Out from Out Where: Beyond Liminality by Kid.Be in Calgary

I am an interdisciplinary artist working in Sculpture: steel fabrication, plasma torch cutting, mold-making/casting and modelling (various materials-clay, concrete, fibre-glass), foundry-casting in aluminium, power carving in wood, and public art. Drawing/Painting/Serigraphy/Murals: aerosol, one-shot enamel, acrylic. Installation: urban-interventionism, "shadow-bombing", gallery, pop-up. I hold a Master in Fine Arts from the University of Calgary (2020), and obtained my Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia University of Art and Design (2002). In 2019 I travelled to New York City to apprentice with internationally acclaimed artist Cal Lane, which has informed my current work with a decommissioned C-Train Artwork/Studio. My work is grounded in Graffiti/Street Art and traverses into an interdisciplinary art practice in the studio, the gallery setting, and moves back out to the street and public realms on some occasions. In this oscillation, between these frameworks, I analyze the intrinsic cultural codes of my materials and artistic processes to access the transitional liminality which occurred in the shift from Graffiti Art to Street Art. This liminal shift was created in the art that was being produced subversively in the public opening its dialogue up to the people-in-place using figure, form, object, and thing, in relation to Graffiti’s text base. This liminality is a place of transition where usual boundaries of thought, self-understanding, and behaviour shift, opening the way to something new. I want to create an intimate connection with my audience through the intervention of a liminal aesthetic experience via Placemaking; the creation of a special intervention to affirm specific meanings, always leaving room for further critique and confirmation as the context shifts. Essentially my work is completed by the viewer and their interaction and experience with it. This is where space transitions into place via the people-in-place.