Meet Kimberlee Koym-Murteira: Artist, Video Sculptor, & Educator
Interview with SHOUTOUTLA, February 15, 2021
Hi Kimberlee, we’d love to hear what makes you happy.
Walking through a forest, by the sea side, up a grassy hill, the physical act of moving brings me joy not just for the beauty of the surroundings, but for the alteration and enlivening of my thoughts as I become active. Bubbling liquids, moving light, studies of water, trees, and people, help me ask: How are we embodied? I wonder how do we activate our lives and how can we be more present in our physical world in order to be more connected with ourselves and others? Studies show physical activity positively affects brain cognition, but it still seems an issue for so many. Some of my favorite activities are drawing, walking, and cooking. I create videos to capture the process and the power of movement and connection. I bottle it up for study. I house my Video Sculptures in mason jars containing water. I use water as a lens like a kid with a magnifying glass, pulling things – in this case transparent layers of video imagery- apart to observe. I choose to work with liquids – for their transparency and because they’re too slippery for me to fully control. The glass mason jars preserve precious memories, life’s seminal moments, and challenges to be used when someone needs to call on them -my grandmother cooking, inspirations from Maya Angelou, remnants from the wildfires. I play with veils of transparency to speak to the act of perception and sight(vision), the ability to see in, to discover. The physical and virtual intersections, matter and media, hold somatic resonance. Virtual refers to media but also thought, imagination, perception, psyche, and spirit. In our ever more virtual and disconnected existences, my video sculptures, projection machines, installations and prints on metal comment on the complexity of what is to be in a body, and to be pulled into virtual realms. “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves.” — Carl Jung. I love art & art making: In my art practice, as in my home, I love to mix high and low tech, I achieve this meeting of virtual and physical with something like a video playing behind a mason jar filled with water. The placement of the image behind water acts as a lens, creating a hologram effect. As you walk around the sculpture the three dimensionality of the bottle, water, and image lends an additional sense of movement and wonder to the video sculpture. I am now exploring disorienting imagery by using a 360 camera to simultaneously give a sense of enclosure and expansion. This filming technique also creates a disembodied sense of floating. During the pandemic the wildness of nature has been a vital connection.
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