Kimberly Corday is a young artist living in North Hollywood, California. Some of her luxurious textiles and more subtle paintings from her Portal Series are available on Buy Some Damn Art. Below I ask Corday about her practice, how and why she makes what she does and what she’s up to next. Check out Kimberly’s show here.
Corday’s Portal Series
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You graduated from RISD in 2014. What kind of work did you make while in school and what have you been working on since?
Much of my education at RISD was centered around abstract figurative painting. I was looking at a lot of Cecily Brown and Abstract Expressionists but eventually hit a wall and wanted to dip my toes in something new. Senior year, my professor Laurel Sparks encouraged me to dabble in unconventional materials. What transpired was a completely invented process incorporating hand-dyed string and found materials.
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“My practice is rooted in the notion of an ideal natural world – a concept that marries
the spectacle of nature and the spirit of 18th century Romantic landscape painting.
Through a Frankensteinian process that borrows aspects of painting, relief sculpture,
and embroidery, I create textured objects that conjure up an amalgam of natural phenomena
like threadbare pelts, plumage, and patterns found in the wild.” – Kimberly Corday
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Pinkie (above), Beryl (below) and other recent works of yours are made with hand-dyed wool on canvas. How did you come to combine these materials and why?
After graduating, I stumbled across a sheepskin duster at IKEA (of all places) and was interested to take it out of context. I then dyed, distressed, and manipulated the wool in order to transform it into a lush, abstract wall-hanging reminiscent of say a threadbare pelt or strange, ancient relic. Thus spawn my practice as a fiber artist.
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What are you working on now? Are you experimenting with new materials or process?
I’m working on a series of wall hangings prompted by both my rococo aesthetic and interest in a Japanese textile tradition called “Boro”- meaning “ragged” or “tattered”. Stay tuned!
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In your Portal Series the predominant form is a circle. What do they represent to you?
It’s funny, I was noticing a lot of circles in my sketchbook around that time. The shape’s recurrence in my work is unconscious, but I’ve learned to embrace it as a representation of my curiosity in both literal and figurative portals. They’re openings meant to summon associations, sensations and emotions.
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Could you explain what a monoprint is?
Monoprinting is the process wherein a painting or drawing is made on glass or Plexi and rubbed onto paper. The image can only be transferred once- hence the name. It’s ephemeral, unlike most printmaking methods.
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Over on
Buy Some Damn Art there is a new show of six drawings by French artist
Camille Michel. The line work in Camille’s work is mesmerizing and speaks to the artist’s dedication to his drawing practice – spanning both his training and work as an architect and his personal work. For the artist music and art are always linked; in this series each drawing is inspired and named after a song.
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Where are you based?
I live in Paris for now, but I might move in the future, depending on the opportunities that lie ahead.
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What is your background in fine art?
I’ve no specific background in fine art. I studied applied arts in high school, and architecture for 5 years. I remember that I really liked the hand drawing part of the second year courses, which included a lot of handmade oblique hatching.
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How does your fine art practice fit in with your other pursuits in architecture and music / sound?
It’s working as an ensemble, very smoothly, and spontaneously. I don’t like to imagine things from within the structure of a specific field. Architecture works naturally with music, sound and graphic things. It’s only a question of enjoying oneself as an amateur. To remain an amateur in each field is very important! Maybe it’s also about leaving a silent trace (drawing / plan) of something immaterial (music / sound). Listen / Silent.
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What does it mean to you to identify as a child of the 1980’s suburbs as you mention on your website? How did 80’s/ 90’s culture and suburban culture influence your development as a creative person?
It’s also (and always) a question of what you enjoy, and how growing up in suburbia teaches you as a child to be in the space, to move, to play, to feel, to understand the geography and the borders between things, or with people. It’s not the same thing at all if you grow up downtown. Suburban feeling is a question of eroticism (and I mean that in a very different way from the suburban hype of today, because I have been thinking about that question since I was 15 years old). Colors, smells, sounds, rhythms are specific and strong, and teach you to be responsive with your emotions, with your body.
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The drawings in this series are all named after various songs. I assume the titles reflect what you listened to when making these drawings. If so what kind of music do you like to listen to when creating art?
The six drawings are named with the albums / bands I was listening to when I did each one of them. These pieces are samples of what I consider interesting, or good music (erotic music), with a lot of guitars, textures, loud sonic walls and catchy melodies.
I like to draw in a small format because I can do that on my desk just in front of my computer, listening to music. It’s a simple continuity between the different things I do everyday. I don’t want to produce things when it’s not the right time to do it. So, sometimes it’s drawing while I’m listening to good music, sometimes it’s making music after reading something good. Sometimes it’s writing. Everything is linked and continuous.
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Your works have a beautiful simplicity to them and are the product of very focused, refined line work. Are they as meditative to make as they appear?
I don’t know if “meditative” is the exact word, but I’m talking a lot to myself in my head when I’m drawing. It’s a pleasant self-reflexive activity. Somehow, drawing something useless (uselessness is important), and very laborious to do, is maybe as a means of find a state of boredom; something empty and boring, like a suburban afternoon during summer vacation.
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What other projects are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on a new series of artwork directly linked to the suburban district where I grew up, between memories, intimacy and documentary (photos, photomontages, texts, sculptures… ). Four new tracks of my band
Crème Fouettée will be recorded soon. And also different kinds of drawings, enjoying being home while listening to good music.
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Marleen Pennings, who also goes by the moniker Stroke a Bird, is the latest artist to show on Art Hound’s sister site Buy Some Damn Art. Marleen is based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands where she is a visual art, illustrator and stylist. Her lilliputian paintings on scrap wood depict the perfectly imperfect living space – just the right mix of old and new, static and living.
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What do you paint on and where do you source these materials?
I paint on canvas, paper and wood. I really like to paint on scrap wood. I source it on places where people renovate their houses. When I pass a construction site I always pause to see if there is a beautiful piece of wood lying around. It already has had a lifetime when I find it, you can see and feel that. The structure has mostly softened during time and the old paint has turned pale. I really love these old pale colors and use them in the artwork.
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Are your paintings always so small?
No, I also paint on big canvases or big pieces of paper and wood, it depends on my mood and ideas in my head. But I do like to paint small, it sometimes feels like you can bond better with the painting, because it’s so small.
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How did your career evolve from a degree in Fashion Design and Styling to illustration and fine art? Why did you take up painting?
After I graduated I worked in Fashion Design for a while, but it didn’t really fit me. So I concentrated more and more on my illustration and one day I just started to paint, because I was curious. The next step was that I quit my job in fashion and concentrated fully on developing my painting skills, because I liked it so much.
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You describe your work as a “subtle translation of a mix of city and nature.” Tell us about that idea. ‘Subtle’ mostly because of my use of colours, I rarely use very bright colours. The colours I use are mostly a bit pale and powdered, I like that. The wood I paint on is a natural material used to build houses in the city. And most houses and buildings have plants for decoration. The indoor landscapes in this series are like a snapshot of daily life where nature and city are combined and mixed up.
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The interior scenes you paint are beautiful. Are they inspired by your home city of Rotterdam?
The scenes are a translation of what I see around me and what inspires me, a coloured wall in a waiting room, a kitchen chair and a beautiful fern I saw someplace else. I collect them in one scene and try to capture the feeling of the three together when painting them.
Rotterdam is a great city for inspiration, but I would like to have a little more nature around me sometimes. So I paint them both.
