KIM-LEE KHO
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Give yourself butterflies in your stomach

11/6/2021

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Singing lessons have taken me somewhere new! Photo: ©Kim-Lee Kho 2021
So back in March, when my life felt like a five-alarm fire, I decided to take singing lessons.

It may sound counter-intuitive, but I needed a way to carve out some time for myself when I wouldn't (wouldn't even be able to) think about all the awful things that were going on.


​This was the period leading up to my father's death, and other equally serious things besides. So I was finally desperate enough to try anything, including something that, if I'm honest, I've wanted to do (thought I should do) for decades.

The reason I am so very, very glad I decided to learn this year is well, more than one reason, but including: the inherent joy of singing, including just playing with your voice in vocal exercises; being a beginner again, which has its own joys including the constant state of discovery; and how totally it absorbs my attention, whether in class or during practice sessions.

Singing gets harder as you learn more about how to do it, because as with any skill-based activity or art you start to realize how little you knew! And that is a gift.

Do something good for yourself:

​Start something that gives you butterflies in your stomach when you think about it.

For anyone who's interested, my teacher's name is Heather Christine, and she can be found via her website (she doesn't even know I'm writing this, I'll tell her later!).
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Podcast Interview: Not Just a Couple of Artists...

10/29/2021

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...But also an artist couple!
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Kal Honey (my creative and life partner of many years) and I were interviewed for episode 9 of Art Conversations with Lisa Jayne Irvine.

Lisa was keen to know about our experiences as an artist couple, from how we met, to our collaborations as designers, to how we navigate being on the same career path as artists and art instructors.

It was so much fun to do (Kal and I love talking and working together), and Lisa (who is a fellow artist and a friend) is such a relaxed host.

​Please have a listen, and let us know what you think. The feedback we've had so far has been amazing, so there's a good chance you'll really enjoy it!

 The episode is available now, on Apple podcasts, Spotify and other podcast platforms. 
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My New Colour Diary

10/12/2020

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Day 05
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Day 10
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Day 07
Back in 2010 I gave my second ever presentation as an artist-speaker, called Daily Practices for Artists, looking at the tremendous value they have for our creativity and our “real” work, the forms they can take, how to figure out one that is both appealing and suits your circumstances.

So recently I decided to take my own advice (haha)... again.

I revived an old, not-quite-daily practice from 2009, my Colour Diary. Over the course of ~100 installments, I mixed and painted maybe 1,000 or more colours, into stripes of various widths. 

The original project evolved over time, and ultimately changed me. I never looked at colour the same way again. I was never as limited in my colour thinking (or colour experience) as I was before the Colour Diary.

Each page was improvised. I would begin with a starting point – one day it was the colour of the peanut butter I’d looked at over breakfast – and then respond. 

They also became composed paintings in that I would not work left to right, I would decide on a position and width (they were always vertical stripes on a horizontal piece of water-colour paper, of identical size each time), and both respond to the colours already mixed and applied and to the relative sizes and positions.

Occasionally I would play specific formal colour games, whether out of curiosity or because I didn’t feel inventive enough that day.​

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Day 21
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Part of the collection
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Day 27
Coming back to the New Colour Diary (or Covid Colour Diary), it was an appealing idea to return to it, to play almost entirely with colour again.

Life has been very demanding, between the pandemic situation, the resulting overhaul of our (my husband’s and my) business(es), family medical crises, personal health issues and on and on.

All of that has made time for studio practice difficult and irregular, but it is essential to my well-being, never mind my professional practice! A bite-sized daily practice is exactly what circumstances demanded.

My first change to the original project was to make it digital, so it would be a manageable time commitment for me. Then as soon as I thought that, I knew I wanted to give it a dedicated Instagram account, to share it with the world, or at least that tiny part of the world that either knows or stumbles across me.

So that is where you will find me, posting these little colour meditations, every day whenever possible. My first goal is 100 days, as in #100daysofcolour, and then we’ll see after that.

You can visit it here (even without an Instagram account): 
​https://www.instagram.com/kims.colour.diary/

​Just click on an image to see it larger.

If you have any trouble viewing it there, I have a Flickr album as well, though I do not update it daily:
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmR7BVqf

I hope you will check it out, and that you’ll enjoy it!
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My Online Studio Visit with Arts Etobicoke in August

9/14/2020

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This summer Arts Etobicoke was kind enough to ask me to hold an online studio visit with them via Instagram Live.

