www.foggedclarity.com
Oct 29, 2009
After India
KS Rives
After a month and a half of staying in India, I felt like I lived there. I ventured to the country in order to work with my creative partner on a Polaroid project asking local people what they wanted to do before they die. My own goals for the trip included a spiritual restructuring, getting healthy, and drinking in the surrounding culture. The ideas for these pieces originated from my visions during meditation while staying at the ashram, and the drawings of them were done before returning to the states. These works were finished in Chicago, and are also greatly affected by the tumult that overtook my life upon reintroduction to the West. All of the materials found below were picked up off the litter-filled streets of Indian towns: Delhi, Amenebhad, Kochin, and Varanasi. The writings (on the back of each piece and journal-style on paper) serve to reflect both my time in India and life since coming home.
KS Rives‘ work has been displayed in galleries around the world. She has received multiple awards, including best in show at Artist Project Toronto. Her series After India will be on display at the Chicago Cultural Center for a solo show in July of 2010.
www.theconduitmagazine.com
February 13, 2009
KS Rives
By Sarah Maehl
When we so often see Art locked up high in an ivory tower—inaccessible, abstract, disengaged from life and culture—we can rest assured that someone like KS Rives will come along to throw rocks at the windows. Kansas/Chicago native, KS Rives, believes art should exist for more than just The Art Community; she deliberately mixes art with the stuff of culture, using maps, parking tickets, various pieces of trash to create piecemeal works, which she hopes gives people some pause about social and environmental issues while allowing them to “get lost in the details.”
Rives is not just another hippie creating confrontational trash art to make consumers feel bad about the vast amount of waste they leave behind. Rather, she is most interested in understanding people and cultures through the various bits of paper they carry around—and then throw away. “Ideally, my art will be a tool for learning and understanding one another,” she says. Her current project, Before I Die I Want To, is both an homage to the fading medium of Polaroid photography as well as a comparison of what the answers to such a question reveal about a culture. She and partner Nicole Kennedy snap Polaroids of people as they state some life goal—for example, one girl wants to go to Legoland—which is then scribbled onto the white border and posted on their website, www.beforeidieiwantto.org. The two plan to keep tabs on each person in the years to come.
The project started in New York with a total of 250 photos, and Rives and Kennedy have since added 600 more from Chicago, Boston, Louisiana, and most recently, India. “You can tell Americans are wealthy,” Rives mused about her observations so far, “They talk about traveling; a lot of women want to have children.” In contrast, Rives has noticed that most Indians talk about spirituality, reincarnation, and wanting to do something to help other people. “Even the children,” she noted. Though they have received a few small grants, Before I Die is mostly self-funded, and they still have aspirations to take the project to Cuba, South America, China, Russia, and Africa. “This is the most important piece I’ve ever done. I feel like I’m making an impact on people,” said Rives as she recalled a participant who reunited with a sister estranged for years. “That I can be a part of that, just to witness it is so amazing.”
The Polaroid element seems to give the project both a sense of immediacy and permanence, as an utterance concerned with the future through the transitory medium of voice is forever sealed within the very tangible object of the photo. Much like Rives’ outlook on her career as an artist: she seems to approach projects with a certain spontaneity but with the purpose of creating something that will last.
To anyone thinking success in art can also mean success financially, Rives has a word or two. “Don’t do your art for money or success. You do it because you have to; sometimes that mean accepting a less luxurious life.” Of course, sometimes that means you get to go to India. But it also requires you to not lock yourself and your art up in a studio. Rives encourages young artists to “talk to everyone” about their work, as she herself met her mentor and supporter, Chicago poet-artist Tony Fitzgerald, through a co-worker. “Don’t be afraid of anyone. You never know who you’re going to talk to and how it will change your life.”
See KS Rives’ work at www.ksrives.com and peruse the Polaroids at www.beforeidieiwantto.org
chicagoist.com
October 16, 2008
An Interview with KS Rives
By Lauri Apple
There's a lot of found-object artists out there these days, but KS Rives takes it one step further by incorporating bits of full-blown trash -- used cigarette butts and discarded rubber bands, for example -- to create pieces that examine various cultures' attitudes about waste. She's also half of the "Before I Die I Want to ..." project, in which she and Brooklyn-based partner Nicole Kenney ask a person what he or she wants to do before they die, take a Polaroid portrait while the subject is stating their desire, then ask the person to write his or her statement on the photo -- starting with the words “Before I die I want to....”
Recently we asked Rives to discuss her many creative projects.
Chicagoist: How did environmentalism become a factor in your work?
KS Rives: Throughout my childhood, a close relative of mine, my Aunt Ann, would continuously talk to me about the environment and how to make sustainable choices for the earth. These ideas didn't truly sink in, however, until my senior year at Columbia College. I took a class taught by Michelle Sayset called "Ecofeminism and the Environment," which changed my world view and made me realize that I was needed to make a difference. A passion was born.
C: You've made pieces out of metro cards from Paris, Madrid and NYC, maps from Paris, and parking tickets from here and Santa Fe. When you go traveling to a place, do you now think about scoping out an item from that place to turn into an artwork?
