Beyond Reality from Rebecca Garrison on Vimeo.

 

The Visceral Pool

Beloved North Sacramento artist Kim Scott enjoys matching words with images, even though, as she says ”they are two different languages.” It joins the two sides of the brain for a moment, she says.

The name of Kim’s show, The Visceral Pool, is a result of that word/image exercise.

“It conjured up dark red and sticky caverns, punctuated with heaving chunks of sentient squishiness …smacking and squeaking.. glistering and primal. Then I went and looked up ‘Visceral Pool’ to find the literal definition. The term is used by the medical profession to indicate the pool of internal organs in the body.”

Kim says the work she will show in February is a mash-up of imagery; flesh and mechanical protagonists witnessing the force of their own sometimes familiar hallucinated nature.

“Scale is disregarded, time speeds up and slows down, dreamlike symbolism helps patch together the story,” she says. “It shows a place where explorers meet to bask, hide out and search for treasure. Sink or swim. Take pictures for their scrap books. Once you leave, it’s hard to remember what it looked like or why you were there.”

Kim was born and raised in Sacramento. She has made art nonstop from the time she was a kid watching TV sci-fi and playing dress up fantasies in thrift store evening gowns. In her 20s, she answered the call to adventure and left the United States to travel and paint.

Back in the states, In 1973 she realized she could make art her profession.

“I had made art for years before this, but I didn’t understand it could be a real job. I studied with several Photo Realist artists including Gary Pruner and Mel Ramos. Now making art IS my real job!”

Kim has taught art in the California Prison System and currently teaches at the Short Center North arts day program for adults with developmental disabilities. She has also taught art history and studio art at American River Community College, the College of art in New Delhi, the Mendocino Art Center and the Crocker Art Museum.

“People who live in Sacramento or who move here are said to be under the influence of the old native ‘curse of the two rivers,’” says Kim. “The curse is like a vortex that makes you stay in Sacramento.”

“If you do leave you will have to come back until all of your spiritual work is done.”

Kim has traveled to 22 countries, including 2 years of studio work in India. She paints topics relating to her own experiences that focus on impermanence, vanity and the confusions and beauty of everyday life.

“My paintings are self portraits,” she said. “But, I must need to do more spiritual work … I still live in Sacramento.”

Kim will have 17 pieces in the show.