Carolina Artworks by Kim Keelor

Kim Keelor is largely self-taught, influenced over a lifetime spent living in the south eastern U.S. She currently splits her time between Franklin, North Carolina and Charleston, South Carolina and has lived in Nashville, Tennessee; Dallas, Texas; Louisville, Bowling Green and Paducah, Kentucky; New Orleans and Lake Charles Louisiana, and Tampa, Florida. 

Painting in watercolor and oil, for much of her life, Keelor's practice became more intentional beginning in 2018, with cultivation in multiple mediums from instructors at the John C. Campbell Folk School, Taos Art School, Redux Art Center, Gibbes Museum of Art, and Southeastern Fiber Fair, resulting in a heavy emphasis on the ancient process of wet felting. In 2022, Keelor completed an artist residency with the Working Artist Studio Provisions of Scotland on the Isle of Skye to integrate her artwork more fully with nature, and to mark the transition from her earlier careers to full-time visual artist.

Keelor began showing her work professionally in 2020 with pieces selected for 19 juried competitions in locations including North and South Carolina, Savannah and Dunwoody, Georgia, and San Francisco, resulting in several awards, including Best of Show in the South Carolina Palmetto Hands Fine Craft Juried Exhibition (2024). Additionally, Keelor’s work is or has been exhibited or sold in The Bascom: A Center for the Visual Arts, the Middleton Place Museum Shop, Preservation Society of Charleston Shop, Charleston Artist Guild Gallery, Anderson Arts Center, and Blue Ridge Arts Center, Uptown Gallery and CorkHouse Gallery.

Examples of Keelor’s artistic influences include Lenore Tawney, Annie Albers, Vanessa Barragao (Portugal) and Pam DeGroot (Australia). Her art practice is also influenced by the spectacles she witnessed while working as a journalist covering natural disasters and crime, and some of the events of crisis she helped manage as a strategic communications professional including an historic flood in Nashville, Tennessee. She holds a B.A. in journalism from Western Kentucky University and an M.S. in Leadership Studies from The Citadel.

2024 – Best of Show Award, Becoming Iron: Josephine and Betty, South Carolina Palmetto Hands Fine Craft Annual Juried Exhibition, North Charleston, SC

2023 – Land, Water, Wind: Isle of Skye, The Bascom Annual Member Show, juried, Highlands, NC

2023 – Convergence: Land, Water Wind, Isle of Skye, South Carolina Palmetto Hands Fine Craft Annual Juried Exhibition, North Charleston, SC

2023 – Land, Water, Wind: Isle of Skye, Palmetto Hands Fine Craft Annual Juried Exhibition, North Charleston, SC

2023 – Grant, $1000, Cowee School Arts & Heritage Center with The Center for Craft

2023 – Land, Water, Wind: Isle of Skye. Arts League of Cary Annual Juried Exhibition, Cary, NC

2023 – Dr. Brown Knows, Summerville South Carolina Public Works Center Fiber Exhibition, Summerville, SC

2022 – First Place in category, Victory Garden Renewal, Southeast Animal Fiber Fair, Asheville, NC

2022 – Victory Garden Renewal, Chattahoochee Weavers Guild, juried, Dunwoody, GA

2022 – Common Journeys, Charleston Artist Guild Exhibition, juried, Charleston, SC

2021 – Shem Creek Shrimper, Corkhouse Gallery, Small Works exhibition, juried, Savannah, GA

2021 – Miniature Rainbow Row, Corkhouse Gallery, Small Works exhibition, juried, Savannah, GA

2021 – Dr. Brown Knows, South Carolina Palmetto Hands Fine Craft Annual Juried Exhibition, North Charleston SC

2021 – Abstruse Spaces, Redux Contemporary Art Exhibition, juried, Charleston, SC

2021 – Carolina Reverb, Anderson Arts Center Fiber Exhibition, Juried, Anderson, SC

2021 – Carolina Reverb, North Charleston Artist Guild Pop Up Juried Exhibition, North Charleston, SC

2021 – Carolina Reverb, South Carolina Palmetto Hands Fine Craft Annual Juried Exhibition, North Charleston, SC

2020 – Windowbox Colors, Blue Ridge Arts Center Annual Juried Exhibition, Seneca, SC

2020 - Leveling the Bubbles, Redux Art Center Juried Exhibition, Charleston, SC

2020 – Honorable Mention, Reaching up on Church Street, South Carolina Palmetto Fine Craft Art Annual Juried Exhibition

2020 – Traveling Exhibition Award, Reaching up on Church Street, South Carolina Palmetto Fine Craft Annual Juried Exhibition

2020 – Shem Creek Swinger, South Carolina Palmetto Fine Craft Annual Juried Exhibition

2020 – Leveling the Bubbles, SIY Gallery, San Francisco, online/juried

2020 – Mama K’s Table, Pickens County Museum of Art and History Annual Juried Exhibition

ARTIST STATEMENT

My intent is to compel the mind and enliven the spirit through work serving as meditations on nature, common journeys, and uncommon sights while supporting planet health and constructive mindsets. 

My practice is evolving to embrace more fiber components; thus, I am currently working to master the process of wool felting. The textural superiority and versatility of wool, the tension or flow I can create with it, and the sustainability of the organic fiber captivate me. Wool felting, mankind’s oldest textile creation process, energizes my creations by linking them more directly and cleanly with nature than did paint, creating a quiet alliance with hundreds of generations of makers before me. I often integrate elements like basket weaving, or with found objects forming assemblages magnifying the mood or movements I hope to convey.

Recently, my work centers on exploring how to express the movement and transformation of natural water sources with wool, recycled silk, cotton, and jute. In particular, the waterfalls of the Nantahala National Forest where I live are represented in my experiments as I observe the changes from a robust flow to a drought-driven trickle due to the planet's climate emergency. These efforts are leading me to expand the scope and scale of my pieces in the hopes of communicating a call to action for viewers of my more serious work, imploring them to invest examine their own lives and businesses for ways to improve climate health. Additionally, I have an ardent desire to begin collaborations on this front with other makers in the Cowee School Arts and Heritage Center community in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina where my studio is located. I see this as a pivotal next step in my practice.