Photographer & Artist Based in South Florida
The early years
My work is constantly evolving but I often reflect back to my younger years. I fell in love with photography in 6th grade when my mom and dad gave me my first Kodak Pocket Instamatic 20 camera. Those tiny 110 negatives didn’t make great enlargements but I loved it! My aunt had a larger Minolta SLR with fancy lenses. I was intrigued by it as she made some beautiful images.
In high school I got my first SLR, a Canon AE-1 with my 1970’s rainbow strap! I still have the Kodak and the Canon as well as many more cameras that I have collected over the years. I learned to develop my own pictures and was known on campus as the ‘yearbook photographer’. In college, I double majored In Fine Art Photography and Art Education at the University of South Florida (USF).
35 Year Career Teaching Photography
Throughout my career I taught photography, art, and business classes to high school students in Palm Beach County, Florida. My students learned how to use their SLR’s and develop film and print their images in black and white as well as in color. It was a challenge managing large classes in small darkrooms but most of my students loved the process. Eventually we eliminated the chemical process and went all in on digital photography. New camera technologies and software such as Photoshop became the norm. After 35 years, I have retired from teaching, so I can travel more and have time to really work on my personal art, much of which I share here at KimsVisions.com.
Personal Art
When I studied Art in college, I felt as though the artist had to be sad and make commentaries about social and political events of the day. While I appreciate that for many artists, it’s not what I wanted to express. I believe that art really is “In the eye of the beholder”. I prefer to see beauty that is all around us admiring photographers like Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston.
Flowers and other natural elements, for example, come and go but they are so beautiful, I need to photograph them with my camera to preserve them. I especially love to take images of the smallest flowers and enlarge them to huge scale reducing them to color, shapes, and lines. I think I am very much influenced but the art of Georgia O’Keefe in that way.
In our modern society I also see to find simplicities in architecture and everyday objects. I often break them down to the abstract imagery of how lines and colors interact. Whether it’s in architecture or objects, the natural world or how animals interact in the world, I like to show the patterns and sensibilities that are often forgotten or ignored.
I love being able to take artistic pictures anywhere I go, especially in nature. My photographs were published in two yearly editions of The Best of College Photography. I had images on the walls of the Boca Raton Museum, Fort Lauderdale Art Museum, the University of Miami Art Gallery, Palm Beach State College Theater, and many private homes around the country.
I love observing the world around me. Photography allows me to capture the beauty I see in the world and share it with others. I hope you enjoy exploring the world through my lens.
My other artistic love…
While photography has been my first love, I also like other types of art. I’ve been making my own jewelry since I was a kid using shells, beads, and chain. Now, I like to make jewelry with Sterling Silver and glass. I have learned to fuse the glass in my kiln to make exciting shapes and patterns. My fused glass is mostly jewelry but sometimes I make larger pieces of art based on my photography. You can see my work on my other website www.NeworBetter.com.
I also show some of my mothers’ work, a painter who has inspired my own art. I have many of her oils on canvas for sale as well as her unique abstract paintings on gourds.
There is also a vintage section where I resell some interesting finds, mostly glass or ceramics, that my husband and I run across on our travels. There are many interesting items for your home or for you to give as gifts.
