Kristy Hughes

BIO

Kristy Hughes is an artist, educator, and current 2021-22 Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. She has an MFA from Indiana University and her MA and BA from Eastern Illinois University. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings, Friend of the Artist, and Execute Magazine, among others. Kristy is a recipient of residencies at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, The Studios at MASS MoCA, a full fellowship at Vermont Studio Center, Liquitex Residency at Residency Unlimited, and ChaNorth Artist Residency. She is the Residency Coordinator for the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency by Collar Works and will be a Lecturer at the University of Vermont in Burlington, starting Fall 2023.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I make sculptures about empowerment, the potential for change, and unabashedly occupying space. The playful forms, bold colors, and piecemealed compositions are an embodiment of sureness and being unapologetic. A representation of my own search for agency and autonomy, the work is a deliberate push-back to our patriarchal capitalistic society.

The final forms and patterns of each piece are an honoring of small moments, a ritual of creating space for their humor and delight, while also acknowledging their seriousness. They’re a celebration of a moth’s black, white, and red patterning, a nod to a watermelon print shirt, a repetition of lines reminiscent of a Laffy Taffy, a totem to my rock collection and New Mexico sunsets. There is freedom in acknowledging smallness. There is empowerment in being serious about joy.

Having been in the position of feeling voiceless and unseen, I make this work to honor myself and others who have also felt this way. It’s a declaration of agency, a statement that small is significant. It’s a revolt against systems and people who say otherwise.

Interview with Kristy Hughes

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist?

I took my first art class in college and didn’t see a museum or gallery until right after I graduated. I always drew and made things as a kid, but didn’t know anything about art in a larger sense. It just wasn’t part of my family’s world, and I had always lived in rural spaces, far away from the resources or knowledge of art spaces.

I took Drawing I in college as an escape from my biology-track classes. I had no idea there were drawing pencils or special types of drawing paper, so I felt a little embarrassed and out of place, but I really enjoyed it. Then I took Printmaking and the rest is kind of history. A Printmaking studio is like a science laboratory, so I felt right at home. I eventually switched my major late in my Jr. year, then went to graduate school for Printmaking. After graduate school, I remember making a decisive choice to keep making art, to be an artist, regardless of success or external validation. I owe everything to my first printmaking professor Denise Rehm-Mott. She opened up the world of art to me.

Can you tell us about some of your most memorable early influences?

Libraries! Libraries nourished me all through childhood and today. bell hooks, Octavia E. Butler, Aude Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Susan Sontag changed my life. There have been so many times that a line from one of these authors shifted how I think and then how I see and interact with the world around me. It’s that same feeling I get in the studio when I know I’ve landed on a good idea, or when a sculpture or painting really starts to come together. Even if it’s subtle, I can feel a shift in the way I approach my work. It’s the same feeling/reaction I had when I saw my first Käthe Kollwitz in real life.

Where are you currently based and what brought you there? Are there any aspects of this specific location or community that have inspired your work?

Right now I’m sitting in my studio at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. I’m a ‘22-’23 Fellow and living a dreamy 7-month residency life. My cohort of visual artists and writers have been an absolute gift to be around. Being in Provincetown during the winter has quieted my interior mental frazzle. This is the beauty of residencies, the real world kind of fades away and I can hyper focus in my studio. After this, I’ll be moving to Burlington, VT where I’ll be teaching at the University of Vermont.

What is your studio space like? What makes your space unique to you?

My studio at FAWC is a large rectangle with great cement floors and big doors in the back that open to an outside area, where I can sand or do other processes that are best done outside. My studio is one of 12 in the building where the other fellows are set up, with a gallery, common space, and a print shop. This is one of the largest studios I’ve worked in, so I’m taking advantage of the space and have been making really big pieces. I’ve also returned to printmaking a bit, having a shop so close. I’ve started collaging monotypes into my sculptures and paintings. I’m really excited to circle back to something that led me to where I am today.

What’s unique about this space is that I’m surrounded by the other fellows here, and I can run up to their studio to borrow a book, have them down for a quick critique, or text to go on a walk. It’s the best.

What is a typical day like? If you don't have a typical day, what is an ideal day?

Right now I am living an ideal situation, and this is definitely not normal life (usually I work a full-time teaching job). During my residency at the Fine Arts Work Center, I’ve gotten into a great routine. I get up at 6:30 and go to the studio until around 8. I drink some coffee and look at the work, write, or do a bit of painting. I go back to my apartment, have more coffee and breakfast with my partner, who was able to come here with me. Then, I’m in the studio again from 10-7pm or so, with breaks for lunch and maybe a little walk, or a trip to the local thrift store Ruthie’s down the street. It’s so ideal I can’t believe it’s real life right now. Reality will hit hard after my residency is over. When I’m in my normal routine, I have one full day of studio on the weekend, usually on Saturdays, and carve 15 mins to an hour each day between my teaching schedule during the week. I always make any breaks away from school, such as Spring Break or Winter Break, into an ultimate studio zone.

