What are You Resisting?

The US's political climate today is fraught with all kinds of contested space. Many of us who are not economically in the top 1%, white, male, or cisgendered, may find ourselves fighting against policies intended to benefit anyone but us. As a result, many political activists have joined together to form "The Resistance" to stem the tide of what seems to be a politcal effort to regress back into the social policies of the 1950s. Many are fighting for basic necessities such as clean water (Flint, MI), healthcare, and equal rights like marriage or voting.

And some are fighting *against* the plutocracy's outrageous and evil notions-- such as the efforts to reduce the land in National Parks, drilling in the pristine Arctic, destroying sacred Indian ancestral burial lands, or to kill net neutrality.  Despite some progressives' lamentations that one can't just be "against" the conservative agenda, but that we must be "for" something, resistance is absolutely critical in this era so that we don't just slip into fascism. 

Sue Coe, You Consume Their Terror, 2011.

The question of "what are you resisting?" is a good one to ask when discussing political or social forces over which one needs to have a strategy. But it's also a good question for the artist to ask "what am I resisting within my practice? Is there something that I'm avoiding thinking about or doing?"

Are you resisting tackling a specific thing in your practice? What are the reasons? Are they valid reasons? Is your resistance a matter of not acquiring a skill set, or is it a resistance to navigating daunting logistics like money/ space/ or time?  Do you not enjoy a particular kind of subject matter because you have some kind of philosophical bias or emotional barrier to overcome to get there? 

My grad school mentors did a good job of breaking down our resistance to subject matter or physically challenging constraints like size or complexity. Inertia / laziness can be a mighty obstacle for some, but nothing can replace "ass in the seat time" for gaining important experience within one's practice. My own resistance against depicting babies or children, working large, and working without color, was broken down gradually so that I'm now able to ask myself whenever I feel like I'm dragging my feet about doing a particular thing, "against what and why am I being so stubborn?" From there I can analyze whether there are logistical problems for which I need to find a workable solution, lack of a particular skill set that needs to be acquired, or whether I'm experiencing some kind of bias in my thinking. And then I need to decide whether overcoming that obstacle is in the best interest of my sustained practice. (Usually the answer is yes).

Resistance to destructive social and political policies also provide the opportunity to make great art.

So what are you resisting?

So What's Wrong With Wanting to Do It All?

Not a thing.

Life is too damn short and, in my opinion, you only get one shot to do everything you can imagine.

Luckily, for we happy people who are called to make Art, everything we make or take on is an endeavor to express our unique position as artists and conduits of culture. Our ability to see beyond what already exists into the realm of "what could be" is our gift (or curse?) and the more avenues of expression we have, the more opportunities we have available to say what we need to say.

The past year for me has been... interesting, to say the least. I've been rediscovering my love of clay art, and it is reshaping my idea about what it means for me to be an artist in this life. Additionally, my serious foray into songwriting has opened up even more possibilities... I feel as if I'm in the most creative period of my life.

I did two shows this year, returning to ConGlomeration-- but as a potter; and was juried into a quirky local show called the Market of Curiosities. In addition to that, a local shop in York, PA, "Black Sheep Everything", has taken my pottery in on consignment and is selling the work. The reception I've received for it has been phenomenal and sales have been very good.

In learning more about search engine optimization, I changed the pottery site's name, rebranded it "Kest Pottery Studio" and finally bought a real domain name; you can take a look at it here:
www.kestpottery.com

Monsterpots!

Additionally, I'm exploring some older ideas that I'd generated when I was in my 20s: wall sculptures. I like to call them gargoyles because they remind me of the odd and amusing faces seen on cathedrals. In the past I'd sculpted them in clay that was only oven-dried, but it's more satisfying to fire them to a more permanent hardness. The storytelling aspect of the pieces is something I'd like to push further. Juxtapositions are interesting too:

Grumpy Gus and the noisy Crow

What is in store over the next year? We shall see. I already have a bunch of ideas to move beyond what I'm currently doing, with ambitions to combine my interest in 2-D storytelling with the clay art.

Generating new ideas to be able to sustain your art practice is the holy grail of being an artist. Older ideas carry over and are folded into the new; new materials can be a fresh way to explore older ideas and can generate entirely new work. I can't wait to see what comes of this in 2018!

So much has happened...

Well, I've been away from my blog for over a year now and a lot has happened.

The biggest thing to change with my work has been the addition of the digital medium to my practice. It's kind of revolutionized it. Not only can I work faster, but better. Yes, not only can I do three times as much work in the same space of time, but I can get back to some of the "details" that I'd let slide when my eyesight began to tank a few years ago. This became especially noticeable in the botanical work, where detail and accuracy is super important. The ability to "zoom" in on the image (without using a lens) made all the difference. (Thanks, Wacom!!) You can see more of the Old Farmer's Almanac 2016 Garden Calendar on my website.

Yep, digital rocks. (Yankee Publishing Co., /Kristin Kest)

Additionally, I made my first foray into the kids' graphic novel genre with New Worlds Publishing Co's, Lost In Dreams, Book 1, which is now out in ComiXology here.  

Lost In Dreams: the adventures of a girl and her dad in the world between dreams. 

Pirates, monsters, robots, spaceships, hints of demons, etc., what's not to like?

Working digitally meant that text, font, speech bubbles, layout, etc., was super easy.  Since I did all but write it, I needed as much help as I could possibly get. 100+ pages is a lot of work, but it was well worth it. Additionally, the experience of it all taught me so much about the genre and how it works.

But wait~ there's more! I "inherited" a pottery studio from a wonderful friend of mine. Elva and her husband John were moving and didn't want to take the studio with them. Elva is a potter and a poet with a doctorate in psychology (and a practice) and John is a writer-historian, professor emeritus in philosophy, and both are just amazingly wonderful people. They both have published books, which you can find here: Elva's book;  John's book. (I drew the illustrations for Elva's book.) Well, you can imagine the fun I've been having with the pottery studio and the clay. Here's just a sample from the summer's play:

Suspicious looking little fellas...

Another friend and I are going to be seeking local craft places to sell our wares in 2016. I am really looking forward to all of the possibilities! 

Endangered Animals

The original 1995 cover.

In 1995, Western Publishing Company published a Golden Guide called Endangered Animals. I was the artist who created all of the artwork on the inside spreads in addition to the cover. It was almost a year's worth of work and I loved every minute of it. The art director, Remo Cosentino, was a fantastic guy and taught me, a newbie illustrator, a lot about the business of creating books.  Unbeknownst to me, this book was to be among the last of that Golden Guide series to be published under the Western name, as the company was subsequently bought by St. Martin's Press in 1999, and then shortly thereafter was sold to Random House in 2001. 

The current cover.

In the ensuing melee of lawyers , moving vans, etc., that accompany the shift of one company's assets to another in a short period of time, all of the paintings for this book were lost. 

All seventy-five paintings. Lost. Gone. 

They were supposed to be returned to me as per the contractual agreement.
In the following years, my agent and I have in vain tried to locate anyone with any knowledge of the whereabouts of this group of paintings. 

So,  I send my plea out to the Internet: If anyone has any information about these lost paintings, I would surely appreciate knowing it.  It is my hope to eventually recover them.

A big thank you!