SN
Is it interesting getting to hear all the different interpretations people have?

KF
Yeah, totally. One of the images, which was a studio photo with printed fabric as a backdrop with a metal grid that I had bent and spray painted into this form. A lot of people thought that it was a digital drawing on top of a photo background, and I feel like that one particularly, a lot of people thought was digital because of the way that this flat white paint just further flattened when it was photographed. 

I feel like we talk a lot about how you shouldn't make work for other people. As the artist, it's your job to make the work that is most expressive of your own viewpoint, because that's the only thing you can do. But especially when you're thinking about perception and how people see things, it does feel really exciting to know what a viewer's experience is.

SN
With what you said about the intention being focused on playing with people’s trust of perception, it's not that you're making it for other people, but you're making it to see what their perception of it is, and do they trust what they're seeing.

KF
Yeah. Or to create a moment where people aren't sure and then they question their own perception. You become aware of this default way that you move through the world, where you just understand what's going on, or you think you understand what's going on, and then setting up a moment where you don't and maybe that makes you sort of question your own abilities.

SN
Was there a moment or a specific piece where, as an artist, you said, “Okay, I get what I'm doing. This is me and it's starting to click, this is the direction that I want to go in.”?

KF
I think the answer is there isn't one piece. I’ve had those moments with particular bodies of work or a particular period, and it's kind of a recurring thing because I'm always chasing something different and I'm interested in so many things. I feel like in my practice, the thing I experience is that I go through phases of working through the tough period where I kind of hate the work. Like, I think it's kind of bad and not knowing where it's going for kind of a long time. Then inevitably something clicks and I can sort of see where it wants to go and I feel excited about it. I think that's just sort of how my process works. I feel like I have to move through a lot of sludge in order to get to stuff that I'm interested in.

I'm not someone who is able to have the whole idea coalesce and then I execute the idea, but I feel like that's what you're chasing as artists, right? That moment where you're like, “Yes, I'm excited.”

SN
I wanted to ask you about “Reciprocal.” What is that project?

KF
“Reciprocal” is a collaboration that I do with my friend, River, who is one of my close friends from when I was living in the Hudson Valley in New York. The main thing that we do is organize zine exchanges, where anyone who wants to participate makes a small self-published publication, book, magazine, whatever you want to call it, and then they send us some copies. We shuffle everything together and then everyone who participated gets ten zines from other contributors. We started doing it when River had a store that was kind of like a mishmash of antiques, and plants, and an art gallery, and community space, but one of our big friendship connection points is that we both really, really love organizing creative things. We love getting people together, we love making people talk to each other.

We organized the first exchange in person, I think in 2018, and it was just really fun and weirdly a way that I met a lot of people that I'm now friends with. We are currently wrapping up our 6th one. We're not in the same place anymore, but over the years both of us have realized, independently and together, that making space for creative interaction and generating structures in which artists can interact and meet each other, enabling that kind of community and that kind of exchange is really important to both of us. 

It's cool. We have had about 50 people participate for the last, maybe, four rounds, and it's all over the place. It's gotten to the point where most of the people participating are not people that we know. It feels really exciting because there're people who participate really consistently and have done a bunch of them, and then every time they're like, “I have a friend in Pittsburgh,” and so she'll participate, and then the next time she'll tell three of her friends, so then there'll be four people in Pittsburgh. Seeing it kind of creep out, it's really fun. Getting all of the packages and seeing all of the zines just fills my heart with joy.

SN
Is there a person that creating your art would not be possible without?

KF
My uncle, David Ford, and then my mom's mom, my granny, were both sort of artists in my life from when I was a kid. My granny went to the Kansas City Art Institute. She worked as an illustrator at Hallmark, which is based in Kansas City where I'm from. She's the person who taught me how to quilt, and there was just a lot of art and drawing in my life from spending a lot of time with my grandparents. Then sort of in a very different way my uncle was very involved in the Kansas City gallery scene and is a self-taught artist. He's a painter, but also makes sculptures and these performative immersive installations. I think particularly when I was in middle school and high school, seeing the work that he was doing and just being kind of in the best possible way, overwhelmed by it. Overwhelmed by the sensory experience of his work, and seeing the way that he had built his life to really prioritize his art made it feel like that is a thing that's possible. So, I do really think that having these people in my life who I saw as artists in a pretty core way gave me some sort of belief that this is a life path that isn't foolish or unreasonable, which is kind of important. Instead of like, “No, don't waste your time, you're never going to make any money.” Kansas City has a pretty great art scene, and going to a lot of gallery openings and knowing a lot of adults who were working artists, and maybe had other ways that they were also making money but that is how I understood their identity, was as an artist. When you have the model for something it feels that much more possible.

SN
What is one record that you think everybody should listen to?

KF
Oh, damn, you're going to ask me a music question?!

SN
I know you like music!

KF
I'm going to do a friend shout out on this one. I'm going to say that everyone should listen to Ben Seretan's "Cicada Waves," because it is, I think, a really important part of what got me through with my first year of grad school. I think that a lot of the recordings he did while he was on a residency in the Appalachian Mountains. There's a lot of piano, and a lot of cicadas, and a lot of layering. Very soothing. I could say someone famous, but who wants that? 

SN
What is a band or artist that you think more people should know about?

KF
An artist that I've been really into as of late is this person, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo. I don't know how I found their work originally, but they do a lot of things. They do sort of socially engaged work that uses a lot of text, and they do paintings, and they do textiles. But the way that I understand their practice is that it’s about creating radical spaces for the types of interactions that we want to be having between humans and in communities. 

I recently watched an online discussion between them and this writer, Legacy Russell, who I really admire, and they were talking about the internet. Rather than sort of accepting that the internet is this black hole of toxic traits and despair, [they were] thinking about the potential of alternative space for relationships and interactions that can be generative, and redefining, and radical, and justice oriented, and meaningful, and loving, and all of that. I just got really amped on it. I think it's really inspiring to see people making work that is smart and reflecting on the world, but is also hopeful.