an artist when I grew up. I was told it wasn’t acceptable to be Pocahontas, so artist became my profession at the age of eight. I sold my first artwork (a small pencil drawing) for one penny. Success! I went on to do a drawing on stage for the school talent show the next year and took all the art classes my tiny town had. Polymer clay became accessible – it was new! So I was able to make sculpture at home too. I have 4 younger sisters and we all shared the clay, and it became a challenge to create small things so that the clay would last longer. I found that sculpting was my favorite thing to do and creation is so apart of my life that I have never considered living without it. For me, to live is to create.
The nice thing about being an artist is that you don’t have to grow up first to be one, you can become an artist anytime by choosing to make art consistently.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I choose “Artist” as my main descriptor not because of the haughty definition of an artist known for fame and such, but because I don’t just work with one medium in the arts. Sculptor is the next best descriptor because sculpture also encompasses a bit of everything. Bronze, epoxy, polymer, resin, rope, textiles, bookmaking, wood, clay, paint, prints, silicone, metal, etc. I love learning new techniques and finding new ways to combine them in art to reach a creative solution to a problem.
My favorite big sculpture is probably the Tic tac Turtle Table created for Botanica Public Gardens in Wichita KS. My BIG sculptures are collaborations, Constance Ernatt was the designer for this build and Brady Hatter did the steel and wood work. I sculpted the turtles features from an epoxy clay and hand painted the swirling designs of a red eared slider turtle. The end result is a life-like representation that doubles as a table for tic tac toe and is built solid enough to be a jungle gym for the thousands of kids that interact with it – two years now and it’s barely scratched!
Being able to work in a variety of mediums is an advantage because it opens up the possibility to create something completely new, or completely tailored to a space that might otherwise be limited. I also don’t limit myself to “strictly art forms” I believe being creative is beneficial to all crafts and disciplines – the more art the better – whether it is a swing in the shape of a spider egg or a snail shell costume or a chair in the shape of a pill bug.
Commission based art work is generally where this type of art thrives, my custom builds can be found at Botanica, at several public pools in Wichita KS, private collections, libraries, and (soon) as part of this years Salina Sculpture Tour. I have a simple online portfolio page: https://karencox.journoportfolio.com/
Most recently I began creating puppets and even did some performances with them, and was asked to teach a class on puppets because of it. In short, my art career is chaotic and varied and not at all contained in neat disciplines so to find out what I’ve done and what I’m currently exploring my Instagram is my record: https://www.instagram.com/karens_kontraptions
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
There are some many rewarding things about being an artist, but I think the best thing is being able to inspire others to be creative too. Things are different now with so many ways to enable art to reach people online and actually sell and survive solely on a creative income; when I was growing up in the nineties it was still very frowned upon to go into the arts and I know so many people whose first hurdle to a creative life was from their own family. My family is very creative and super supportive so I never had to overcome that and instead have tried to be a supporter of anyone creative I meet. No one should feel ashamed or afraid to create simply because they aren’t “talented enough.”
People always say “I’m so bad at art! It looks awful!” and my favorite thing to say is “That doesn’t matter! What matters is the ideas. If you have the ideas, if you can dream – that is the most important part. Everything else is just technique that takes practice and time.” One of the first people I gave this advice to was my friend Jaclyn Baer (who volunteered me for this interview) in grade school shortly after she drew a horse that looked very much like a duck. She is now a very successful photographer, painter, and creative human and I’m so proud to be her friend!
I post just about everything I make on my Instagram, and anytime someone is inspired by my creations to make their own unique art it is such a fantastic feeling. A world full of creative people who aren’t afraid to be silly or experiment and are open minded to the limitless possibilities – how fantastic!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
My life has been marked by extreme events. When I was 15 my childhood home was destroyed by a gas explosion, our life quite literally turned upside down. I was a bit of a hoarder before and I lost everything I’d ever made except a few half burned drawings. I’m vastly simplifying the experience – but it taught me that things are just things, people are what matter. Nothing lasts forever but I can create new things for as long as I’m here and connect with people through art.
After that Extreme Makeover: Home Edition chose us as a family and they built us a new house and my sisters and I all received scholarships to Wichita State University. We were small town famous and tv famous for a short while – in which I learned that people can be amazing, so kind, and how strange it is to feel so lucky after a horrible thing occurs. It also taught me that fame is very, very fleeting and that I have no desire to chase or work for fame.
With the scholarship I was able to get my degree in sculpture, met my husband through college, and achieved my dream of being a stay at home artist and mother. At the time I was painting maternity skeleton shirts with a ninja baby in the belly. I hand painted over a thousand shirts – I should have diversified and had them screen printed too but so many people straight up copy/pasted my design – and copyright did almost nothing to protect it. Turns out you need expensive lawyers to protect art. I learned then that continual creation – always growing and adapting and changing is the best way to keep ahead of immoral copycats. Inspiration is GOOD, but you HAVE to make it your own, otherwise you’re holding yourself back from learning what you can do and you’re also being a crappy person stealing someone else’s art.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://karencox.journoportfolio.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karens_kontraptions/