KR: There is nowhere that I can go where I am not thinking about my work. I could be on the beach in Hawaii and I will be conjuring up some way to turn it into a work trip. I also attempt to gather trash no matter where I go, and now to take photos. I love what I do, I am passionate about succeeding at this game and about getting my work out into the world so that I can continue to make art.
C: Many of the trash items you use involve transportation. Thoughts?
KR: My focus is society and culture, and traveling comes naturally with that type of study. I enjoy traveling so that I can experience different people and various ways of living life. Even here at home, I surround myself with people of different backgrounds, from other cultures, who speak languages that I do not speak. I devour a good challenge, so I place myself in situations where I can continually learn.
C: When did the trash wallpaper series originate?
KR: I started this series in 2005 through a class that I took at the Chicago Art Department called "Street Studies." I was out walking around in the rain one evening, trying to get inspiration from the streets for my art. I picked up a lot of things that evening, among which were tons of cigarette butts. I was interested in creating a piece that was focused on texture.
C: Do you wear gloves?
KR: No, as I enjoy connecting with my materials intimately. Dirt washes off. I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty for my work.
C: Your recent show of Polaroids, Death + Extinction, was a 12-artist, Chicago/New York City project plus an exhibition that you organized yourself. What were the challenges in making it happen?
KR: Hanging the show was challenging. Shortly before the show was to be hung, my husband and I decided to permanently separate, and I moved to Oak Park to stay with a friend. Because my husband and I had the gallery together, that was also to be my last show there after three years. Physically dealing with planning and hanging the show was a huge hurdle for us to overcome, as well as my grieving, and my partner in the project, Nicole Kenney, supporting me in this difficult time. Working through that period made us extremely appreciative when the show was such a success. Our pain was worth it, and the other artists worked so hard to create a museum-quality show.
C: What's the status of the "Before I Die" project?
KR: Nicole I are working with galleries in New York and L.A. to make the show a touring exhibition. We have plans to take the project on the road to locations all over the United States and to one Third World country.
C: That project involved the use of suicide contracts. How did you make that connection?
KR: Suicide contracts were one initial inspiration for this project when Nicole and I were mapping it out. We are intrigued by psychology and the workings of the human mind, and so referencing knowledge of this kind is not surprising coming from us. We imagined that if humans were predisposed to needing that social connection in order to do something as important as not bringing harm to themselves, that the same theory would apply to a situation where they were asked to complete a task in their lives. The outcome of both situations is positive and beneficial for the person making the promise.
C: What are you working on currently?
KR: I am still working on the Paris map collages some, but am also branching off into three-dimensional collages, also made from trash. I am currently talking to some local building owners in my neighborhood, Humboldt Park, to get a mural erected. Not a traditional mural, but a 7'x7' parking ticket collage that I will affix directly to the outside of a building and cover with a protective coating to survive the elements. I am working on some commissioned pieces of the trash wallpapers; right now I am creating a series of rose wallpapers made from dyed security envelopes. I am also creating more of the rubber band works, which are more textural in nature. I have just begun a sculptural piece in the same vein as the piece that I recently created for the 32nd + Urban "framed" show that I envision will turn into a series about the stages of grieving. My focus was and will continue to be sociology, mostly using garbage to investigate different cultures.
There's also a piece that I proposed to Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh: a room filled with telephones, each one sharing a prerecorded secret (in my voice) with the participant who picks up the phone. I have been interested in self-expressive pieces just for the simple fact that I am going through some personal trauma right now which I need to release.
I also just gave a talk at Green Home Chicago in the West Loop, on the subject of my work and how it is connected to the environment.
C: What's in the future for you?
KR: I have an upcoming solo show at the Chicago Cultural Center; the people there have been great to work with thus far. I am curating a show with an artist who currently lives and works in Romania, to take place at the Museum of Cluj-Napoca. It is titled, "I fought the X and the X won," and features 10 artists, including Chicago artists Delicious Design League, Aaron Edwards and myself alongside other U.S. and international artists. The show is about accepting the inevitable in life. For that show I am doing a video installation piece which I began shooting last week with my cinematographer, Yorvi Moreira. We are talking to the Cultural Center and a couple of other galleries in town about bringing the show here after its run in Romania is finished.
For the December Miami art fairs, I will be exhibiting with Adam Baumgold Gallery of New York, Jack Fischer gallery of San Francisco and Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn. I have a show at Dust gallery in Las Vegas in March 2009. Those are on the calendar at the moment, and I know that more will come up in the next few months.
C: Earlier this year, you told the Sun-Times that Chicago doesn't really open its doors to young and emerging artists. Did you get any responses to that comment -- from gallerists, city officials, or other? Have you seen any promising signs of change since February?
KR: Little changed for me in Chicago after that article. I tried making contact with the MCA, ThreeWalls, Hyde Park Art Center, Cynthia West of Three Arts, and Artadia grant, and heard nothing in response. I am tapping on their glasses, like, "hello, I'm right in front of you. What are you waiting for?"
C: Who do you think is keeping the local scene energized and fresh?
