KIM WHITT

Bio

Kim Whitt has enjoyed a lifetime involvement in the arts as an art student, art teacher, arts administrator and a practicing artist in dance, fiber/textiles, and painting. She holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and Dance from The University of Southern Mississippi with graduate studies in Process Pedagogy. She served as the Arts Education Director for the Mississippi Arts Commission and was a former Fellow Member of the Mississippi Craftsman’s Guild as a textile artist. Kim has been a practicing artist in weaving and painting for over 40 years and lives in Moselle with her husband, John, a retired stained-glass artist, at their Sweetwater Studios, Inc home. Currently Kim is a member of the Hattiesburg based, Women’s Art Collective, serves as the Director for the Mississippi Art Colony and spends her time painting and weaving in her studio. Whitt has shown her work statewide, won several awards and has been commissioned for painting and weaving. She and her husband have been featured artists on HGTV’s Home Town program and is represented by Caron Gallery in Tupelo and Laurel.

Artist Statement

My work is process based. Being a weaver and a painter, I have been working for several years to integrate the elements of weaving and painting into a new unified artform. I began by painting fiber reactive dye onto the warp threads on the loom before weaving them into cloth or structure. I have used this painted warp process for over 40 years in clothing and wall sculpture.  Some of the handwoven works in this show are painted warp, some are woven paintings, some painted weavings, some are just traditional woven hangings celebrating the texture of the medium and the art of handweaving. I am inspired by nature, our relationship to nature and the many lessons that nature teaches us.  I was introduced to pure powdered earth pigment and soy milk as the binding liquid and discovered a new relationship of pigments and unprimed cloth. I discovered this process created its own expression depending on many variables. It is a painterly language where there is control and the suspension of control that allows an image to appear by making deliberate choices, editing, and manipulating the image. Working with the contrast of harmony and disharmony, I seek harmony and a unified whole. Even in cases of being destroyed (cut or torn), there is hope through repair and mending for recovering harmony just as is in life.  After experiencing a significant loss in my life, I came across the following poem by Gwen Flowers and realized that this is a similar process an artist goes through when developing their true authentic voice – we absorb, adjust, accept and realize a new way of seeing, a new dimension of our work.

I had my own notion of grief.
I thought it was the sad time
That followed the death of someone you love.
And you had to push through it
To get to the other side.
But I’m learning there is no other side.
There is no pushing through.
But rather,
There is absorption.
Adjustment.
Acceptance.
And grief is not something you complete
But rather, you endure.
Grief is not a task to finish
And move on,
But an element of yourself –
An alteration of your being.
A new way of seeing.
A new dimension of self.

- Gwen Flowers