Come enjoy a new exhibition in the Maudee Carron Gallery at The Art Studio, Inc. on the first Thursday of each month. This event is always free and open to the public from 5:00-8:00pm.
Join us on October 5th for the opening reception of Kim Brent’s exhibition entitled “i2eye”
The artwork will be on view through October 26 during TASI’s regular gallery hours:
Tuesdays through Saturdays, from noon until 5:00pm
“i2eye”
i2eye is what lives inside of me striking a chord with what lives inside of you – the viewer of these works.
The twisted faces, odd rhythms, strange bedfellows and family constructs that make up the landscape of these images are a mirror of the complexities lying at the heart of our common humanity – the connections we forge wherever beings gather, by birth or by choice.
Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters; people forced together at work, on buses, boats or trains; the creatures that live alongside us or in the mythical realm that connects us to something beyond our grounded existence.
We’re all in the soup – collectively separate as we navigate our personal spaces within the public sphere, merely trying to understand place and purpose.
Who are we within these spaces, none of these spaces, or those private spaces we hold near and dear to our hearts?
Do we even know?
Dive into the common waters and float with the relevant fishes – their stories will tell you the way.
If not, will you simply float and float?
Will you float away simply – a confounded figure, floundering forward, furrowing brows as you wind your way backward, forward, sideways – here, then there.
Trying to make your way, you are wayward:
This to that, to and fro,
and back and forth.
Back and forth.
–Kim Brent
Artist Bio
I was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, a city just north of the Ohio River divider on the Mason-Dixon Line – making me, as many joked when I first moved here, a “damned Yankee.”
Growing up, I always had a love of art.
Visiting the Cincinnati Art Museum was one of my favorite things to do – from its pre-historic art to the large Miro mural that was always one of my favorites, because I swore it had an image of my favorite cartoon character Snoopy.
I could lose myself in the creations held within that building.
But other than the regular school art classes, sketching on my own or trying my hand at replicating the “can you draw this” contest images in the weekly TV Guide, my formal art training was nil beyond studying photography in the art school at the University of Michigan my final semester before graduating college.
That class changed the course of my life.
I chose to pursue a future in photography as opposed to one in social work, and entered the University of Texas at Austin as a graduate student in photojournalism.
That decision led to a series of internships and jobs that have taken me from one corner of the country to the next and every state save one beginning with the word “New” – New York, New Mexico, New Hampshire.
New Jersey has always been on my radar.
I know; please don’t joke.
But in 2014, I came here – back to Texas.
Ultimately, it was work that led me to this place, but how I really got here from there is more about the personal struggles I encountered along the way.
My first jobs were a heart break of sorts that led to feelings of isolation and depression.
I sought refuge in art and in art therapy wherever I could find it.
That difficult time landed me briefly back in Cincinnati, where I sought work in a bookstore and eventually became head of the art and photography department, seeing all the new art books that would cross the consumer landscape before they hit the shelves.
Those books became my personal classroom.
Paul Klee (and more Paul Klee and then some – I may own every book ever created about this artist!), Kandinsky, George Bellows, Lee Krasenstein, Jackson Pollock.
I even remember ordering a small photo book made by Southeast Texas artist Keith Carter – a name that meant nothing to me then beyond someone whose work caught my eye.
In that journey, I found the artist within myself.
Later, that fledgling artist grew as I transitioned back to photojournalism and got a job at a newspaper in Southeast Michigan.
Through the paper, I met local artists, forged new relationships, explored new mediums like reverse painting on glass and had my first showing of art for sale in a small gallery in Monroe, Michigan.
It was the first time I saw myself as an artist worthy of going further.
When I moved to Beaumont in 2014, I continued my art work, but it took a while for me to bring it to the public eye via opportunities like the Alternative Show.
Hearing reaction from that show, I kept at it – my painting interspersed with other ventures like jewelry making and knitting.
In this show, you’ll see a range of those interests – primarily painting, but also jewelry making and some of the photography I have done independently – not for work, just purely for myself and my love of the genre.
Honestly, I believe I’m not good enough at any one of these ventures to be a fully successful ‘one trick pony.’
Much like my photography, and perhaps my life in general, I’m something to be seen in a broader scope – I’m art and photography and writing and jewelry maker and knitter of small things.
I’m this, that and the other – not really great at any one thing, but maybe talented enough at a few of them.
It’s an uncomfortable place to reside – feeling like you’re hopefully average or above average in spots, but never quite reaching the level to which you aspire.
Is it just me?
To keep going, I’ve had to let go of expectations, self-evaluation, comparing my apples to others’ oranges.
Judgement is a futile enterprise, because if we are all born truly unique – and I whole-heartedly believe that we are – then everything we touch and create is one of a kind.
A person’s creation is theirs alone, and whether it resonates with the masses, looks ‘good’ or looks ‘bad,’ doesn’t matter.
Nobody can ever do what any one of us will ever do, feel or be.
What I make or anyone makes is merely “i to eye.”
See it for what it is and make of it what you will.
I’m just here making these things.
