Podcast Interview: Colour and Ceramics (16 minute read)
Karen was recently featured and interviewed on the Colour and Ceramics podcast: https://colourandceramics.com/episode/karen-adams-sculptor-and-painter
Transcript:
Bob:
Welcome to the Colour and Ceramics podcast. I’m Bob Acton, your host, and I’m very pleased that you’re here today to share in my conversation with Karen Adams from Lush Brush Studios. Karen is a sculptor and painter based in Roswell, GA, in the United States. She was early into art as a child, taking art classes at the Children’s Museum in Nashville, TN. She then went on to receive her BFA and MFA from the University of Georgia. She also studied at Montana State in Bozeman and in Cortona, Italy. She does some lovely sculptures using multimedia and found objects, and you can find her website and Instagram sites in the show notes; I hope you enjoyed the show. Karen, thanks so much for joining us today on the Colour and Ceramics podcast. I’m excited to have you here.
Karen:
Oh, I’m delighted to be here. I really appreciate you choosing me.
Bob:
Oh well it was, it was great. I follow you on Instagram and see some of the work that you do and I love some of your sculptures. I know you do a lot of painting, so I thought this might be a great opportunity to talk with you about your work and find out how you do it, and to share some of those ideas with our listeners.
Karen:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely fire away.
Bob:
So I bet you that you didn’t start last week, and that you have been at this for a little while. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your journey to where you got to today?
Karen:
So if you’re speaking about ceramics, I am a newbie relatively, it’s only been about 10 years that I’ve been working in ceramics. Before that it was all strictly 2D, figurative. But what happened, Bob, is… I just became so obsessed with the figure that I needed another way to describe it. I was running through all the possibilities on paper and canvas. I decided (the light bulb went off over my head) and I said that’s it! I’ve got to learn how to sculpt! So I immediately found out about a sculpting class not too far away. And I signed up for that class and that was 10 years ago.
Bob:
Wow, well, that is quite a bit of time though, Karen. That’s not like you started last week. So you’ve been at it for a while.
Karen
Ten years to me feels short because I think about my whole artistic journey; and I really started when I was 5, so that’s been almost 60 years.
Bob:
Yeah, yeah, very cool. Very cool. So can you tell people a little bit about some of the sculptures that you’re doing, and how you think about that, and what’s exciting you these days about your work?
Karen:
So, I’m very excited about a series I’m working on now, that began 3 years ago with some drawings. I had a woman reach out to me from England. She’s a composer and she was composing a ballet, and she wanted to know if I would storyboard for her. And her whole story was about fairies. And I was like, okay, I can try to do this. Well, the more she wrote, the more she told me about, the more I drew, the more excited I was about these fairies. And I started incorporating them into my own work. These drawings were specifically for her, but later on I incorporated the fairy imagery into my own work. And I realized that I could use the fairies to be these archetypes of people ….and I am just having the best time with that.
Bob:
Very cool. So tell us more about these archetypes and and how you work in those ideas.
Karen:
OK. So one of my first fairies was Kit, Kit the Fairy. I created a personality for her. She is a 13 year old fairy. And she’s very cranky. And a lot of people don’t know this, but 13 year old fairy girls molt their arms and wings. And so she’s at this period of time where she can’t really fly. She doesn’t have any arms. And so there’re limitations in her life; it’s scary to her. But she’s a strong fairy, and she will get through this. So she (Kit the Fairy) started the idea of creating, like I said, these archetypes of strong women. Now I have branched out. I’ve done one male fairy and he is Kit’s little brother, Sam. Sam is rambunctious, he’s nine years old. He runs around with no shirt on, and his pants are always falling off and his butt crack shows. And he just gets into trouble, and he’s sticking his tongue out at his sister all the time, and everybody he comes into contact with. So, I’ve created these people that I hope that a viewer can see a little bit of themselves and like, oh yeah, I remember when I felt like I couldn’t do anything. I felt very constrained or, oh, I remember when I was a rambunctious little boy and nothing mattered, and I was fearless. So that’s kind of the idea.
