Kara Albrecht (Spellbound)
Tell us a little about yourself.
As a child I would notice details, color, textures in the world around me that I would try to reproduce with materials that children typically have access to and use at home or in school. Quite often I would put my own flourishes and ideas into school art assignments. My family, and in particular my maternal grandfather, was supportive of my creative side. After graduating from high school I attended the U of M for art and later transferred to the Minneapolis School of Art and Design where I graduated with a BFA program in the program. I've gone down many artistic roads and have accumulated skills in painting, drawing, photography, metal work, quilting, computer coding and graphics plus whatever my squirrel brain takes a fancy in trying.
Where and when do your best creative ideas often strike you? What inspires your artistic practice?
My process at this point in life is a combination of letting the materials help form and dictate what my my brain envisions as to to how it might become a finished piece. Sometimes that means I end up creating a new process to meet finishing a complete work.
Inspiration can be fleeting for me and has no pattern other than maybe a word, the pattern on a leaf or the million other things that are present every day in the world. What ends up as a finished work is usually the one that sits in the forefront of my brain long enough to jot down.
Tell us about your piece that’s included in Spellbound.
My piece in Spellbound is the product of my life long fascination with the horror genre in film and print, combined with pushing the materials of cheap tinfoil and newsprint that I've been working with to pop off the canvas. "When Old Gods Wake" is the intersection of pulling my ideas and skills together successfully.
Do you have any Halloween traditions?
Halloween is my favorite holiday, but I have no set in stone traditions and instead enjoy it each year in what feels right in the moment.
Are you working on anything new you’d like to share with us? Where can we find more of your art online?
I usually have a multitude of projects in rotation and people can get a sample of those and sometimes my fleeting ideas in process on Instagram @karaalbrecht
