INTELLIGENT, INTUITIVE & INTEGRATED DESIGN
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Christina Reynolds (the artist formerly known as Chris Kniss) is a freelance graphic designer, mixed media artist, and musician who moonlights as an office administrator in Springfield, Ohio. She has a BFA in Studio Art/Graphic Design from James Madison University. |
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ARTIST STATEMENT
'Broken' intaglio print
I firmly believe in diversity’s ability to bring complexity and richness to every facet of life, particularly to the arts and human relationships. Our world is saturated with plurality of everything--a daunting reality for the individual who couldn’t possibly live every experience the world has to offer or see everything around them at any given moment. Humanity shares this mystery, each of us with our own blurred blind spots and areas of sharply focused awareness. Art is an incredibly powerful medium for bringing together disparate views of the world to create something larger than ourselves, to evoke a greater shared understanding and appreciation for what connects us as human beings as well as that which distinguishes one from another.
As an artist, I am intrigued by the transformation of diversity into a dynamic, living unity greater than its parts. I cannot allow myself to be intimately tied to any one pursuit in or approach to both my art and life--the world I awake to each day is far too vast; too full of wonder and beauty I couldn’t possibly conceive without experiencing in some way. Questioning what we experience leads to exploration and experimentation, leading to discovery and a deeper understanding…which usually leads to more questioning--a cyclical process that continues through all of life. With each work of art, I learn something new about myself and my work, media and process. Each lesson learned builds upon its predecessors and informs all my work yet to be created. I explore and experiment with my own questions and curiosities through my art--not expecting to find answers, rather, hoping to find more questions and a better way to ask, approach and explore them. My hope is to bring others into this exploration and raise new ideas for them that they are inspired to question and pursue.
Not everyone is ready or willing to question themselves or their world, and certainly not everyone sees far beyond an aesthetic when viewing art. In addition to the philosophical motives behind my work, I am also motivated as an aesthete to create beauty that translates as fluently as possible across humanity. Our earth, while teeming with more beauty than anyone could possibly see in a lifetime, is also riddled with ugliness--ugliness that frequently overpowers and disguises the beauty existing around it. However, creating oases of aesthetic beauty in a world being destroyed and corrupted by the ugliness of hatred, greed, ignorance, violence, complacency and apathy doesn’t seem enough to initiate any significant change. Of course artistic beauty is not enough to overwhelm and resolve the world’s problems on its own--but it plays a vital role as part of a larger movement toward the pursuit and proliferation of beauty, light, hope, peace, patience, understanding and love throughout the world. I, too, want to play a role in bringing such things into the world around me however I can, and have found visual art to be a language in which I can call them forth.
I’m under no impression that every piece of art I create will radically change the world or even another human being. Slowly, however, I am bringing into being an arsenal of beauty--which, at the very least, means I am not contributing to the propagation of ugliness. With each piece, I have another chance to bring beauty into the world that might instigate change, even if that change is no greater than someone’s pursed lips stretching into a smile. That’s more than enough reason for me to continue working and living life as an artist.
--Christina R. K. Reynolds
As an artist, I am intrigued by the transformation of diversity into a dynamic, living unity greater than its parts. I cannot allow myself to be intimately tied to any one pursuit in or approach to both my art and life--the world I awake to each day is far too vast; too full of wonder and beauty I couldn’t possibly conceive without experiencing in some way. Questioning what we experience leads to exploration and experimentation, leading to discovery and a deeper understanding…which usually leads to more questioning--a cyclical process that continues through all of life. With each work of art, I learn something new about myself and my work, media and process. Each lesson learned builds upon its predecessors and informs all my work yet to be created. I explore and experiment with my own questions and curiosities through my art--not expecting to find answers, rather, hoping to find more questions and a better way to ask, approach and explore them. My hope is to bring others into this exploration and raise new ideas for them that they are inspired to question and pursue.
Not everyone is ready or willing to question themselves or their world, and certainly not everyone sees far beyond an aesthetic when viewing art. In addition to the philosophical motives behind my work, I am also motivated as an aesthete to create beauty that translates as fluently as possible across humanity. Our earth, while teeming with more beauty than anyone could possibly see in a lifetime, is also riddled with ugliness--ugliness that frequently overpowers and disguises the beauty existing around it. However, creating oases of aesthetic beauty in a world being destroyed and corrupted by the ugliness of hatred, greed, ignorance, violence, complacency and apathy doesn’t seem enough to initiate any significant change. Of course artistic beauty is not enough to overwhelm and resolve the world’s problems on its own--but it plays a vital role as part of a larger movement toward the pursuit and proliferation of beauty, light, hope, peace, patience, understanding and love throughout the world. I, too, want to play a role in bringing such things into the world around me however I can, and have found visual art to be a language in which I can call them forth.
I’m under no impression that every piece of art I create will radically change the world or even another human being. Slowly, however, I am bringing into being an arsenal of beauty--which, at the very least, means I am not contributing to the propagation of ugliness. With each piece, I have another chance to bring beauty into the world that might instigate change, even if that change is no greater than someone’s pursed lips stretching into a smile. That’s more than enough reason for me to continue working and living life as an artist.
--Christina R. K. Reynolds