Bob:
Yeah, that is fun. I know lots of times when people look at some of my work, they have many different reactions to it, right? Some like it. Some don’t like it. Some have thoughts about the pieces that had never entered my mind. And I bet you you have the same kind of reaction to your work.
Karen:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it it’s always been that way. When I was a painter, my paintings were figurative, but they were somewhat abstracted. And so it was open to a lot of different interpretation. And these are as well, definitely.
Bob:
What do you hope for when people see your work, particularly these ceramic sculptures that you’ve been working on?
Karen:
I really just want them to enjoy the work in whatever way they can. Like I said, if it triggers a memory of their own, I love that. I love it when I can make a connection. Somebody can connect with my sculpture, whatever connection they have, whatever. Yeah.
Bob:
Cool. Have you a story that you’d like to share of a person who had a reaction to one of your pieces? That that really you liked?
Karen:
I will share this. I have a sculpture and his name is Shellheart. And he came before the fairy series. But in hindsight, when you look at things you realize, well, he had some fairy qualities about him. Anyway, he’s quite beautiful. He’s a beautiful specimen of a man, and he has a beautiful face. My sister-in-law was at the exhibition where he was being shown, and she walked up to him and kissed him on his little, ceramic lips. She said, “He is wanting me to do this.” I said, “Well, you just have!” That tickled me to no end. That was just delightful. And I also I love it when… I don’t mind people touching my sculptures.
I don’t know… I want to say, “Reach out and to see what that texture feels like… does it feel like you expected it would? What does that shiny shell feel like, you know?”
Bob:
Right on. So that sounds good. I can see a couple of pieces behind you because we’re doing this interview with a video, and of course people are going to only listen to this by audio. Can you tell people a little bit about how you do your work, like what kind of materials do you use, and how do you form your work and so on?
Karen:
Right, okay. So I have found that I really enjoy B mix clay. It is low grog, no grog and very smooth, and very forgiving, very flexible. So that’s where I usually start. And in the last few years I’ve been incorporating found objects. With my sculpture, I really enjoy mixed media. If I can put a brass horse in my sculpture that I’ve found at a flea market, instead of making a ceramic horse and painting him brass, I’m going to do that. I like mixing the textures. So, it’s gotten me into trouble a time or two because I don’t have welding skills. I don’t have tools for cutting wood. I have just very rudimentary things, so I’ve expanded my friend group to include a welder. And a woodworker. And so when I get into trouble, I call up my friends and I say, “Hey, I don’t have the equipment. Can I come over and show you what I want? Can you help me out?”
Thank God for friends!
Bob:
Thank God for friends, right? Thank God for friends with tools! I guess that’s what you’re talking about.
Karen
Absolutely. So when you first contacted me, Bob, I was thinking about colour. I started thinking about, you know, when we’re children, we’re given toys with primary colours, right? Things to stimulate us, our parents think, right? So we all kind of started off with that, and colour always resonated with me as a small child. I like to think the turning point happened when Santa Claus brought me a chalkboard with coloured chalks. And then I started realizing I can make these things with colour. And then time went on, and pivotal for me were two films, The Wizard of Oz… and Doctor Seuss’s The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, the original cartoon version. The brilliance of those colours!… and I was, you know, a four or five, six year old child.
Karen:
And I was just so… I wanted to live in those worlds of colour. And I thought about it, and I realized I’ve just been spending my life trying to live in those worlds of colour! That’s what I’m doing. I’m living in worlds of colour that I create!
Bob:
That is great. I think colour is really interesting because… it’s, as you know with your sculptures, you really need to marry together. The form that you’re using and the colour that you’ve decided to work the surface.
Karen:
Right.
Bob:
Yeah. How do you think about that? How do you think about colour and form?
Karen:
So. Well. You know, let’s go back to Greco-Roman sculptures that survived all these centuries, and they’re in their last form with no colour on them? I remember when I found out these these beautiful, gorgeous white sculptures had been painted. And I was appalled when I learned it in art history class! Now, I’m so fascinated and I wish I knew what they looked like, you know, with their prior colour. So I start out, and I’ve got this bisque-fired piece that is kind of a creamy white. I usually start with a latex base of a medium gray, because I don’t know where I’m going, but it’s the same psychology as when I would tint a canvas before I’d paint it. I never painted on a white canvas. I would put a layer of transparent colour, because there’s something daunting about an empty, white canvas and there is something daunting about painting a white sculpture. So that’s where I start ……with a medium-gray, latex colour and then, you know as I I live with it, I walk through my studio, I work on several pieces of pieces at a time. I let them sit there until they tell me what I’m supposed to do next.
