Name: Kim Kleinhardt

City of Residence: Traverse City, MI

Featured Artwork: Homage to Innocence

Exhibition: 10 FOLD, CTAC - Traverse City Cornwell Gallery

On View: now through May 23, 2025

Tell us about the creative process for the featured piece in our exhibition: World conflicts are on the rise creating instability, displacement & gender-based violence. Women and girls are most at risk from such extremism. In 2023 UN reported civilian casualties were higher globally by 10-FOLD than the previous year. Statistics show 4 in 10 deaths being women and 3 in 10 deaths children. The U.S Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) focuses on promoting gender equality worldwide. Efforts are being made to address global conflicts by empowering women as peacebuilders and leaders in preventing/responding to terrorist ideology. This triptych composition invites the viewer to see beyond the maternal setting into the complexity of global conflicts and gender inequality. This composition is to bring awareness that women must be critical actors in all efforts to achieve sustainable international peace and security.

Who or what inspires your creativity? 
Storytelling through visual engagement, letting images trigger memories of each viewer in individual ways – these are the catalysts for my creative journeys. Whether developed into 2D compositions or sculptural forms, each piece is aesthetically layered in messages and mixed media. The initial development of ideas originates from personal emotions- memories, grief, life changes, frustrations- sentiments that relate to all viewers in individual ways. My artwork is not created merely for visual pleasure, but to work through private thoughts as a meaningful process. Attention to detail with an element of surprise give my compositions an intriguing quality that demands the attention of the emotional state that often times turns less representational, but more provocatively decorative.

Where can visitors learn more about your work? https://kkleinhardt.com

Artist Bio: My work reflects wide-ranging experience in various mediums developed from teaching thirty years of high school/community college art. I have yet to find a material that I’m not excited to explore, enhancing my desire to work in mixed media, and collage which challenges the edge between dimensions. The viewer is invited to share in my visual story telling of personal experiences with the intent of bringing their own memories to the surface. Through mixed media and the collage of overlapping materials, hidden images and thoughts emerge.

LIGHTNING ROUND!

• When I work, I listen to: Music
• For example: NPR, Imagine Dragons
• I studied: At Central Michigan University
• "One" art-related thing I can't live without: Elmers Glue
• Three words that best describe me: Empathetic, Secure, Resourceful
• Three words that best describe my art: Worldly, Female-centric, Intricate

Thank you to Kim for jumping in and joining us for the Artist Spotlight Q&A in Traverse City!