After months of lockdown it felt like another way to connect up with people and community online, much like my Virtual Studio Parties, and Kal Honey's Virtual Collage Jams (which I co-host).

Studio visits are fun, in fact I love seeing the insides of other artists' studios, what kind of space they have, how they work in them, how they organize them and so on. Not to mention what they are working on in there!

So you'll get to see some of all of those things in my video, which is on Arts Etobicoke's Instagram account.

​Here is a direct link: www.instagram.com/p/CDeniKDpkrE/

It's almost exactly an hour long. In it you'll get a peek at some experiments, a longtime hobby of mine, the view out my windows, what my painting table looks like and plenty more. Plus I answer some questions from attendees.

While not yet up on their website or YouTube channel, I'm sure it will be sometime this fall, and I will update the link in this post once that happens.

​I hope you enjoy it! Please let me know in the comments if you would like to see more.

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Virtual Studio Parties, Fall Term & the Coming Weeks

8/11/2020

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DATE CHANGE:
Virtual Studio Party will return two weeks later,
on Saturday, October 3 at 2pm.

My co-host Kal Honey and I are taking a break from some of our work responsibilities for several weeks, including the Virtual Studio Parties, free weekly creative events on my YouTube channel, that have seen us through the first few months of the pandemic.

It has become something that we, and numerous regular attendees, have come to treasure, for the creative time, the conversation, and for the community experience.

While we are on hiatus, there is a YouTube playlist of 24 videos available on my channel from past parties. They are there for you to enjoy whenever you feel the need for some creative time with friendly company, in the comfort of your home (or at this time of year, possibly your cottage).

Here is the link: https://bit.ly/31HtbOm

Meanwhile, in the coming weeks, you can expect more posts here in the blog, and updates in the Teaching+ menu above, in my Online Offerings.

I've got my Fall term planned out so I'm busy writing and making web pages for each of the courses I will be offering. Some of them are up already with everything but the materials lists, which I'll post in late August.

UPDATE: All of my Fall courses are up on the website now!
Click here to see what's available.

Finally, if you haven't made it to one of our Virtual Studio Parties yet, I hope you can make some space in your week to attend one live on a Saturday afternoon this Fall, or else by watching or listening to a replay. And if you know anyone else who might enjoy it, please share the link with them.

Creative time, creative community, a friendly artist making things – and it's free! What's not to love? I hope you'll join us!


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Spring: The Perfect Season to Contemplate Growth & Not-Knowing

4/12/2020

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The realm of not-knowing is
a great place for an artist to be, because what we already know
​we can no longer discover.

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'Spring Returns' photo-digital artwork by Kim-Lee Kho, 2017.
As I re-build my business, not quite from the ground up, (the foundation remains, but the structures above must be replaced), I find I am spending a lot of time in the realm of not-knowing.

Life under pandemic has changed our rhythms and routines, our customary locations, and how we spend our time. My husband and I (but especially him) used to spend way too much time driving from place to place, because our work was in-person but also in a variety of locations.

Now by building up our tech and online skills, there is so much new and in flux but so much less by way of complications and travel. We just have to adjust to frequently re-arranging our home and studio to accommodate all the new virtual events and courses.

But looking deeper than that, I realize I am accustomed to spending a lot of time in that place of not-knowing, whether I'm developing new work for an exhibition, or at an earlier stage even, when I am excavating in order to discover new ideas in my studio, it is imperative that I enter that psychological space, or I will not get to what matters or what's new. Neither I nor my work would grow.

Other artists may work differently, but I think most have to work like that at some level, (and not just artists either!) or they would not make discoveries. And without locating something new, something fresh, where would art be? It would not move forward, nor would it deepen.

Spring is a season of the new: new growth, new life. And as this weekend is one of sacred spring festivals, Passover and Easter, it may be the perfect time to contemplate this.

​Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
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Life in a Pandemic: Anxious Times

3/26/2020

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This is a time for hearts,
for big hearts, growing hearts,
open hearts.

Hearts too big to fit into this picture.


​Let’s take good care of everyone,
​including ourselves.
Life during a pandemic, even in countries like Canada which is still in the early stages, is full of anxiety. We're thrown off balance so we have trouble finding our footing. It's like the ground keeps moving.

It's not just that we are having to learn new practices to stay healthy, it's also the fact that the situation is constantly changing, close at hand, and around the world.


Some people have reached out to me, each experiencing some degree of distress. Some are experiencing a lot of fear – of the virus, for the future – and the 24/7 news cycle has become a vortex that infects us with fear.