KR: Allegoric is doing a good thing. Another promising pair is Liz and Joshua from Swimming Pool Project Space, and Michael Workman, keeping it real. Paul Klein, of course, is doing a lot for the arts. Tony Fitzpatrick without a doubt is lifting up the Chicago art world at every turn. 32nd Urban and the Chicago Art Department have something good going on, too.
So, there are people who are doing things differently here, but most just think inside the box. Not smart enough to have an independent thought of that what has come before them, or that which their peers are already doing. How is it possible that the art world can be so un-innovative? No wonder artists are getting fed up with the gallery racket and are starting to work as free-agents.
casasugar.com
May 13, 2008
Casa Verde: KS Rives Transforms Trash Into Art
I'm all about making something out of nothing, and artist KS Rives takes that philosophy one step further by making something beautiful out of nothing anyone wants: trash.
Whether through the use of old maps of Paris, discarded rubber bands and public transit tickets, or even cigarette butts, KS Rives takes something that no one wants and transforms it into a highly desirable work of art.
To see some of her art, including her hand-cut wallpaper, just read more.
In her artist statement, she says,
For years my work has been about using refuse to reflect on the decisions that people make, and deciphering what that means about them as people. Studying waste from different parts of the world allows me to discover not only things about other cultures, but about my own by comparing and contrasting the two. Using the technique of collage, I am able to connect intimately with my work and study the individual pieces in detail. This therefore allows me to form a personal relationship of sorts with each culture, combining art making with my passion for sociological thinking.
Art Letter
February 29, 2008
By Paul Klein
There's a show closing tonight I wished I'd previewed and spent money at. ks rives' closing is at the Chicago Art Department. Her collages are painstakingly and meticulously rendered. They work from afar and from close up. And they're rather wonderful technically for such a young artist when most others her age are still making "dorm" art. ks rives is the first chapter of a Chicago success story, making good art, having a good sellling, strong looking exhibit, and getting written up large in the Sun Times. Bravo. It can be done.
www.wrongdistance.com
26 Feb 2008
KS Rives creates things out of waste she finds on her travels. These are some really nice cuts up made from some old Parisian street maps abandoned by some street vendors. Really like these. Link and some flickr photos (via Cheetah Fight)
Chicago Sun Times
February 10, 2008
Chicago artist finds she has to open her own doors
ART | Rives’ collages bridge cultures; now she must connect in hometown
BY MARY HOULIHAN mhoulihan@suntimes.com
On a Saturday afternoon last June, KS Rives was browsing the Paris flea markets when, suddenly, it started to rain. The vendors quickly packed up and went home, leaving behind all sorts of discarded treasures.
The Chicago artist was in her element. Concerned with environmental and sociological issues, Rives creates art out of found objects -- discarded metro cards and parking tickets, old newspapers, rubber bands and even cigarette butts.
But that day in Paris, Rives found inspiration in a box of books. Lying on top was a collection of antique maps of Paris. “I was picking up all sorts of stuff,” Rives recalls with glee. “But I knew immediately that I could do something interesting with those maps.”
What Rives did was cut up the maps and create small abstract collages that explode with a graceful intimacy. Thirty of the collages are on display in “KS Rives: Entre Les Deux,” running through March 1 at the Chicago Art Department, 1837 S. Halsted. The show’s title means “between the two”; Rives’ goal was to explore how cultures differ, to focus on the distance between “us and them.”
“There are two themes that I meditate on in my work,” says Rives, who won’t reveal what “KS” is for. “One is the environment; the other is sociology. I spend about as much time getting inspired as I do working on the pieces.”
The collages are a relatively new endeavor. Rives first found success with her “wallpaper” series, in which she uses Chicago parking tickets and New York metro cards to create elaborate cut-out designs like Victorian wallpaper, blending a standard piece of interior design with the street. “I’m trying to examine the choices people make on the outside vs. the inside,” Rives says. “To ask the question: Why are we trashing our outside world when we would never do that inside our homes?”
Her work also includes intricate mazelike designs created with rubber bands and striped collages using newspaper headlines. The cigarette assemblages have a “yuck” factor but are nonetheless intriguing designs. (For more, visit www.ksrives.com.)
“KS has grown to be more and more specific in her work but at the same time more and more universal,” says artist Tony Fitzpatrick, a friend and mentor. “She’s extremely driven. And that’s exactly what a young artist needs to be to break away from the pack.”
Rives’ map collages were a hit at the recent Art Basel Miami, and her work is exhibited in galleries in Santa Fe, N.M., and New York -- big moves for an artist who until three months ago was working at Time Out magazine as a graphic designer and trying to create art in her spare time.
“It was like having two full-time jobs,” she says. “I didn’t have time to really concentrate on art. So I was basically stressed out and unhappy all the time.”
‘A crafty child’
Rives grew up in Wichita, Kansas, and moved to Chicago with her family when she was 16. She remembers being a “crafty child.” “I would build sculptures and glue glitter and buttons onto frames,” she says. “In some way or another, I was always interested in art.”
She graduated from Regina Dominican High School and attended St. Mary’s of Notre Dame for a couple of years before deciding “it just wasn’t the school for me.” She transferred to Columbia College Chicago, where she studied interior architecture for two years before deciding that also wasn’t the right road.
