Kayb Carpenter Joseph

Kayb has been drawing, sewing, dreaming, building, and arranging since childhood. Her curiosity about the world has taken her through various media and across many continents. As a third generation artist she has an innate sense of the beautiful and a keen sense of craft. As a fourth generation international traveler she is an adventuress ever curious about new people and places. She grew up in a rural community in the mountains of Oregon which developed her commitment to place and community. Reflective by nature her work is inspired by her experiences of people, place, and her maker.

Art is my way of being curious about the world, figuring things out, and talking to others about it.

I experience life as a constant tension between polarities: Reaching for the sacred but mired in the profane; loving this place and these people but feeling an unrelenting homesickness for a place I've never been; beguiled by beauty yet uncomfortably aware of impending tragedy; nurturing the intentional and reflective life while living in a world of immediate gratification and the practical. Thus, I often feel disoriented. My art flows from this disorientation and my rooted loves--another polarity.

I am ever fascinated by embodiment. I trained as a classical sculptor to understand the body and what makes it one of the most beautiful creations on earth. That fascination has grown into the use of space and visual metaphor to explore the social, psychological, and spiritual experience of embodiment. It sounds rather weighty and profound, really its just me processing my experiences and hoping it will create a point of mutual understanding and communication between myself and the viewer. An effort to be intimate in a world that makes us feel alone.

Other times, I make work for the shear pleasure of it. Just because I am interested in an idea or an image or I find something beautiful. I want to see something in my head in the world, to be a harbinger of beauty. There is nothing intentionally profound about it except that I have a love for something and I get intrigued. Often my best work begins here. I suppose that is the well spring of all good work, no matter the vocation. I suppose if there is anything that I suffer from its that I possess too much Love, Creativity, and Curiosity. Its the part of me that is still a child. In this way, I hope I never grow up, though I hope my art will.