Bob:
It is true. I mean, I think that I’ve experienced that as well with some of my work. That sometimes the best stuff is when I’ve taken my time and let it sit there a little bit, and I’ve looked at it over and over… and then it seems to come to. Is that what you’re talking about? That happens to me.
Karen:
It is exactly what you’re talking about, but also the reverse can be true. I remember with Kit the Fairy, I knew that I did not want her lower legs to all be ceramic. I had one ceramic leg going all the way down, and one cropped at the knee. I could not figure out… you know, days went by, a couple of weeks went by. Soon we were working on a couple of months going by. And I said, This is bullshit! I’m going to create this lower leg today! And I went out in my backyard, I picked up a tree limb, brought it in, and that became her lower leg. That just got the ball rolling. I think it’s the hardest thing as an artist to gauge. When to roll and when to back off? It’s just the hardest. I was working on a sculpture… a beautiful woman, really gorgeous face, and hair up in the air… with lots of movement. I had put the primer on her and then I painted white on top of the primer. And it just came to me that I needed to put black stripes on her. And I thought, am I going to ruin this? I’m going to put black stripes… I thought, you have to… you can’t even go there. You cannot just NOT do it. And if you don’t like it, you can do something different. But I did the black stripe because my gut was saying you’ve got to do these black stripes… and I did it. And I was so glad I did. And it, you know, it pleased me.
Bob:
I was going to say that it’s interesting: that internal dialogue, that conversation that we have with ourselves, can either take us down the path of the letting the stripes go on the piece, or we can pull back and restrict that and decide not to do that for some reason. And it sounds like you have a lot of those conversations with yourself.
Karen:
I do! It’s a whimsical thing, as you know. When you get in the flow, you cannot predict it. You can have everything set up. You can have your clay right there. You can have all your pieces… and have your music going, and be very stimulated to work… and it just doesn’t come through for you. And then some days, you’ll just pop in and be in a rush, and something comes to you. It’s hard working that intuitively, but it’s the only thing that makes me happy, ultimately, with the pieces that I create. I learned about making maquettes before making a sculpture… making these little 6, 7, 8 inch tall maquettes. I’ve done that and it was helpful, but I can’t do that now. I need to know that the process is unpredictable. I can’t take a little miniature and blow it up, because I know what it’s gonna look like. I can’t know what it’s going to look like at the end when I start a piece. I have to be surprised.
Bob:
Like that’s really interesting. I interviewed somebody a couple of weeks ago who had the exact opposite approach. His approach was… he thinks about it, and thinks about it, and thinks about it, until it is all in his mind about what the final piece will be. And then he makes it. And you are the complete opposite of that, it sounds like, or at least on the other end of the continuum.
Karen:
I am, but I do know sculptors that work that way. I was fortunate enough to be at Buffalo Creek Art Centre in Gardnerville, NV, a few years ago, doing a residency. I was there with another sculptor who was a metal worker. Large scale outdoor sculptures, monumental things, and he had to work that way. He could not work intuitively. He had to have drawings and calculations and mathematics all ready to go, and you know… more power to him. Thank God we’re all different!
Bob:
Absolutely. I’ve got a a bunch of questions here for you. One has to do with some ideas you might have for another ceramic artist or artist who might struggle with the notion of… I should do it this way. You know, the classic should word, and how a person might overcome that and tap into that intuitive thinking?