“I’m really driven to succeed, and I felt that was a field that would take more years than I was willing to spend to become successful,” Rives says. “I’m more of an instant-gratification type.”
But Rives needed to make a living, so she taught herself graphic design and eventually landed the job at Time Out, where she worked for three years.
Now, Rives feels she’s finally come full circle to the art she loves creating. In many ways, Rives still does much the same sort of work she did as a child, only now it’s on a more sophisticated level that has pushed her into up-and-coming status. “You can try and run away from what you’re really supposed to do for only so long before it just draws you back in again,” she says. “I feel so comfortable and so right doing this, like nothing I’ve ever done before.”
‘Few if not zero open doors’
Quitting that day job may have been the best move for Rives, but it brought about a whole new set of challenges, the first of which is: How do young artists infiltrate the Chicago art scene?
“There are very few if not zero open doors here,” she says. “There are a lot of really good artists here, so I don’t understand why galleries won’t pay any attention. It’s frustrating to be in your own city and have people tell you no.”
At a recent seminar at the Chicago Cultural Center attended by Rives, young artists were advised to either move to New York or mount their own show in Chicago. Although Rives may someday end up in New York, for the time being she latched onto the second idea.
The Chicago Art Department is a nonprofit organization offering opportunities -- gallery and work space -- to emerging artists. Rives had to organize the show and sell her own work (prices range from $400-$700), but she also gets to keep the profit.
“It’s good experience for me to learn all this,” she says, a bit of resentment in her voice. “Yet part of me doesn’t want to throw my own show. I just want to work on the art and keep coming up with ideas and producing new art.”
Outside of Chicago, Rives has had better luck with galleries. Santa Fe gallerist Dwight Hackett has had great success showing and selling her artwork. “There is an excessiveness in her work that makes it stand out,” Hackett says. “She combines the sensibility of antique design with contemporary materials. Collectors and other artists really respond to it.”
‘I’m not homeless’
Rives’ Pilsen apartment, which also serves as her studio, is decorated in artist shabby-chic. Art fills the walls; second-hand furniture abounds. On a small desk in front of a living-room window, she cuts and pastes her collages and wallpaper creations.
Rives has favorite spots around town where she finds her materials. Sometimes when she’s out collecting (“parking tickets are everywhere in the gutter”), she’s approached by strangers. “People come up to me and offer me money for something to eat,” she says, laughing. “But I tell them ‘I’m not homeless, I’m an artist!’ “.
Albequerque Journal North
Friday, October 26, 2007
The Most Interesting Pieces in ‘Birds’ are Those Created by Largely Unknown, Up-And-Coming Artists, Hollis Walker
Some of the other most famous of folk’s artwork in this exhibition was not the most impressive (Leslie Dill’s and Fred Tomaselli’s, in particular— in fact, we’ve seen this work of Tomaselli’s at SITE Santa Fe in the past), but I was quite attracted to the lesser-known artists’ works. I was fond of KS Rives’ two pieces, elaborate paper cutouts based on 17th- and 18th-century wallpaper designs collaged on board. Her paper mediums are Santa Fe and Chicago parking tickets. The cutouts themselves are that kind of wonderful, obsessive work with which much of the current generation of emerging artists seem to be intrigued. So am I. There’s something very primal about that repetitive patterning and the detail-oriented, visually engaged mind to which it appeals. (Excerpt)
www.nearwestgazette.com
Sept 6, 2006
City Beat, April Galarza
Chicago Art Department, 1837 S. Halsted St., www.Chicagoartdepartment.org, (312) 226-8601. As the website of this Pilsen gallery proudly states, “if you have a fire you call the Chicago Fire Department, if your house has been robbed you call the Chicago Police Department, and if you have an insatiable desire to create and experience art, you call the Chicago Art Department.” Located in East Pilsen, this gallery/studio/school operates under the philosophy that art can come from anywhere. Although the gallery is known for video and digital photography, it is open to anything. Its most recent exhibition, “Your Trash,” explored its philosophy to the fullest with pieces that consisted of mixed media, including materials found in garbage. An intriguing piece by KS Rives looks vaguely naturalistic at first glance, like a bamboo or birch sculpture—until you get close and realize it is made entirely of cigarette butts. Another piece uses cutlery to create crabs crawling along a sandy shore. The Chicago Art Department’s primary intent is not selling art but teaching classes, which are offered in all media and often result in an exhibition.
Chicago Reader
July 13, 2006
Briefs
“Your Trash,” wallpaper made with cigarette butts, parking tickets, and other discarded materials by ks rives, with other garbage-based work by Mike Nourse, Fri 7/14, 6-10pm, then by appointment through Fri 8/4, at Chicago Art Department, 1837 S. Halsted, 312-226-8601.
Caption: Detail of Butts 1, wallpaper by ks rives, part of “Your Trash” showing Friday at the Chicago Art Department.
