Kim Abeles kept her door open to the studio all day, where students could pop in and get a costume re-designed, watch her draw, or see a video being edited on her computer. She surprised us with a lovely short video when she left.

About Kim Abeles

For art activist Kim Abeles, societal issues such as environmentalism, feminism, aging, and HIV/AIDS prevention have provided the impetus for the work she has created in the last two decades. Invoking atypical strategies for art making, Abeles incorporates data gathering, library research, and experimentation with unconventional materials into her mixed-media sculpture and performances.

Abeles received international attention for her 1990 Smog Collector series, made from particulate air pollution collected outside her downtown studio.  Following the notoriety of the series, she was invited by several organizations to create projects about air pollution, as well as serve on discussion panels for urban agencies, botanical gardens, and environmental conferences. Abeles has continued to utilize her unique methodology to reach non-art audiences.  In 1993, she was the subject of a mid- career survey, "Kim Abeles: Encyclopedia Persona", curated by Karen Moss and organized by the S anta Monica Museum of Art. Following its positive reception in several US venues, this exhibition traveled throughout South America under the auspices of the United States Information Agency.

 

Abeles' work has been collected by the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and has been archived in the library collections at the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt Publication Design Collection at the Smithsonian Institution.  Abeles was awarded grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation and Peter Norton Foundation and fellowships from J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, Pollack-Krasner Foundation, and the California Arts Council.

Kim Abeles received her MFA from University of California, Irvine in 1980.

 

 

http://www.kimabeles.com/

http://www.mentalcontagion.com/issue0601/causeandeffect.html

Certain Traces Dialogue Los Angeles-Prague, 2004