Kimberly Reed-Deemer – Student, Sculptor, Artist (IRON TRIBE)

$3,800

SKU: 33596

Artwork Description

Kimberly Reed-Deemer – Student, Sculptor, Artist (IRON TRIBE)

Dimensions: 43 x 40″ unframed
Year: 2021
Medium: oil on deep edge canvas

My passion for painting the sculptors of New Mexico Highlands University’s art foundry began after I attended one of the art department’s Iron Tribe Conferences, an event that draws metal sculptors from near and far. The Performance Pour is a spectacle of molten metal and fire to which the public is invited. I was hooked. My first Iron Tribe painting followed. For a figure painter, the Iron Tribe has it all; motion, color, fire, energy and excitement, all in an environment of interesting material and textures.

The art foundry sculptors call themselves a tribe, and I consider my series of oil paintings depicting them an ethnography in paint. The iron artists truly are a community, or ‘tribe’, and it has been a fascinating experience becoming acquainted with their world. Foundry sculptors are extremely ‘process’ oriented, and the pour is a powerful social ritual that requires the cooperation and trust of the group. Artists making art is an endlessly fascinating subject for my work. During iron pours there are stretches of time between bursts of activity, and I find these down times where the sculptors relax and interact, regroup and recharge, or lose themselves in contemplation of their art, as interesting as the action. I believe it’s essential to depict women as the multi-dimensional and proactive human beings that we are. My Iron Tribe series allows me to portray women of every age active in a very demanding process that requires strength and responsibility as well as intellect and creativity.