Time Out Chicago
Art listings
July 19th, issue 125
“HighLife.” This all-women’s group show features seven artists working in painting, photography, mosaics and other media. Participants include Carla Avila, Nicole Kenney and TOC’s own ks Rives.Through Jul 28
Oct 29, 2009
After India
KS Rives
After a month and a half of staying in India, I felt like I lived there. I ventured to the country in order to work with my creative partner on a Polaroid project asking local people what they wanted to do before they die. My own goals for the trip included a spiritual restructuring, getting healthy, and drinking in the surrounding culture. The ideas for these pieces originated from my visions during meditation while staying at the ashram, and the drawings of them were done before returning to the states. These works were finished in Chicago, and are also greatly affected by the tumult that overtook my life upon reintroduction to the West. All of the materials found below were picked up off the litter-filled streets of Indian towns: Delhi, Amenebhad, Kochin, and Varanasi. The writings (on the back of each piece and journal-style on paper) serve to reflect both my time in India and life since coming home.
KS Rives‘ work has been displayed in galleries around the world. She has received multiple awards, including best in show at Artist Project Toronto. Her series After India will be on display at the Chicago Cultural Center for a solo show in July of 2010.
www.theconduitmagazine.com
February 13, 2009
KS Rives
By Sarah Maehl
When we so often see Art locked up high in an ivory tower—inaccessible, abstract, disengaged from life and culture—we can rest assured that someone like KS Rives will come along to throw rocks at the windows. Kansas/Chicago native, KS Rives, believes art should exist for more than just The Art Community; she deliberately mixes art with the stuff of culture, using maps, parking tickets, various pieces of trash to create piecemeal works, which she hopes gives people some pause about social and environmental issues while allowing them to “get lost in the details.”
Rives is not just another hippie creating confrontational trash art to make consumers feel bad about the vast amount of waste they leave behind. Rather, she is most interested in understanding people and cultures through the various bits of paper they carry around—and then throw away. “Ideally, my art will be a tool for learning and understanding one another,” she says. Her current project, Before I Die I Want To, is both an homage to the fading medium of Polaroid photography as well as a comparison of what the answers to such a question reveal about a culture. She and partner Nicole Kennedy snap Polaroids of people as they state some life goal—for example, one girl wants to go to Legoland—which is then scribbled onto the white border and posted on their website, www.beforeidieiwantto.org. The two plan to keep tabs on each person in the years to come.
The project started in New York with a total of 250 photos, and Rives and Kennedy have since added 600 more from Chicago, Boston, Louisiana, and most recently, India. “You can tell Americans are wealthy,” Rives mused about her observations so far, “They talk about traveling; a lot of women want to have children.” In contrast, Rives has noticed that most Indians talk about spirituality, reincarnation, and wanting to do something to help other people. “Even the children,” she noted. Though they have received a few small grants, Before I Die is mostly self-funded, and they still have aspirations to take the project to Cuba, South America, China, Russia, and Africa. “This is the most important piece I’ve ever done. I feel like I’m making an impact on people,” said Rives as she recalled a participant who reunited with a sister estranged for years. “That I can be a part of that, just to witness it is so amazing.”
The Polaroid element seems to give the project both a sense of immediacy and permanence, as an utterance concerned with the future through the transitory medium of voice is forever sealed within the very tangible object of the photo. Much like Rives’ outlook on her career as an artist: she seems to approach projects with a certain spontaneity but with the purpose of creating something that will last.
To anyone thinking success in art can also mean success financially, Rives has a word or two. “Don’t do your art for money or success. You do it because you have to; sometimes that mean accepting a less luxurious life.” Of course, sometimes that means you get to go to India. But it also requires you to not lock yourself and your art up in a studio. Rives encourages young artists to “talk to everyone” about their work, as she herself met her mentor and supporter, Chicago poet-artist Tony Fitzgerald, through a co-worker. “Don’t be afraid of anyone. You never know who you’re going to talk to and how it will change your life.”
See KS Rives’ work at www.ksrives.com and peruse the Polaroids at www.beforeidieiwantto.org
chicagoist.com
October 16, 2008
An Interview with KS Rives
By Lauri Apple
There's a lot of found-object artists out there these days, but KS Rives takes it one step further by incorporating bits of full-blown trash -- used cigarette butts and discarded rubber bands, for example -- to create pieces that examine various cultures' attitudes about waste. She's also half of the "Before I Die I Want to ..." project, in which she and Brooklyn-based partner Nicole Kenney ask a person what he or she wants to do before they die, take a Polaroid portrait while the subject is stating their desire, then ask the person to write his or her statement on the photo -- starting with the words “Before I die I want to....”
Recently we asked Rives to discuss her many creative projects.
Chicagoist: How did environmentalism become a factor in your work?
KS Rives: Throughout my childhood, a close relative of mine, my Aunt Ann, would continuously talk to me about the environment and how to make sustainable choices for the earth. These ideas didn't truly sink in, however, until my senior year at Columbia College. I took a class taught by Michelle Sayset called "Ecofeminism and the Environment," which changed my world view and made me realize that I was needed to make a difference. A passion was born.
C: You've made pieces out of metro cards from Paris, Madrid and NYC, maps from Paris, and parking tickets from here and Santa Fe. When you go traveling to a place, do you now think about scoping out an item from that place to turn into an artwork?
