Hello Friends!
TJ Kimber
2021
Germination
2015
Etching on handmade paper mounted on wooden panel
Amethyst
2020
Main Street Arts Small Works show
Collateral Damage
2022
Moore Alumni Show
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Where to start...
As a child I was told of the struggles and sacrifices that my parents, both descendants of Catholic Italian immigrants with large families, had endured. I was raised with an understanding that they had been abused and mistreated by their parents and wanted a better life for my sister and I. But it's complicated to have control on a situation that comes with embedded social expectations and family entanglements. Generational trauma etches itself into the DNA When your brain is constantly telling your body that you are under attack it's hard to overcome without the right guidance. Years of fawning and freezing mixed with neglect, neuro-divergent thinking, and religious trauma made it extremely difficult for me to access my voice. Art and movement allowed me to dive into the traumas being stored in my body, connect with my internal experience, and find myself in the swirling chaos. I fully committed to pursuing art for myself in 2012 by attending Moore College of Art & Design. By 2015 I had graduated with my BFA in Fine Art and was awarded the Diane and Clarence Stern Award for Excellence in 3D Fine Art as well as the Senior Entrepreneur Business Plan Prize. This time was largely focused on exploring handmade organic sculpture through the process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Over the next four years I spent my time and resources exploring various studio arrangements and mediums.
From 2019-2020 I completed a year long fellowship at The Soapbox Community Print Studio and Zine Library in West Philadelphia. I found that what I was missing over the last few years was a sense of community. One of the many benefits of my time at Moore was the shared studio space. Being in community with other artists everyday allowed me to re-examine the very thing that lead me to art in the first place. I realized that I needed to dive further into the organic structures that I was so fascinated by. Enter the mushrooms. Mushrooms have a mycelium network, connecting them with the environment around them. They act almost like a hive mind, interconnected and ever present with one another. They can reallocate resources to support the group and break down what can be used and recycled. They are the ultimate transformers of death and decay to make way for new life. Their fruiting bodies come with various textures, colors and abilities. Biologically, they fall somewhere in between plants and animals, speaking with their own vocabulary of electrical impulses.
Organic matter developed my subject matter while Cubism and Abstract Expressionism informed my style and practice. The contrast, line work, and sense of surreal dissociation within Cubist work influenced my road map to forming cohesion. Abstract Expressionism allows me to abandon spoken language and instead dive again into the movement, emotion, and release of fluid expression. My first post college show was at the Main Street Arts Gallery in NY in November of 2020 for their Small Works show. This gave me the momentum to keep going and has lead to the creation of my most recent body of work. My most current piece "Collateral Damage" will be at Moore College of Art & Design for their Alumni show from June-September of 2022.
Through all of this has been my partner Jay. For the past 11 years we have built a partnership based on trust, respect, our love for our cats and Philadelphia, and a mutual love to see the other thrive in their expression and growth. |