Karen:
You know, it is hard. You kind of have to trust yourself. My situation is, I will draw where I’m at in the sculpture. I do a lot of photographs: I take the sculpture in different lighting. And just moving it around, I can get some ideas. I mean being stuck is no fun. I have Aria the Tiger Fairy who I was creating, and I knew she was going to be a strong-willed mid-teen, late teen, young girl. I needed her to appear to be shy, but she needed to know that her inner strength was there. Fortunately, it popped into my head. I needed to have a tiger coming out of her abdomen to show that she had this strength. So I went walking around a flea market until I found a little brass tiger that would fit my sculpture. Everybody’s gotta pick their own solutions. You know, it’s just like what do you do when you get anxious? Well, I listen to music. I take a walk. I think all of that applies when you get stuck with art. Listen to music, take a walk, do a drawing, get away from it. Get up next to it.
Bob:
Yeah, for sure, because I think that the word should, you know, that we can get wrapped up in, takes away from that creativity. It blocks that ability to pay attention to those inner ideas that we have about our world.
Karen:
It does. It’s self-editing, and it’s one of the worst habits you can get into. I just recently have started writing about my art, and that has not ever been one of my genres, writing particularly. But I wanted to do it because I knew it would give me insight, and I’m really enjoying it, but it’s hard for me. To tell myself….. ohh that sentence sounds stupid. Let’s go back and erase that and do another one. Just keep the flow going. Just keep it going. Just keep it moving and then edit later.
Bob:
Yeah.
Karen:
So we all have to figure out little things to help us, you know, over the hump.
Bob:
Yeah, absolutely. I remember taking a creative writing class years ago, and the instructor had us start the right way. Couldn’t remove the pen or pencil from the paper and and we couldn’t erase anything or draw a line through it or anything. We just had to keep going. And it was amazing.
Karen:
Brilliant.
Bob:
To me, what came out of that experience, because I think probably traditionally I would have been like what you were talking about. Ohh no, that’s not good enough, and I would have been editing as I was trying to let the ideas out.
Karen:
Yeah. Right, right.
Bob:
You know, it seems to me that people who, as we’re talking, who are moving into being able to be intuitive and and in touch with those feelings and ideas and be able to allow that into their art, they need to have enough technical skills, I would bet, to be able to let that happen in a way that’s helpful for them. Have you got any idea? What do you think about that?
Karen:
Yes.
Bob:
You think that’s true?
Karen:
No, I do think there’s truth in that. I mean, certainly there are uneducated or unschooled artists that are, you know, do great works. But like for me, I think it was a lot easier going into sculpture 10 years ago because I had this huge background of drawing the figure. So that made it so much easier than anybody starting from the ground up in ceramics. I think that that helped me a lot. But you know, like I’ll give you an example. I’m scared to death of glazes, scared to death of them. I told myself, I said alright, I’m going to learn how to sculpt in clay, okay, but I’m never going to learn glazes because that’s a whole other ball game. It’s too much of a learning curve. I want to concentrate on the form, so that’s what I’ve done. I know how to oil paint, so I cold finish all of my sculptures with oil paint. And some of them are acrylic, and some of them have wax on them… but I just knew that I wanted to know enough. To get as far as I could get with the ceramics and not bother with the glaze. I remember taking a class in college and I sucked. I was no good as an 18-year-old college student in ceramics class. I had no skills. I never could get the hang of throwing on the wheel. The only thing that I got the hang of was hand building. And I actually created a swimming pool with three different swimmers that you could move around like pieces on a chess board in the pool. And I painted them with acrylic. So I guess I kind of went back to what I didn’t know to do.
Bob:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I guess it really doesn’t matter, does it? There are no rules around these kinds of things. And if you’re able to accomplish what you want with acrylics, then you don’t need glazes or underglazes with them.
Karen
Absolutely, absolutely.
Bob:
But you do need to know how to work with clay, because your pieces are going in the kiln. And you need to know how to put it together, and create the form that you’re interested in… and the muscle structure and so on. That’s important for you.
Karen
That’s right. Oh, absolutely. You know, the biggest thing that I had to learn about working with clay was measuring the amount of moisture in the clay, and knowing what level of moisture can do what… and what I can do when the clay is at that level. So that was the biggest learning curve for me. I remember taking a workshop and building this nice, big male torso. I was getting ready to add the head, and the torso started just sinking. It was too soft, you know, it was just melting into itself. Like, okay, that was a big learning point for me. You cannot build up until … and I’ve learned about how, you know, different sections can be almost dry. And different sections can be very damp… and you can work it that way… and you learn how to work your plastic. But yeah, you just have to get in there and do it. You just have to get in there. Learn.