KR: There is nowhere that I can go where I am not thinking about my work. I could be on the beach in Hawaii and I will be conjuring up some way to turn it into a work trip. I also attempt to gather trash no matter where I go, and now to take photos. I love what I do, I am passionate about succeeding at this game and about getting my work out into the world so that I can continue to make art.
C: Many of the trash items you use involve transportation. Thoughts?
KR: My focus is society and culture, and traveling comes naturally with that type of study. I enjoy traveling so that I can experience different people and various ways of living life. Even here at home, I surround myself with people of different backgrounds, from other cultures, who speak languages that I do not speak. I devour a good challenge, so I place myself in situations where I can continually learn.
C: When did the trash wallpaper series originate?
KR: I started this series in 2005 through a class that I took at the Chicago Art Department called "Street Studies." I was out walking around in the rain one evening, trying to get inspiration from the streets for my art. I picked up a lot of things that evening, among which were tons of cigarette butts. I was interested in creating a piece that was focused on texture.
C: Do you wear gloves?
KR: No, as I enjoy connecting with my materials intimately. Dirt washes off. I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty for my work.
C: Your recent show of Polaroids, Death + Extinction, was a 12-artist, Chicago/New York City project plus an exhibition that you organized yourself. What were the challenges in making it happen?
KR: Hanging the show was challenging. Shortly before the show was to be hung, my husband and I decided to permanently separate, and I moved to Oak Park to stay with a friend. Because my husband and I had the gallery together, that was also to be my last show there after three years. Physically dealing with planning and hanging the show was a huge hurdle for us to overcome, as well as my grieving, and my partner in the project, Nicole Kenney, supporting me in this difficult time. Working through that period made us extremely appreciative when the show was such a success. Our pain was worth it, and the other artists worked so hard to create a museum-quality show.
C: What's the status of the "Before I Die" project?
KR: Nicole I are working with galleries in New York and L.A. to make the show a touring exhibition. We have plans to take the project on the road to locations all over the United States and to one Third World country.
C: That project involved the use of suicide contracts. How did you make that connection?
KR: Suicide contracts were one initial inspiration for this project when Nicole and I were mapping it out. We are intrigued by psychology and the workings of the human mind, and so referencing knowledge of this kind is not surprising coming from us. We imagined that if humans were predisposed to needing that social connection in order to do something as important as not bringing harm to themselves, that the same theory would apply to a situation where they were asked to complete a task in their lives. The outcome of both situations is positive and beneficial for the person making the promise.
C: What are you working on currently?
KR: I am still working on the Paris map collages some, but am also branching off into three-dimensional collages, also made from trash. I am currently talking to some local building owners in my neighborhood, Humboldt Park, to get a mural erected. Not a traditional mural, but a 7'x7' parking ticket collage that I will affix directly to the outside of a building and cover with a protective coating to survive the elements. I am working on some commissioned pieces of the trash wallpapers; right now I am creating a series of rose wallpapers made from dyed security envelopes. I am also creating more of the rubber band works, which are more textural in nature. I have just begun a sculptural piece in the same vein as the piece that I recently created for the 32nd + Urban "framed" show that I envision will turn into a series about the stages of grieving. My focus was and will continue to be sociology, mostly using garbage to investigate different cultures.
There's also a piece that I proposed to Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh: a room filled with telephones, each one sharing a prerecorded secret (in my voice) with the participant who picks up the phone. I have been interested in self-expressive pieces just for the simple fact that I am going through some personal trauma right now which I need to release.
I also just gave a talk at Green Home Chicago in the West Loop, on the subject of my work and how it is connected to the environment.
C: What's in the future for you?
KR: I have an upcoming solo show at the Chicago Cultural Center; the people there have been great to work with thus far. I am curating a show with an artist who currently lives and works in Romania, to take place at the Museum of Cluj-Napoca. It is titled, "I fought the X and the X won," and features 10 artists, including Chicago artists Delicious Design League, Aaron Edwards and myself alongside other U.S. and international artists. The show is about accepting the inevitable in life. For that show I am doing a video installation piece which I began shooting last week with my cinematographer, Yorvi Moreira. We are talking to the Cultural Center and a couple of other galleries in town about bringing the show here after its run in Romania is finished.
For the December Miami art fairs, I will be exhibiting with Adam Baumgold Gallery of New York, Jack Fischer gallery of San Francisco and Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn. I have a show at Dust gallery in Las Vegas in March 2009. Those are on the calendar at the moment, and I know that more will come up in the next few months.
C: Earlier this year, you told the Sun-Times that Chicago doesn't really open its doors to young and emerging artists. Did you get any responses to that comment -- from gallerists, city officials, or other? Have you seen any promising signs of change since February?
KR: Little changed for me in Chicago after that article. I tried making contact with the MCA, ThreeWalls, Hyde Park Art Center, Cynthia West of Three Arts, and Artadia grant, and heard nothing in response. I am tapping on their glasses, like, "hello, I'm right in front of you. What are you waiting for?"
C: Who do you think is keeping the local scene energized and fresh?
