Chicagokim

Archetype of Future Architecture #2
mixed media on wood
36 x 36 x 4 in.

Growing up I was surrounded by the incessant beat and the fascinating backdrop of a great American city — Chicago. Sounds of trains passing by my family’s apartment, homeboys blaring music from their cars, the calls of young people jockeying for a spot in the street hierarchies, almost daily visits to the beach after school (even in the winter), guitar lessons at the Fine Arts Building, free tennis lessons at the park, sirens from the firehouse a block away. The third child born into a single parent family with a wonderfully creative mother with too much responsibility to shoulder to explore her talents. This was the soundtrack to my life as a young Chicagoan. You can feel, hear and sense all of it in my work. Look closely.

My work tends to be about our choices and the impact those choices have on those around us. Not only life’s ripple effect but our personal ripple effect on others. It is also greatly influenced by the impact architecture has on me personally. The power of a great skyline, the planning it takes and the inspiration it engenders in its inhabitants is of acute interest to me. The ripple effect great architecture has on humans.

The grandeur of global architecture drives me to create pieces that viewers struggle to categorize. No problem. People didn’t know how to categorize K.D. Lang either, but she’s made an enormously successful career for herself – perhaps because of this ambiguity.

I am an extension of my mother’s creativity — a creativity that didn’t have a chance to blossom due to the great responsibility she was forced to shoulder on her own. My art is the progeny and the influence of architecture, my beautiful city and its incredible life beat; my muse is being my mother’s daughter. (TX)

© Chicagokim