Artist’s Profile – Allison Keim

by | Feb 7, 2016 | Allison Keim | 2 comments

5:22 AM, February 5th, 2016

Allison is up early. I can tell because she has answered my message from the night before asking if we are still on for today. The time she answers is 5:22 am.  I am up at about 5:25 am and see her response.  An early bird like me. That’s cool.

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I always wonder what people do who get up that early. I know what I do: coffee making, exercise doing (sometimes), dog feeding, contest entering, kitchen cleaning, art making, news reading.  But others? I usually think they are doing more momentous things.  Some out of this world exercise routine that lasts for an hour and sculpts them into Greek Gods and Goddesses maybe?  Perhaps they are making every meal for every person in their house for the entire week.  Or they could be answering the 200 international emails from overnight, solving world problems and arranging to solve more.

Is Allison doing any of those things? I decided to ask. She doesn’t answer. Maybe she is busy doing one of those epic things I mentioned or maybe she went back to bed like I am inclined to do.

1:36pm, May 20th, 2015

Instead I decide to look through the photos I took the first time we met.  It was at Philbrook Museum of Art here in Tulsa, Oklahoma in May of 2015. She worked there at the time. I had decided to do some blog profiles of local artists and she was one of the more interesting I had come across. She was a curator, a single mom, and an artist with a distinct style.

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Allison and me at ‘La Villa’, the restaurant at Philbrook Museum of Art

She had just changed jobs from being an preparator (someone who gets the artwork and gallery space ready for exhibition) to being a fundraiser. Even though both jobs are in the same museum, it’s like going from being a blue collar warehouse worker to a white collar office worker. It’s going from jeans and tool belts to dresses and high heels.  She talks extensively about the transition, how her background and her heart prepared her to be a preparator and fundraising is a brand new challenge tapping into a whole new range of skills she has or needs to acquire. It’s a challenge but very interesting and exciting.

We talked extensively about a very difficult childhood. It’s one that scarred her but also, maybe because of, maybe in spite of, instilled in her a unflappable vision of who she is and an equally fierce determination of who she wants to become.

This is evident by her current situation. She is a full-time worker, a full-time mother to 2 young children and a part-time artist whose bedroom doubles as her studio.  She is not making any excuses. She is an artist and she is going to be one, even if that means she paints in her small bedroom.

While we were there we walked around the museum. I asked her which art piece was her favorite and she led me here.  This is her very favorite piece of art in the entire world.

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Allison with Milton Avery’s ‘Child with Doll’

Here is a better view of it.

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Child with Doll, 1944 – oil on canvas – Milton Avery

It resonates with her deeply on many levels.  For her it’s more than a child and doll.  It’s a mother and child, it’s love, it’s family, it’s emotion in art. It’s always an honor to have someone show me their favorite piece of art, something profound and sacred about it for me.

Our plan was to meet up again at her studio to take a look at her work and finish up the interview. That doesn’t happen for a variety of reasons. I moved on to other projects and she did as well.

9:05pm, January 29th, 2016

Fast forward 7+ months and she contacts me saying she is no longer at Philbrook and is wondering if I want to meet again and update the interview. She is now a full-time artist she says. I really want to hear how this came about and get a chance to see her artwork. We plan to meet in a week.

5:25am, February 5th, 2016

 Ah, she responds to my question about getting up early.
“I’ve always been a morning person, but when I’m in a super creative space, I am motivated to get up and get at it! This morning I’ve been reading a feminist blog I follow, doing some religious research, and was getting ready to start yoga but both of my sweet babies just crashed my bed!!!!!”
So, basically she was doing epic stuff.

10:08am, February 5th, 2016

 I call her, lost.  After having picked up her Soy Latte and my Caffe Mocha I have trusted my GPS and am now facing a ditch digger in an apartment driveway. I tell her I am facing the ditch digger.  She kindly directs me to her apartment, which is in a different complex seemingly unknown to google maps, where I can see her waving from her 3rd floor balcony. Success!
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We sit and catch up for a while. She is no longer at Philbrook. She took a giant leap of faith 3 month prior, after she got a very sizable commission for a painting, and left her employer to become a full-time artist.  I am intrigued and want to know more about this.
 
Philbrook is an incredible museum. She was honored to work there.  And she tried as hard as she could, but she hated being a fundraiser. It was causing her a crazy amount of stress, so much so she was being adversely affected physically and psychologically.  She had to talk to someone about it and through that counseling was able to get a clearer idea of what was actually happening.  What was happening? She was doing what others wanted, not what she wanted.  She was fulfilling someone else’s dream of being a respected insider patron of the arts, with all the prestige and glamour that went along with it.
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Philbrook at Sunset

We all do some things because other people want us to, but when it is your entire life you are designing for someone else instead of yourself, it quickly can become toxic and dangerous to your well-being.  That is what was happening to her and it had come to a breaking point.  She took a leave of absence to figure things out and finally, when a large commission made it feasible, she made the break towards the end of 2015.  All she wanted to do was paint.
12:22 pm, February 5th, 2016
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When someone makes a change this dramatic it is usually followed by other changes. And she made some serious changes. Changes like cutting her hair and going back to her natural hair color, becoming a more committed feminist, growing deeper in her religious beliefs and practices, and becoming an entrepreneurial artist/business woman.  Three of those things it seemed she just naturally gravitated towards with her new found freedom. But the third, being both an artist and a business woman, was gravitation by necessity. She was now going to have to make her living as an artist, no fall back job, no fall back paycheck, no fall back, period.  Scary.  And exhilarating.

And where is she doing this painting? In her bedroom. In her small bedroom. On large canvases much taller than her and bigger than her bed.  

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And that is where she is now.  She is in her studio. A studio that happens to have a soft horizontal surface with warm blankets where she can sleep.  But where it is doesn’t matter. What matters is she is doing it. She is doing commissions, having exhibitions, hustling to make her dream come true.  She is making art.

She paints in a very free expressionist style. If she is not doing a commission then she is not planning a canvas out in advance.  She goes with what moves her. In this case she has a canvas that was given to her by her grandmother, also an artist, who is moving to Florida.  The canvas had already been worked and so there are considerations. How much does she keep, how much does she cover?  There is a extra layer of canvas her grandmother has put over the top 5th of the canvas. What to do with that?  There are horizontal lines drawn in pencil. Does she use those or get rid of them?  This is the same grandmother who really wanted her to have that job as a fundraiser more than Allison did.  
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This is not easy. The canvas is filled with emotion, memory and heritage even before she starts.  She is filled with fight, self-determination, independence, rebellion, hesitancy.  She is confronted.

She decides to do what she has set her sails to do. She is going on her journey, not her grandmother’s. She grabs the white paint, stuck shut, and uses all her strength to open it.

Then she makes her move.  

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During my visit we did a periscope live video interview where Allison tells about her life and her art.  Here it is.

 

If you would like to find out more about Allison and her art, perhaps purchase a piece or commission her to create something for you,  you can find her at her website http://allisonkeim.com

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© 2016 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com