Bob:
Yeah, I’ve asked many people who I have interviewed what advice might you have for somebody….. and almost everybody says just go and do it. You’ve got to work at it. And I think working with people around you is important. So you can get some feedback from people about how you’re doing your things. But how does that fit for your practice?
Karen
Definitely. For me, I’m fortunate enough to have a couple of artist friends that live not too far from me in the Atlanta area, and we get together and discuss our art, go to each other’s studios. I also get so much… I don’t know why I feel embarrassed to say this… but the people I’ve met on Instagram, the artists that I’ve connected with on Instagram, I have learned so much from them. Just watching their journeys. And I’m so grateful for them. I feel like that. I mean, that is a community that I was able to tap into, and I don’t know that everybody feels that way, but I’m very grateful for the people in that community.
Bob:
How do you engage with people in the Instagram community where you can get feedback about each other’s work and talk with each other like you do friends in Atlanta?
Karen
Absolutely. Absolutely. People all over the world. Yeah, it’s beautiful. I mean, you found me there. Thank you, Bob.
Bob:
I did. Yeah, absolutely.
Karen
Yeah. And I enjoyed your recent post about colour, and your animal and your choice of colour. And I was like, yeah, you go Bob, you went with your gut. That’s the way to do it.
Bob:
Yeah, I did. And I was pretty happy, and I think that really fits with what you’re talking about. Really paying attention to that intuitive piece for yourself.
Karen
It is the buzz for me. Working, and feeling that I’m going in the direction that the sculpture wants me to go. It’s coming, and I don’t know what it’s going to look like at the end. I don’t know. And even though it’s cool, it’s a struggle. That’s the biggest buzz of all, is that you don’t know where it’s going… and then you just learn all about it… and all about yourself when it’s done.
Bob:
Very cool. Hey, now I bet you you’ve had a challenge or two in your art career. What’s the challenge that you’ve experienced and how did you overcome it?
Karen
The jury’s still out on how I’ve overcome it… if I overcome it. I really do want to branch out more into metals, and I’m interested in welding. So I went to Penland School of Craft two summers ago and took a metals workshop. I learned about MIG welding, TIG welding, forging, cold forging. And it was just enough to let me know that I want to do this… but I don’t. So once again… ten years ago I said okay, I’ve got to learn clay. I’ve got to learn it, so I did. So now I’m like… I really want to learn metal. I really want to know about this metal, because I want my sculptures to be metal and ceramic and whatever else I want to throw in there. So. I’m in a quandary right now as to how I’m going to go forward with that. Am I going to go to a technical school and take a welding class? Am I going to break down and get a MIG welder, have it out in the shed with my kiln? That’s an immediate thing that I’m still wrestling with.
Bob:
Umm, it’s a journey. Being able to decide which path to go down… I start to think about being out in the forest with different paths we can choose to go down. That’s what I hear you talking about… is I’m not sure if I should go left or right with this one. And you’re at that spot of trying to figure that out.
Karen
Absolutely. I have one little story I wanted to share with you. It’s very personal and special to me. I was working on a self-portrait and in clay and it was taking me forever. It just was. It was just monumental. There were mental hurdles to get over, and all kinds of things. And so it took quite a while. I went to Jekyll Island, GA, which is a place I used to go as a child. I went on my birthday and this is something I try to do annually. It’s in February, so it’s cold at the beach… you’re not out there in your bikini, you’re out there and your sweatshirt and your jeans, just walking around. I went to the place where we used to stay when I was a child, called the Buccaneer Motel. It had been razed many years ago. It’s where I learned to swim, and I walked around. There’s no development now, It’s been razed years ago, and I went and crept in through the chain link fence, you know, they’ve got it all blocked off. And I started walking around and I looked on the ground and the ground was kind of, you know, sandy, but dark, with plant matter. And I saw something turquoise shining and I bent down to pick it up. And it was a piece of tile. From the swimming pool that had been razed and then demolished, and I walked around. And I found several more pieces of tile. They’re all cracked and broken. None of them are very big, but I collected them. I went back the next year and did the same thing. Because, you know, more storms move in. Sand shifts. And I added those to my self-portrait sculpture. And it was the missing personal link that I needed and I didn’t know that I needed it. I still have several pieces of those tiles, and I occasionally add them to other pieces of sculpture just as a pop of colour, or just a pop of me, you know, little whimsical Karen from the swimming pool.
