Things That Bring Me Joy: Making Art

Detail from 24 Cupcakes and 1 Banana Split Sculpture Installation

In addition to being an adjunct professor, a businesswoman and now blogger, I am an artist. Creating art brings me great joy. I like to consider myself a media inclusive artist or a multimedia artist which basically means I work in a variety of materials.  The artwork I create to be exhibited in galleries or museums is driven by concepts and not a particular medium.  By this, I mean that if I have an idea for a series one of the first things I take into consideration is what media or materials will work best to convey the concept. This creative process has served me will over the years and has helped me to grow as an artist and allows me to work fearlessly when it comes to the making of my art. That being said, I didn’t always approach the making art in this manner. When I first started out, I was a painter and worked primarily in oil focusing mostly on portraits. 

Exhibition Opening at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art – Lithographs of Hair and Ceramic and Steel Sculpture by Kim Putnam

I first started to break the chains of media specificity when I was in graduate school at MassArt. While there, my professors pushed me to move out of my safe comfort zone and to explore different, ideas, media and approaches to art making. After graduation, I had my breakthrough working a series called Objects of Desire. I always work in series or multiples because it allows me to explore an idea in greater depth as I’m often making many versions of single thing or concept. 

In this body of work I was exploring all the slang names for women’s breasts and then trying to create a work of art that represented said slang name. What I came to realize was my preferred medium, the one I was most comfortable with, was not meeting the needs of the concept and was not allowing me to convey what it was I was trying to convey. It was then that I realized the work needed to be three dimensional (verses two dimensional such as paintings and drawing). After much deliberation, I decided on clay. I’d never worked in clay before, so the next step was learning how and thus began my journey into multimedia.

Portrait of an Old Woman

It has been said that for an artist to become a master they need to put 10,000 hours in whatever material they are working in, so with each new media I take on it means I will need to put in another 10,000 hours to master it! Thus far I have worked in oil paint, clay, wood (I taught myself carpentry and how to use power tools so I could create a full-scale outhouse for an installation that focused on the issue of transgender and equality in the restroom), various printing processes including silkscreen, copper plate and plexi-glass etching, and paper plate lithography, and most recently fiber art and learning how to sew.

As an artist or more specifically a female artist, I use my art to inspire conversation, to communicate and explore current topics that have thus far related to concepts such as identity and gender in our culture. Topics that are of particular interest to me include objectification, the male gaze, gender biases and voice as agency. This particular focus has moved me toward activism or rather art activism and thus my art becomes my voice often speaking to even larger and or more controversial topics such as immigration and race while still maintaining an emphasis that speaks to issues that perhaps relate specifically to women. 

Clay Corset Sculpture

Overall, creating art and taking on such hot topics has been incredibly rewarding and intellectually stimulating but it also takes an emotional toll after a while. I think the latter is what has motivated me to explore the world of applied arts and home décor.  From there, I’ve decided to also make a shift in the focus of my fine art and move away from topics that focus on the male gaze and toward that which examines the concept of the Devine feminine, mother nature, and our natural environment. I’ve found over the years that when I need to revive my energies be it creative or otherwise making the connection to nature helps bring both peace and balance back into my life and spirit. So as I build Palisade Posh, I will also start a new chapter in my artistic journey focusing visually on that which brings me joy and helps provide balance and a sense of peace.

Sunset Landscape in Oil Paint