Artist Profile: Kristin Skees

About the Artist

Kristin Skees works in a variety of media, including photography, experimental fibers, digital video and installation. She has shown her work nationally and abroad, and her photographs are found in various private and public collections, including the Cohen Family Collection, the Candela Collection, the Huntsville Museum of Art and the Mobile Museum of Art. She was awarded a 2016-2017 Professional Artist Fellowship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Kristin has a BFA from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a MFA from the University of Arizona, and an MLIS from the University of Alabama. She is currently starting her 11th year as faculty in the Department of Fine Art and Art History at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia.

What is your earliest memory of visual art?

I don’t have a specific early memory of formal visual art, but I do remember always making something. I was that kid who was making papier-mâché masks, friendship bracelets, cross stitching, making collages from magazines, and always obsessed with stationary and art supplies. When I was in middle school (in the 80’s) I figured out how to hook up 2 VCRs together so I could dub VHS tapes and make bonkers video collages. I’ve also always been into costumes and fashion, interior decorating, and weird kitchen science experiments. Everything in my life that I’m interested in has a creative component to it. I think when I became aware of “fine art” as most people understand it to be, was a family trip from Alabama to D.C. where we toured all the museums, and stopped by Monticello. I was just in love with the architecture and the National Gallery of Art. Sometimes I’m still amazed that I get to live in the same region that really impacted me at a young age.

Do you consider yourself a “master” of a particular medium?

Maybe, but probably not, depending on the definition of a “master.” I barely have the attention span in one medium to confidently call myself a photographer or a sculptor or fiber artist, even though I have extensive experience and expensive degrees in all those things. I just use the term “artist” because it seems general enough to encompass everything I do. I like to learn a technique to achieve an idea, or because I’m interested in a particular aspect of the process. I rarely stick with one thing long enough that it becomes an identity. But after teaching digital photography and the history of photography for over a decade now, I can say that is the medium I’m most knowledgeable and proficient in. But I also know enough to know that there are many amazing photographers out there that I would never compare myself to, both past and present.

Who is an artist that inspires you?

I have a long list, but I’ll mention three that come to mind. Carrie Mae Weems, for the way she examines how photography shapes our shared cultural identity. Félix González-Torres for teaching me about the beauty of conceptual art. “Untitled (Two Lovers)” is heartbreaking and maybe the most perfect work of art I’ve seen. Cig Harvey is my most recent photographer-crush-love. She makes photos I never knew I always wanted to make myself.

Watch Alan and Kristin Skees on Episode 15 of The HeART of Hampton on Thursday, August 20, 2020 at 7PM.

Images: The Musgraves (main image; detail), Ashley (London), Angela and Steve, Eliza.