KR: Allegoric is doing a good thing. Another promising pair is Liz and Joshua from Swimming Pool Project Space, and Michael Workman, keeping it real. Paul Klein, of course, is doing a lot for the arts. Tony Fitzpatrick without a doubt is lifting up the Chicago art world at every turn. 32nd Urban and the Chicago Art Department have something good going on, too.
So, there are people who are doing things differently here, but most just think inside the box. Not smart enough to have an independent thought of that what has come before them, or that which their peers are already doing. How is it possible that the art world can be so un-innovative? No wonder artists are getting fed up with the gallery racket and are starting to work as free-agents.
casasugar.com
May 13, 2008
Casa Verde: KS Rives Transforms Trash Into Art
I'm all about making something out of nothing, and artist KS Rives takes that philosophy one step further by making something beautiful out of nothing anyone wants: trash.
Whether through the use of old maps of Paris, discarded rubber bands and public transit tickets, or even cigarette butts, KS Rives takes something that no one wants and transforms it into a highly desirable work of art.
To see some of her art, including her hand-cut wallpaper, just read more.
In her artist statement, she says,
For years my work has been about using refuse to reflect on the decisions that people make, and deciphering what that means about them as people. Studying waste from different parts of the world allows me to discover not only things about other cultures, but about my own by comparing and contrasting the two. Using the technique of collage, I am able to connect intimately with my work and study the individual pieces in detail. This therefore allows me to form a personal relationship of sorts with each culture, combining art making with my passion for sociological thinking.
Art Letter
February 29, 2008
By Paul Klein
There's a show closing tonight I wished I'd previewed and spent money at. ks rives' closing is at the Chicago Art Department. Her collages are painstakingly and meticulously rendered. They work from afar and from close up. And they're rather wonderful technically for such a young artist when most others her age are still making "dorm" art. ks rives is the first chapter of a Chicago success story, making good art, having a good sellling, strong looking exhibit, and getting written up large in the Sun Times. Bravo. It can be done.
www.wrongdistance.com
26 Feb 2008
KS Rives creates things out of waste she finds on her travels. These are some really nice cuts up made from some old Parisian street maps abandoned by some street vendors. Really like these. Link and some flickr photos (via Cheetah Fight)
Chicago Sun Times
February 10, 2008
Chicago artist finds she has to open her own doors
ART | Rives’ collages bridge cultures; now she must connect in hometown
BY MARY HOULIHAN mhoulihan@suntimes.com
On a Saturday afternoon last June, KS Rives was browsing the Paris flea markets when, suddenly, it started to rain. The vendors quickly packed up and went home, leaving behind all sorts of discarded treasures.
The Chicago artist was in her element. Concerned with environmental and sociological issues, Rives creates art out of found objects -- discarded metro cards and parking tickets, old newspapers, rubber bands and even cigarette butts.
But that day in Paris, Rives found inspiration in a box of books. Lying on top was a collection of antique maps of Paris. “I was picking up all sorts of stuff,” Rives recalls with glee. “But I knew immediately that I could do something interesting with those maps.”
What Rives did was cut up the maps and create small abstract collages that explode with a graceful intimacy. Thirty of the collages are on display in “KS Rives: Entre Les Deux,” running through March 1 at the Chicago Art Department, 1837 S. Halsted. The show’s title means “between the two”; Rives’ goal was to explore how cultures differ, to focus on the distance between “us and them.”
“There are two themes that I meditate on in my work,” says Rives, who won’t reveal what “KS” is for. “One is the environment; the other is sociology. I spend about as much time getting inspired as I do working on the pieces.”
The collages are a relatively new endeavor. Rives first found success with her “wallpaper” series, in which she uses Chicago parking tickets and New York metro cards to create elaborate cut-out designs like Victorian wallpaper, blending a standard piece of interior design with the street. “I’m trying to examine the choices people make on the outside vs. the inside,” Rives says. “To ask the question: Why are we trashing our outside world when we would never do that inside our homes?”
Her work also includes intricate mazelike designs created with rubber bands and striped collages using newspaper headlines. The cigarette assemblages have a “yuck” factor but are nonetheless intriguing designs. (For more, visit www.ksrives.com.)
“KS has grown to be more and more specific in her work but at the same time more and more universal,” says artist Tony Fitzpatrick, a friend and mentor. “She’s extremely driven. And that’s exactly what a young artist needs to be to break away from the pack.”
Rives’ map collages were a hit at the recent Art Basel Miami, and her work is exhibited in galleries in Santa Fe, N.M., and New York -- big moves for an artist who until three months ago was working at Time Out magazine as a graphic designer and trying to create art in her spare time.
“It was like having two full-time jobs,” she says. “I didn’t have time to really concentrate on art. So I was basically stressed out and unhappy all the time.”
‘A crafty child’
Rives grew up in Wichita, Kansas, and moved to Chicago with her family when she was 16. She remembers being a “crafty child.” “I would build sculptures and glue glitter and buttons onto frames,” she says. “In some way or another, I was always interested in art.”
She graduated from Regina Dominican High School and attended St. Mary’s of Notre Dame for a couple of years before deciding “it just wasn’t the school for me.” She transferred to Columbia College Chicago, where she studied interior architecture for two years before deciding that also wasn’t the right road.
