Kim Bishop: Threads & After Shocks
March 3–25, 2023
Opening Reception: Friday, March 3, 2023 , from 6–9pm | Free & Open to the public
You go through this whole life marching for change—trying to change things and then the aftershock slaps you in the face when you realize you’re right back where you started, or so you think. According to Carl Jung, we live in the entanglement of the past, present and future; a collective consciousness he called “a sympathy for all things.” This is why Bishop draws with her Grandmother’s thread (literally and metaphorically), the continuous line of her path, as she journeys through a world that seems familiar but is not. The drawings and drawing processes in this exhibition are a way for Bishop to navigate the social condition of her time in her constant endeavor to measure the standards that determine her worth.
Bishop states, “My imagery focuses on the entanglement of body, time and movement which carries a universal theme of quantum remembrance and the repetition of the physical world that I live in today. Questions posed at a time of racial trauma, death, attempted coups and an insurrection, questions of gender freedom, parental rights, and the rights of women to be able to make decisions about their own health stripped away, yet again, have me realizing, yet again, that this has all happened before. I see it as an overlap rather than a deja vu, and that I am grounded in my past and collective experience of my ancestors stored in the thread of my DNA as I move forward through my future experiences.”
About Kim Bishop
Kim Bishop is a nationally exhibited artist who has been working from her San Antonio, Texas, based studio for the past 20 years. Bishop holds a Master of Fine Art in Contemporary Drawing and Painting from the University of Texas at San Antonio, a Master of Arts in Education and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Arts from Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. Her work is part of many private collections as well as the collections of the University of Texas San Antonio, Texas A&M Kingsville, the San Antonio Public Library, the Oxbow Tower and the Pearl Brewery. Her work can also be seen on the streets of San Antonio at several bus stops, as mural installations in the neighborhoods and across Texas in the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau billboards. Her latest public art piece is Poet’s Pointe, a pocket park in San Antonio, that she designed with her partner Luis Valderas, and is scheduled for unveiling in October 2022. Bishop is a co-founder of A3, a pop-up industrial street press, 3rd Space Art Gallery and is a mentor for the New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist program. Her mission is to socially engage audiences in the process of art making to create a healthier world. With over thirty five years of art education experience she is currently the Teen Programs Coordinator for the UTSA Professional and Continuing Education Department at the UTSA Southwest Campus, and is an adjunct professor in Drawing at the UTSA. www.kimbishopart.com