City of Boulder, CO Creative Neighborhoods Projects, 23 Jun 2021

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From YouTube: Artist Interview: Kathleen Johns

Description

Kathleen is conducting color study lessons over zoom for residents in her neighborhood. Lessons will be available for kids and adults and using coloring pages made from illustrations by the artist. After a session spent coloring and learning, participants will be encouraged to tape their work in their windows for the entire neighborhood to enjoy. Creative Neighborhoods: COVID-19 Work Projects was launched by the Office of Arts + Culture and Create Boulder: https://boulderarts.org/public-art/creative-neighborhoods/covid-19-work-projects/

A

um Hi, my name is kathleen spencer johns, I'm an artist in boulder. I do drawing painting in print making mostly I've taught extensively, and um I have produced coloring images and I'm working on a kids children's book.

A

Well, kobe 19 affected me in a lot of ways in order to keep my boat of flow. One of the things I do is airbnb, so that's been completely closed down. I have a major show that I am supposed to um have this coming december, but now it's on the maybe list.

A

It's a fundraising show for the taos pueblo senior center and I've been doing paintings and prints for this show and I've been working on this for about three years, and um you know it's not going to be a big money maker for me, because so much of the money will be going to the senior center to help the elders, but that is is a derailment and then residencies bend potential residencies get derailed um and then I'm I teach art, and so I had to close down my teaching studio and I've taken all my classes and I've created zoom classes.

A

So the project that I um came up with was one where I wanted to do, something where neighbors could get together in a non-threatening way and um do something creative, whether they were um an artist or a non-artist. And so I took some of my coloring images, which are all local landmarks.

A

You know um tom's tavern trident bookstore into the wind, you don't might not know any of these um and then I changed them and worked on them so that they would be in a different format, and I invited all the neighbors to participate in zoom meetings, where I would send ahead of time the pdf that they could print out and if they didn't have a printer.

A

I ran around with um copies to neighbors and we would just sit in color and chat in a hopefully a non-threatening connective way, and then we could show each other as we were going along and get excited about what other people were doing in their choice of color or in their um choice of medium or something of that nature.

A

And then, when it was over, the participants were asked to post their coloring page in their window, so that it would um again enliven visually the neighborhood and show that connection of participants.

A

Well, um what I'm excited about is that um it's starting to blossom to beyond this neighborhood as well, um but yet still um contained in in certain arenas. Bottom line, is if we eliminate the arts, we eliminate so much more than a pretty picture and art is really what connects us. All: music, theater, dance, visual arts, it's how we do connect and it's also how we stay peaceful, how we say, stay loving and how we stay honoring of our planet, each other and whatnot.

A

So I think it's really important for the arts and the artists to continue to find ways to reach out to pull people back into humanity.