Featured Artist Kerri Warner

Kerri Warner presents her delightful collection of mixed media works. Enjoy, and visit her website for more from this talented artist.

 

 

My family introduced me to the arts and made them an integral part of my life. My Grandparents (Justus and Alice Wyman) were vaudevillians who toured with Fanchon and Marco in the 1920’s.

 

 

My father (Robert Wyman) began his stage career at six years old at the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco. His income from work on a radio show from age six to nine helped support the family through the depression. My Parents met doing a theatrical production (Director and Lead Actress) and after marriage opened a community theater with my grandparents in Sacramento, California.

 

 

As a child I would help at the theater (JayRob ) building and painting sets, running lines with actors, preparing props and sorting tickets in the box office. Most evenings my mother would be sewing costumes for JayRob productions and for the Lila Maple Studio of Dance. Prior to performances my sister and I would help her design and prepare marketing materials; printing tickets and programs on a hand cranked Gestetner printer in our home office.

 

 

In high school I began working as a graphic artist for my mother’s marketing and advertising business. In college I majored in radio, film and television and completed my upper division units in animation, hand painting cells and capturing stories frame by frame on an Acme animation stand (yes, they do exist).

 

 

Throughout my life the arts have been a major influence on who I am, how I approach challenges and celebrate successes. I have been fortunate throughout my life to have had opportunities to connect to the arts, doing a bit of acting and dancing, developing my artistic skills through commercial graphics work, building scenery and props for various productions and doing murals and portraits on a commissioned basis. In the past five years I’ve had more time to devote to producing art and as of January 2014, I am working as an artist full time.

 

 

The time it takes to develop and produce my collage work varies depending on the size and details of the subject. On average I spend 3 to 4 weeks on each piece. I like to work in a large format because it allows me to use a variety of printed materials.

 

 

In order to have the appropriate scale to blend patterns or the type printed in most books, the subject must be of an adequate size to allow the papers to blend as graphic elements rather than stand out on their own. In my commissioned portrait work, people give me various momentos from the subject’s life; announcements, newspaper articles, brochures from work, tickets from a first date or special occasion. I love the challenge of building these items into a portrait and capturing the spirit of each subject.

 

 

I’ve always loved dabbling in various mediums and the challenge of creating something from nothing or repurposing found objects. I often incorporate bits of metal filigree, hardware and mechanical looking parts into my collage work. A few years ago I heard a quote, “Sometimes we must leap and build wings on the way down.”

 

 

I’ve taken the leap into being a full time artist and look forward to continuing to build my wings. (Literally and figuratively… see my angels among us series of winged sculptures on my website.)