There are others for whom the loss of normalcy, the rhythms and routines of their ordinary life, is the biggest issue. Losing so much so suddenly, they find themselves wading through grief for their life pre-pandemic. The suddenness can hit us hard.

I have been fortunate in finding meaning and purpose in the new things I have taken on, directly in response to the crisis, to help people get through the isolation and disquiet, and doing that has given me a little comfort. 
Before I tell you about that though, I want to share with you some thoughts I wrote to someone who needed help and emotional support through her distress at feeling unable to focus, unable to work, unable to settle. I feel it too. So many of us do, even if not all the time. So here is what I would like to say to you:

Nothing is normal right now. Nothing. So be gentle on yourself for not being able to work, and for feeling scattered. That is a natural response to feeling the anxiety of our crisis situation and even trauma and grief at the loss of normality.

We humans adapt to amazing things but to stay healthy in the full sense it is important to do gentle things that nourish, calm and ground you. That will ease the transition to the new normal, and you will feel better for it. 

Activities that get you focused on your body are especially beneficial: movement of any kind and focusing on your senses instead of your thoughts whenever you can, or for part of each day.

Do something with your hands, go outside for a walk if you are healthy (and keep your distance from others). Above all, have patience with yourself and those around you... even for the times that you – or they – lose patience :-)

.  .  .  .  .

On March 20, I started holding Virtual Studio Parties online, via YouTube livestream so that anyone with high-speed internet, no matter how unconfident with their computer, could take part.

It’s a no-cost creative gathering for anyone who’s missing the experience of community, is feeling isolated or anxious, or wants to have some gentle fun in the real-time, virtual, company of others.

People have said it's really helped them and it's something they look forward to now.

If this sounds like it might help you, or just be fun, visit my Virtual Studio Parties page.

​Do you have a suggestion for self-care during stressful times? Please share in the comments.
​
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'Hearts in Place': My Installation at In Situ 2018, Part One

11/30/2018

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'Hearts in Place', my room installation at the 2018 In Situ Festival. Most of the room is shown, but you can't see what's at the back centre, behind the "veined" panels, nor what's behind me as I photographed this. All artwork: Kim-Lee Kho, this photo: Kim-Lee Kho
Part two of this blog series is up!
​To go directly to it, click here.


The 2018 In Situ multi-arts festival took place November 8–10 at the Small Arms Inspection Building (a former WWII munitions factory now partially refurbished as a creative hub) in Mississauga, Ontario.

'Hearts in Place' was a whole-room installation comprised of: ten 7-foot high scrolls, eight of which were transfer-printed (a hand-pulled process), two were hand-painted; two paper-and-fibre "veined" panels (centre); two veiling textile panels; one built-onsite sculpture/assemblage which you can see a sliver of light from at the centre of this photo; and the wall behind me as I photographed the room panorama was a mural drawing which I drew a portion of as a live performance each of the three evenings of the festival.

Like the first In Situ festival in 2016, this was an extraordinary experience and a creative high, but with the benefit of central heating and running water!

I am still exhausted from the experience of preparing all of this new work, performing and then taking it all down just days later. As a result I will keep this entry shorter than I might have, but will share with you some photographs. Thanks go to the numerous – generous – photographers and friends, (all credited individually), who made this possible, documenting when I could not.

​Many thanks to the many people who came out to experience the festival and visited my room! If you were there, please let me know what you thought in the comments below.
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Photo: Kim-Lee Kho 2018
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Photo: Jennifer Vong
Kim-Lee Kho stands in front of a 8-foot whimsical heart sculpture made of rope lights, curving silver tubes, metal mesh and tree branches, and next to a very large close up of a face, backlit.
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Hearts in Place installation artwork by Kim-Lee Kho, 2018. Photo (left): Sandra Robson, photo (above): Kal Honey.
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Photo: Gabriella Bank from Sanborg Productions Inc
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Photo: Elaine Whittaker
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Photo: David Ahn
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Photo: David Ahn
4 Comments

To Find a Wonderful Idea, You Have to Get into the Sandbox

9/29/2018

1 Comment

 
OK Go is a band that does extraordinarily creative, innovative and powerful visual music videos like no one else – they are art forms in and of themselves. They pull off incredible feats without relying on the magic of digital effects, what you see always happened in real life and in real time.

