Kim Abeles

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Kim Abeles

Kim Abeles is an American contemporary artist who expresses herself through her feminist and environmental focused artwork. Some of the topics she has explored include feminism, civil rights, domestic violence, gender roles, pollution, climate change, and AIDS/HIV. Her work speaks to civic engagement, science literacy, society, and most importantly mental health departments. She is also an activist that challenges communities to confront social issues by making them impossible to ignore.

Media:

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Instagram: @kimabeles

email: kim@kimabeles.com

Life and Education

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Kim Abeles was born on August 28, 1952 in Richmond Heights Missouri and currently resides in Los Angeles at the age of 70. Abeles received a Bachelors of Fine Arts in painting from Ohio University and on top of that she earned a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine in 1980.

Work

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Smog Collectors (1987-2020): Kim Abeles created Smog Collectors [1]as a reality of the quality of the air we breathe on a daily since it was common back then to think it was fog, not smog. Abeles created the first smog Collector in 1987 while in San Gabriel Mountains that was filled with smog as she looked from her studio apartment in downtown Los Angeles. The Smog Collectors included cave paintings of Lascaux, images of the body, and American landscape paintings and photography.

Walk a Mile in My Shoes (2014): Kim Abeles created a public artwork called, "Walk a Mile in My Shoes"[2] to represent the phrase, "You can't really understand another person's experience until you've walked a mile in their shoes". She made this piece as an arrtribution to Native Americans and Mary T. Lathrap's poem Judge Softly famous closing line, "Take the time to walk a mile in his moccasins."

Pearls of Wisdom: End of Violence (2017): Pearls of Wisdom[3] is an installation at Orange Coast College gallery created by Kim Abeles in 2017 that shows pearls displayed on shelves covered with satin and oyster-shell-print fabric which each pearl connected with a ribbon. This art piece represents transforming memories of domestic violence pain into something as beautiful as a pearl since pearls form as a result of harmful irritant.

Exhibits

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Art Shack, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach CA

LA Art Show, Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk at the Convention Center, Los Angeles CA

Community Room, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena CA  

Speak for the Trees, Southern California Art Projects and Exhibition, Corona Del Mar CA

Extraction: Earth, Ashes, Dust, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance CA

Circle of Truth, Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg PA

Differential Ontology, Wonzimer, Los Angeles CA

Kim Abeles: Smog Collectors 1987-2020, Nicholas & Lee Begovich Gallery, Fullerton CA

Kim Abeles: A Survey, Fresno Art Museum, Fresno CA

Awards

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Abeles has received numerous awards from the Guggenheim Fellowship.[4] These include the Andy Warhol Foundation,[5] the California Community Foundation[6], the J.Paul Getty Trust Fund for Visual Arts, Pollack-Krasner Foundation, and the California Arts Council.[7]

References

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https://kimabeles.com

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/arts/design/pollution-abeles-art-fullerton-environment.html

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-abeles-b396058

https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Kim-Abeles/EA18133AFD87F48C/Biography

https://www.lacountyarts.org/experiences/directories/prequalified-civic-artists/kim-abeles

  1. ^ "Smog Collectors". Kim Abeles. Retrieved 2022-12-14.
  2. ^ "Walk a Mile in My Shoes". Kim Abeles. Retrieved 2022-12-14.
  3. ^ "Pearls of Wisdom: End the Violence". Kim Abeles. Retrieved 2022-12-14.
  4. ^ "Guggenheim Fellowship", Wikipedia, 2022-09-17, retrieved 2022-12-10
  5. ^ "The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts". Retrieved 2022-12-10.
  6. ^ www.calfund.org https://www.calfund.org/. Retrieved 2022-12-10. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  7. ^ "Home Page". California Arts Council. Retrieved 2022-12-10.