Bob:
Wow, that is very cool. I love that idea of going out and searching, out in the wild I’ll call it, even though it might not be that wild… and finding little bits. And there you found a little bit of you out there.
Karen:
I did. And it just felt very magical. And I don’t think a lot of people are as intuitive. Maybe artists are more intuitive than your average person walking down the street. Another artist would think of that, but …..maybe a non-artist wouldn’t…I don’t know.
Bob:
Yeah, I know what you mean. Maybe a fairy had put those pieces there for you.
Karen:
You know, it was that magical. It was. And you know, I think there’s something as I’m talking to you, I’m realizing this there. There is something about me as an artist that just wants to tap into that childlike wonder. And I think that is probably something that I want the viewer to see when they see my fairies… Ohh fairies, yeah, I remember fairy tales when I was a kid. Ohh, but look at this, it’s a cool fairy, I can relate to this fairy. So I don’t know. I guess maybe there’s a little bit of of that going on. Me trying to get the viewer to get in touch with something childlike. Colour is magic… and magic is colour.
Bob:
Yeah, for sure. Hey, I was going to ask you about your colour. We didn’t get to that. How do you choose your colours? Because sometimes a person, could choose muted colours. They could choose really bright, vivid colours. Like your Doctor Seuss movie that stimulated you. What are you thinking about? Your colours these days when you’re doing your fairies, for example?
Karen:
My tendency is always to go toward brighter colours. I had kind of wondered if you were gonna ask me who is my favorite artist of all time . And I thought, if you do, I’m going to tell you Mark Chagall because he was such a brilliant painter, drawer, draftsman, ceramicist, colorist and so on. My palette is always going to want to go bright; I’m going to have to struggle to force some neutrals in there. Something might act as a neutral that other people would call it bright colour. I’m always going to go for brighter. That’s just my palette, it just is. Doctor Seuss and the Wizard of Oz are my palette.
Bob:
You know, it’s very interesting that you’ve got this notion of truly being yourself, Karen, and really tapping into that intuitive side for you is really important. I was wondering if you had any thoughts or advice you might have for other ceramic artists out there who might be listening to this. What might you encourage them to do to grow and get moving on that?
Karen:
Learning is growing, right? So if there’s something you want to do, that you don’t know how to do, go take a class in it. If I all of a sudden, wanted to incorporate hand thrown work into my sculpture, I would force myself to go learn how to throw a pot. You know, don’t be afraid to learn and don’t be afraid to experiment. And dear God, please don’t listen to those bad voices in your head that are telling you…why are you doing this? It doesn’t matter to anybody! You got to shut those voices out!
Bob:
Right on. Karen. Thanks so much for being with us here today. I’ve really enjoyed having this conversation with you. I think I have some of your ideas around this intuitive part for you, and paying attention to what’s important for you. And how you know what you want to do, and to feel comfortable with that…those are really great ideas for people.
Karen
Thank you. One more thing I would say is learn from the artist that that you love, whether they’re from history or they’re on Instagram. I learn every day that I scroll through Instagram and look at my artist friends. I’m learning that is that is continuing education for me. I think that’s incredibly important. And I do get out and go to shows as well. So yeah.
Bob:
Yeah, there’s lots of ways for us to connect with artists, and I know when I’m on Instagram or in a gallery or a museum somewhere, I’m often asking… I wonder how they did that? I wonder why they did what they did right and that stimulates, for me anyway. The whole notion of learning and getting better at what we do.
Karen
Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m so glad you reached out to me. Thank you so much, Bob!
Bob:
Yeah, I enjoyed talking with you too. So thank you so much.
Bob:
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