Artist Interview: Autumn Kinsey

Chamber of Commerce, 2009, mixed media

"It's a series of 21 matchbooks that feature some memorable Kilgore establishments. 

some are still in business, some are not."*

Photographs  from Recollections,  MFA Exhibition, 2008, mixed media

"The idea is for the viewer to feel invited into a warm space - one that is the opposite from the typical white and cold cube gallery. The viewer can sit on the couch, relax and watch tv. I have chosen to show episodes of Roseanne on the tv in order to illustrate the typical blue collar, middle class family."

“The viewer can press the sewing machine pedal to interrupt the reception on the tv.

This was something that drove me nuts growing up.”

"This is a basket that I made out of notes from Clay Collins in 7th grade. 

There is one made from Colin Avant's notes, too."

"I decided to make a set of matchbooks that feature 20 different boys 

that I had crushes on from 6th grade through 12th. Old flames..."

Name: Autumn Kinsey

Current City: Arlington, TX

Hometown: Kilgore, TX

Preferred Medium: screenprint and anything crafty (I walk the aisles of Michael’s Arts and Crafts for inspiration)

Education: BFA in Printmaking from the University of North Texas. MA and MFA from the University of Dallas.

Website Link: uh…not yet. Friend me on Facebook – I have lots of photos there.

Gallery Link: check back in 5 years…

Tell me about you work in one sentence: My work is a humorous and honest recollection of the memories I have of growing up in a small, East Texas town.

Would you prefer to deal through gallery representation or directly with clients, why? definitely with clients. I feel that a large part of my work is storytelling. When I have the opportunity to talk directly with the people who are viewing my work, they get the full experience. And maybe it’s selfish on my part, but I love to hear how my memories and stories tie into the experiences of others.


Besides being an artist, how else do you support yourself? Since I finished my MA in 2006, I have been an instructor at several colleges in the DFW area. I absolutely love teaching. I've always been somewhat of a school nerd, so this just gives me another chance to stay where I feel I belong...I'm just on the other side now. In addition to teaching, I do a little bit of freelance design work, too. Tshirt designs are my main focus. I worked at a marketing company in Denton, TX before going to grad school, and that experience has helped me to maintain a few clients who call me up every few months for a new design. One of my dreams is to start a screenprinting shop where I can design and print original tshirt designs. And then I could utilize that same space to work on my fine art pieces as well.


Would you consider teaching to be an important part of your role as an artist? 

Yes, absolutely! Teaching is a huge part of my life as an artist. I can't tell you how vital my professors and mentors were to my development as an artist. There are so many things that I learned from them that I try to pass on to my students. It is such a honor (and sometimes a chore, of course) to work towards becoming that same kind of mentor to someone else. 

What is your favorite forum/method of sharing information about art? Word of mouth. Don’t get me wrong, I read blogs and magazines, I go to museums and galleries, but there is nothing like sitting around with good, artsy friends and shooting the shit about art, artists and the awesome/ridiculous things that have happened as of late. I wouldn’t trade those times for anything.

Your work is selected to show in a gallery or museum in the world, where would you choose? I’m sure that for my career, choosing New York or LA would be wise, but I have always wanted to have a show in my hometown. In a town of eleven-thousand, there is definitely not a gallery, but I would love to go home and show all the people that I grew up that the experiences we shared together have served as the foundation for some really interesting art. And more than anyone, I think they would understand what I’ve set out to do.

In what period of your career did you feel most aware of the needs of your audience, if ever? Like a lot of people, I think that grad school really opened my mind to the endless possibilities of art. In my first solo show, all my pieces were on pedestals covered with acrylic vitrines. It was at my reception, as I watched people view my pieces that I realized I couldn’t continue to show such intimate artwork in such a cold, white-cube setting. So I began to work on a way to display my art that would allow viewers to be enveloped by an environment. In this space they could pick up and really examine the pieces that I created.

The art world right now is experiencing a newfound medium of exchanging information virtually. Do you think that this has affected the relevance of galleries, studios, and museums?

I still think that the formal settings are important, but online resources have just created a completely new level to the way that the world sees art. These resources allow more and more opinions to become public knowledge. The cliché image of a starving artist walking from gallery to gallery with a giant portfolio only to be rejected again and again is no longer the norm. There are so many alternative spaces and venues in which to show and talk about art.

Would you rather have your work well known in the art community or well understood in the general population? I don’t know that either is really important to me. I enjoy showing my work and talking with viewers about my pieces, but making the artwork is what’s most important to me. Even if I make a piece, give it to my parents and no one else sees it but my family, I’ve created something and made my idea into an object. That’s my goal.

Do you think this is the case because you are able to receive a stipend in other ways?

Maybe. Being solely a studio artist has never been a goal of mine. Like I mentioned before, I am passionate about making artwork, but I am also passionate about teaching and designing. I think I have a lot of talents and it's my goal to find a way to incorporate all of them into a life that I can be happy about.

Who are your artistic influences? Speaking in terms of fine art, I am really inspired by Tom Friedman, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Joseph Beuys, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Janine Antoni, Shepard Fairey and Dave Kinsey. But my influences definitely reach beyond art – movies, music, television and literature are super-important to me, too. One of my biggest influences is the show Roseanne. It reminds me so much of my own family. The dialog and the middle-class aesthetic all play a huge role in how I set up my spaces. Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is another favorite of mine that influenced my love of memory. I think often of the little objects that Boo would leave in the tree for Scout and Jem. That idea of collection is hugely influential.

What is it about your work that makes it different from these people and relevant in today’s society? My work is different because it is about my unique experience. We’ve all had embarrassing moments and pesky siblings, but I’m the only one who lived it in my shoes. I pass on these stories in my own voice and in my own visual way. I incorporate craft with design by using processes like sewing and quilting with digital mediums, too.

Its 2012 and as the Mayans predicted, the world ends. Every cultural link is destroyed, but luckily there are few survivors. You are among them and are selected to document our cultural past. What artifact/artwork would you choose to record first? For some reason all I can picture is that scene in The Fifth Element when Leeloo is watching the sped-up video of the history of the world. Anyway, I suppose I would begin by cataloging photographs – personal photos of families and events. Even though these photos might not be relevant to the whole of human history, the tangibility of those single objects would be of great comfort to me in a time of chaos and destruction.




* These are captions taken directly from Autumn's Facebook Album.