What gets you in a creative groove or flow? Is there anything that interrupts your creative energy?

I love working in complete silence, especially early in the morning. It’s when I organize my thoughts, write, and sketch. This gets me going for the day. Then, when it comes down to the work of it all, I usually listen to podcasts to keep me company. One of my faves right now is Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso. Beyoncé’s Renaissance always gets me going too if I’m not in a podcast mood. Regardless, I’m a big believer in showing up and working whether if I feel like it or not. The work itself typically leads to flow. News can interrupt it all; I make sure not to look at my phone too much while I’m in my studio, especially at any news. It’s usually such a bummer and then it’s hard to jump back in.

How do you maintain momentum in your practice?

Keep on keeping on. I think about my practice as a life-long marathon. When I’m down or feel spent, I try to zoom out to the whole picture. You need rest days and the lull… ha! I’m laughing at myself right now because I hate these types of days. My favorite days are when I’m fully in it all. But, I completely know that the other days are part of it too. Keeping momentum includes the acknowledging that days away from the studio are also part of it. For me, it’s how I frame the whole picture, as a life-long practice and pursuit.

What medium/media are you working in right now? What draws you to this particular material or method?

I make sculptures and paintings, and I use collage in both. The sculptures are very painterly and are made from insulation foam coated with fiberglass, joint compound, and sometimes epoxy resin. I use these materials because I can work and build intuitively and they are fairly light. I can also carve into the sculptural structure, to embed objects into the surface. I use acrylic and house paint for both the sculptures and paintings. I love the immediacy of acrylic, its quick layering capabilities. Collage has always been an integral part of my work too, starting from my printmaking days, with a method called chine collé. Printmaking is dependent on knowing and thinking through layers. I consider layers and shallow space a lot when I paint and make sculptures.

Can you walk us through your overall process in making your current work? Does drawing play a role in your process?

I start each sculpture with a sketch. I sketch by making a collage, painting, or with a pen drawing. I think a lot about color and shape, and I write down a general idea of what I’m after. Sometimes this is a direct quote from something I’m reading, other times is a sentence or word. No seed of an idea is too small.

Once I have a sketch I’m happy with, I start making the form, and fabrication station begins. I use insulation boards that I’ve collected from construction sites, along with cardboard, to build the forms. I have a heavy-duty foam cutter that is a recent purchase and a game changer. I glue and screw the shapes together, forming a puzzle of sorts. The hardest part, besides the composition, is to figure out balance, gravity, and weight. I try to make modular works so that I can take them apart easily and can pack and ship without crating a ginormous piece. Often the form changes as I make it and react to it in real time. My work is never exactly like my sketches; the sketch is really just the impetus. After the form is made and I’m happy with the composition, I coat it with fiberglass, using a joint compound and glue mixture. This typically takes a few days. After this part is done, I sand it and put a layer of primer down, switching into painting mode. I typically do a big clean of the studio before I paint. I use acrylic and house paint, and coat some layers with epoxy resin if I want a high gloss.

What is exciting about your process currently?

Teresita Fernandez said, “in many ways making art is like blindly trying to see the shape of what you don’t know yet.” I love this and completely agree. I never know exactly how my work will turn out or what it will be, until I do it, until it happens. It can be frustrating of course, but it is absolutely gratifying when the work becomes what it needs to be. I love being surprised by my work, figuring things out about myself as I make it, pushing past my own expectations. My process definitely facilitates a space of chasing after an unknown; it opens me up to surprise and I learn from the near misses, the failures along the way. This keeps me curious and excited—each piece and each day in the studio holds its own unexpected potential.

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work over time? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future?

I started making sculptures as a way to teach myself to take up space, to reclaim agency for myself, and to work through ideas of empowerment. I think about portals/circles a lot, as a symbol for the potential to change. Gratitude comes into my work often too. Many pieces are “thank you love letters” to people or ideas that have fundamentally shifted my perception. Another concept that is threaded throughout my work is hope. I recently listened to a great interview between Sam Fragoso from Talk Easy podcast and Hilton Als. Hilton Als has this gorgeous quote from a commencement speech he gave, “you walk proudly into your sunlit hope, ghosts and all.” I’m really interested in what the imagery of holding hope could be, while also being present with the past and reality. adrienne maree brown’s book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds is about working with and facilitating change. Her book has been a cornerstone to what conceptually drives my work, along with Octavia Butler’s book Parable of the Sower.

I am intrigued about working with public art—to see my work completely outside of a gallery setting, how the change of size and scale would affect the work, and its interaction with people in a completely different capacity. I’ve started applying to a few public art calls.

Do you pursue any collaborations, projects, or careers in addition to your studio practice? If so, can you tell us more about those projects, and are there connections between your studio practice and these endeavors?

