About
Bio
Kristina is a native of Broward County, Florida but currently resides in Atlanta, GA as a full time student at Savannah College of Art and Design. Kristina is the recipient of the Frances Larkin McCommon Award and is continuing her art education at the Savannah College of Art and Design on a full scholarship. Her first solo exhibition was held at Razza Gallery in Coral Springs, FL in June of 2008, and two of her pieces were shown in the ArtServe of Ft. Lauderdale's juried "Red Eye" Gallery show in July 2008.
She has studied at the Broward Art Guild under Pablo Verol, at the Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs Museums of Art, and most recently under nationally recognized artist, Al Razza. She has attended summer workshops at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kristina has participated in art and art history explorations of Alaska, Italy, Ireland, Wales and London. Since 2009, Kristina has worked as a teaching assistant at the Creative Summer Art Academy at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale for 1st-8th graders. She helps children develop skills in drawing, painting, printmaking, set design, sculpture, and collage/mixed media.
During Kristina's time at SCAD, she is learning not only the technical skills to create successful, professional artwork, but she is also learning how to harness and develop the concept behind her work.
Artist Statement
Similar to the concept of elevating everyday life through genre paintings, like the Realism painter Gustave Courbet, I aim to elevate objects and materials that are no longer considered useful, or no longer seem to have a purpose. Courbet painted scenes of the lower class and laborers, which were not typically revered subjects in the 19th century art world; and I paint, weave, glue, and nail together objects and materials that are considered waste in our mass producing, mass consuming society.
Mass-production creates mass waste, which takes over and destroys many natural environments. Instead of products becoming waste I want waste to create products, but not just any products, I want waste to produce art. What was once refuse becomes something valuable again. These artworks are intended to reflect nature in that they are unique; they take on a more organic form, usually a web-like shape; and can appear either welcoming or threatening depending on the viewer and the material used. The result should take these materials and objects far from the world of technology and mass-production, the world from which the waste was discarded.
My sculptures appear as if they are inching down the wall towards the viewer; suggesting movement or growth invisible to the human eye similar to the movement of hair, trees, fingernails, or feathers. A material used most often in my work is string or any related form of it. String in my sculptures is like a line in a drawing, however string can literally and visually hold things together, while a line can only create the illusion of holding different shapes and materials together. String unifies objects that wouldn’t necessarily coexist in their original function or setting like a broken hubcap and an old t-shirt. One material may act as a skeleton while another acts as skin, like a telephone wire covered in shreds of a recycled painting, creating arms that stretch and feel their way down to the floor. A fabric-square and t-shirt web clutches two wooden fence planks. One clings to the wall and the other steps out onto the floor.
I reuse the factory produced to form the manmade, to reflect the natural world. These creations may be intimidating to some viewers but my aim is to create an object to be respected. The viewer and sculpture must agree to coexist in the same way man and nature must agree to do so.