Seriously, you need to check these videos out, no matter what your musical preferences are, those won't matter at all. Here are some I recommend (titles are links):
  • Rube Goldberg Machine (This Too Shall Pass)
  • Musical Obstacle Course (Needing/Getting)
  • Zero Gravity (Upside Down & Inside Out)
  • The One Moment (incredible synced slow motion)
​
What these videos show is that these guys are masters at finding ideas. Extraordinary ideas. They also obviously have an amazing team and a considerable budget to pull them off, but plenty of uninteresting ideas have that and get made.

Below is a TED Talk they gave on "How to Find a Wonderful Idea". They point out that the usual approach of sitting in your chair (or other favourite thinking spot) and dreaming up an idea, then planning and polishing it before executing it is missing a vital step: the "sandbox" – that place where you play and discover or unearth your real idea, the wonderful one that the preliminary idea (which leads you to where the sandbox is) was just the seed for.
This feels so relevant to me right now as I work to prepare a big new room installation for the In Situ multi-arts Festival at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga. Click here for more info in my News section.

I had an idea for the installation but did not get the grant that would fund it. So now I am in my sandbox discovering the new form(s) it will take, and hoping that in the course of my tests, experiments and discovery process, I will unearth that wonderful idea...

​...the one that is waiting for me to find it.
Hands shown palms open and up, above a painting table, with lots of paint on them
Getting your hands dirty is a vital part of finding your next wonderful idea. Photo: Kim-Lee Kho
Have you unearthed some of your own wonderful ideas in a sandbox of some type? What's your favourite sandbox? If you haven't tried it, where could you start? Let me know in the comments below!
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Whether Art or Ornament, the Universal Fascination of Miniatures

8/20/2017

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Whether you have a long-dormant love of model railroads or can't resist dollhouses and their tiny furnishings, you're far from alone in loving miniatures. I grew up with my own dollhouse made of printed steel, but rather jealous of my cousin who had a big table in his basement devoted to his model railroad, set in a landscape he'd made and populated by exquisitely detailed buildings and street scenes.

A couple of years ago in pursuit of materials for some miniature projects (still on the drawing board) I visited, on my friend Fred's recommendation, The Credit Valley Railway Company, a truly amazing place with aisle upon aisle of trains, other vehicles, and buildings of different eras, human figures, street furniture, vegetation – even different kinds of grasses! Investigating those aisles was such an engrossing way to spend a couple of afternoons.

Plenty of artists love miniatures, miniature painting is quite a tradition, particularly in south Asia and Iran to my knowledge, but some artists either create dimensional miniatures or use the kind I drooled over at the store as their raw material.

Sculptor Kim Adams, 2014 winner of a Governor General's Award in Visual Art (click to view his award page), is one such artist whose work I particularly admire. His elaborate installations a few years ago at the Art Gallery of Ontario (click to view a slideshow from that work) were fascinating.
What got me thinking about this topic recently was an article in The Guardian about sculptor/miniature artist Randy Hage who has done a whole series in which he has re-created old New York City storefronts with amazing detail, right down to the litter, the papered-over windows and the inevitable graffiti.

​On his site (click to link to it) you can see side-by-side comparison photos of the shot he took of the actual storefront and his 1/12 scale miniature. Beautiful work! Below is a time-lapse as he makes one storefront “Ideal Hosiery”.
Finally there's an epic miniature museum project in Mississauga/Oakville called Our Home & Miniature Land where they are painstakingly re-creating Canada in miniature, starting with Toronto and Hamilton. Click here or on their name to check out their site. The project is not complete yet, though they have had a public open house, but the videos of their progress are amazing! Below are a couple of samples to whet your appetite. I can't wait to see it all in person!
How about you? Are you a miniatures geek whether secretly or proudly? Did you have a dollhouse or model railroad when you were growing up, or make other kinds of models?

​If so, please tell me about them in the comments below!
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    Kim-Lee Kho

    As a visual artist I like nothing more than getting up to my elbows in paint or little plastic toys, or wading in at the deep end in pursuit of an idea. When I am not teaching others in a similar vein, you can find me researching, writing and noodling around in my studio, seeing where my latest lines of inquiry lead me.

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  • Home
  • Gallery
    • Burnt Offerings (2022) >
      • Sponsors: Thank you
    • My Father's Things (series)
    • Heartspace
    • A Full Heart
    • Subject to Limitation >
      • Boxed In
      • Expanding Media
      • Fences as Barriers
      • Containment
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    • [Un]Settled
    • Digital / Photo / Mixed
    • Painting
    • To See More
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