I am the residency coordinator for the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency by Collar Works. This means that most summers I live and work at Elizabeth Murray’s farm in upstate NY, helping run the summer residency program. During the offseason I do a lot of the administration/email work of it too. Each summer I meet incredible artists and writers who quickly become life-long friends. I deeply value the community that EMAR has built and it is such a gift to be part of this. Also, it’s pretty dreamy living and working in the space of one of my all time favorite artists and heroes, Elizabeth Murray. I mean… come on.

I also teach and this informs my work and practice so much. I constantly learn and expand my world through teaching, my mind blown away by my students each semester. A lot of folks are pessimistic about our future, and rightly so, but teaching and working with students actually does give me hope.

Being an artist is so much about how we live in the world, how we contribute to each other and build the spaces, communities, and therefore the futures we hope for. All of these things—residency coordinating, teaching, and studio are all interconnected. They inform and nurture one another.

Have you had any epiphanies recently that have changed the course of your work or caused you to shift directions?

I’ve started embedding objects and notes into my work, both inside the sculptures themselves and on the surfaces. I am very intentional about the work that I make and each one starts from a specific idea; the impetus is always something particular. To underscore this intentionality, I’ve started writing down quotes on paper, thoughts, and ideas of what I’m thinking about for the specific work, placing the notes inside the layers of the sculpture. This for me is like setting the foundation for the piece, even if the work’s meaning changes as it progresses. I also embed found objects from my environment in the surface of the work. Some recent examples are rocks, driftwood, and bits of string or clay shards I’ve found in my immediate surroundings. This ties the work to a place, which is important for me while I make it.

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music—that are important to you?

Lately I keep returning to Michelle Segre’s work, especially the pieces in her show Night Chorus last year at Derek Eller Gallery. Oof, they are dynamite. One of my favorites of hers is from 2017, “Dawn of the Looney Tune.” I think it’s absolutely perfect. She uses carrots in this piece. In other works she suspends mushrooms or builds sculptures using bread. It’s so unexpected and such a genius compositional move. She’s one of the many artists who continually give me “permission” to follow whatever the work needs, no matter how wacky it may seem.

I recently read an interview with Maya Angelou in the Paris Review from 1988. It was one of those quotes where your mind’s jaw drops and your whole world kind of comes to a halt. She said, “But the truth is you can never leave home. You take it with you—it’s under your fingernails; it’s in the hair follicles; it's in the way you smile; it’s in the ride of your hips; in the passage of your breasts; it’s all there, no matter where you go…home is between your teeth.”

I can’t stop thinking about “home is between your teeth.” Three of my recent sculptures have come from this.

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? What are the best exhibitions you’ve seen in recent memory and why do they stand out?

Michelle Segre, Phyllida Barlow, Helen O’Leary, Ernesto Burgos, Vincent Fecteau, Lee Bontecou, and Elizabeth Murray come to mind right away.

It was kind of a while ago, but I saw Agnes Martin’s retrospective at the Guggenheim. It was the most powerful show I’ve seen, mostly because her writing and work have been so incredibly informative for me. My partner and I even quoted an Agnes Martin poem in our wedding vows. Art changes your life; Agnes Martin’s work and words changed mine and it was a gift to see her work together like that.

I also saw a Helen O’Leary show at the Bangor Museum of Art in Bangor, Maine a few years back too. I love her work. I love the piecemealed-ness of it all. She is a compositional beast. Seeing her range of bigger works that leaned up against the wall, next to table-top pieces, all of them were so good and made perfect sense together. That show kept me going for a long time afterward.

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?

Lately, I keep coming back to something my friend and brilliant artist Mark Thomas Gibson said a few years ago while we were at the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency together. It’s simple, but we were talking about how detrimental it is to, as he put it, “compare and despair.” When I catch myself comparing and despairing, I am reminded of our conversation and how an absolute waste of time and energy this is. Art isn’t a competition, it’s a life’s pursuit.

My dear friend Georgia Dickie, a dynamite sculptor who is also a fellow at FAWC, sent me a classic David Bowie interview only a few weeks after we met. I hadn’t thought of it for a long time and it was such a perfect reminder. One part that is particularly good—Bowie says, “ If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth, and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you?

I have one month left of my fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. I’ve started one last big sculpture (about 10 ft tall) and one more wall piece. I have a solo show at the Sculpture Center in Cleveland, OH in July that I’m working towards.

Anything else you would like to share?

This quote by Susan Sontag from her book Against Interpretation is always a good one to come back to. “A work of art encountered as a work of art is an experience, not a statement or an answer to a question. Art is not only about something: it is something. A work of art is a thing in the world, not just a text or commentary on the world.”

Thank you so much for sharing your work with us!

Thank you so much for allowing me to share! I loved answering these questions and I’m so excited to see it all come together. It’s an honor to be included in Maake Magazine!!

To find out more about Kristy Hughes check her out on Instagram or on her website.