“I’m really driven to succeed, and I felt that was a field that would take more years than I was willing to spend to become successful,” Rives says. “I’m more of an instant-gratification type.”
But Rives needed to make a living, so she taught herself graphic design and eventually landed the job at Time Out, where she worked for three years.
Now, Rives feels she’s finally come full circle to the art she loves creating. In many ways, Rives still does much the same sort of work she did as a child, only now it’s on a more sophisticated level that has pushed her into up-and-coming status. “You can try and run away from what you’re really supposed to do for only so long before it just draws you back in again,” she says. “I feel so comfortable and so right doing this, like nothing I’ve ever done before.”
‘Few if not zero open doors’
Quitting that day job may have been the best move for Rives, but it brought about a whole new set of challenges, the first of which is: How do young artists infiltrate the Chicago art scene?
“There are very few if not zero open doors here,” she says. “There are a lot of really good artists here, so I don’t understand why galleries won’t pay any attention. It’s frustrating to be in your own city and have people tell you no.”
At a recent seminar at the Chicago Cultural Center attended by Rives, young artists were advised to either move to New York or mount their own show in Chicago. Although Rives may someday end up in New York, for the time being she latched onto the second idea.
The Chicago Art Department is a nonprofit organization offering opportunities -- gallery and work space -- to emerging artists. Rives had to organize the show and sell her own work (prices range from $400-$700), but she also gets to keep the profit.
“It’s good experience for me to learn all this,” she says, a bit of resentment in her voice. “Yet part of me doesn’t want to throw my own show. I just want to work on the art and keep coming up with ideas and producing new art.”
Outside of Chicago, Rives has had better luck with galleries. Santa Fe gallerist Dwight Hackett has had great success showing and selling her artwork. “There is an excessiveness in her work that makes it stand out,” Hackett says. “She combines the sensibility of antique design with contemporary materials. Collectors and other artists really respond to it.”
‘I’m not homeless’
Rives’ Pilsen apartment, which also serves as her studio, is decorated in artist shabby-chic. Art fills the walls; second-hand furniture abounds. On a small desk in front of a living-room window, she cuts and pastes her collages and wallpaper creations.
Rives has favorite spots around town where she finds her materials. Sometimes when she’s out collecting (“parking tickets are everywhere in the gutter”), she’s approached by strangers. “People come up to me and offer me money for something to eat,” she says, laughing. “But I tell them ‘I’m not homeless, I’m an artist!’ “.
Albequerque Journal North
Friday, October 26, 2007
The Most Interesting Pieces in ‘Birds’ are Those Created by Largely Unknown, Up-And-Coming Artists, Hollis Walker
Some of the other most famous of folk’s artwork in this exhibition was not the most impressive (Leslie Dill’s and Fred Tomaselli’s, in particular— in fact, we’ve seen this work of Tomaselli’s at SITE Santa Fe in the past), but I was quite attracted to the lesser-known artists’ works. I was fond of KS Rives’ two pieces, elaborate paper cutouts based on 17th- and 18th-century wallpaper designs collaged on board. Her paper mediums are Santa Fe and Chicago parking tickets. The cutouts themselves are that kind of wonderful, obsessive work with which much of the current generation of emerging artists seem to be intrigued. So am I. There’s something very primal about that repetitive patterning and the detail-oriented, visually engaged mind to which it appeals. (Excerpt)
www.nearwestgazette.com
Sept 6, 2006
City Beat, April Galarza
Chicago Art Department, 1837 S. Halsted St., www.Chicagoartdepartment.org, (312) 226-8601. As the website of this Pilsen gallery proudly states, “if you have a fire you call the Chicago Fire Department, if your house has been robbed you call the Chicago Police Department, and if you have an insatiable desire to create and experience art, you call the Chicago Art Department.” Located in East Pilsen, this gallery/studio/school operates under the philosophy that art can come from anywhere. Although the gallery is known for video and digital photography, it is open to anything. Its most recent exhibition, “Your Trash,” explored its philosophy to the fullest with pieces that consisted of mixed media, including materials found in garbage. An intriguing piece by KS Rives looks vaguely naturalistic at first glance, like a bamboo or birch sculpture—until you get close and realize it is made entirely of cigarette butts. Another piece uses cutlery to create crabs crawling along a sandy shore. The Chicago Art Department’s primary intent is not selling art but teaching classes, which are offered in all media and often result in an exhibition.
Chicago Reader
July 13, 2006
Briefs
“Your Trash,” wallpaper made with cigarette butts, parking tickets, and other discarded materials by ks rives, with other garbage-based work by Mike Nourse, Fri 7/14, 6-10pm, then by appointment through Fri 8/4, at Chicago Art Department, 1837 S. Halsted, 312-226-8601.
Caption: Detail of Butts 1, wallpaper by ks rives, part of “Your Trash” showing Friday at the Chicago Art Department.
Time Out Chicago
Art listings
July 19th, issue 125
“HighLife.” This all-women’s group show features seven artists working in painting, photography, mosaics and other media. Participants include Carla Avila, Nicole Kenney and TOC’s own ks Rives.Through Jul 28
