3 Questions

The Jean Cocteau Cinema continues to host intimate art openings in its lobby, this time with local multimedia creator Shakti Kroopkin (5:30 pm Thursday March 1. Free. 418 Montezuma Ave., 466-5528), a transplant from Chicago who's been studying and creating art since, she says, she was only 7 years old. Kroopkin embraces the abstract for her new body, a strange yet magnetic array of skewed shapes, wild colors (or no colors) and intriguing creatures that we find both kinda creepy and kinda cool. It might seem like cubism at first blush, or perhaps like desaturated Kandinsky, though with Kroopkin's swirling and expertly coralled chaos, they become movements unto themselves; almost living and painstakingly detailed.

What's your new body of work like?

All of the work I've created this year—some previous to getting the show and some in the months since—there are kind of two bodies coming through. I
produced … creatures coming out of larger pieces. I call them my 'Pop Block Series.' They're done on clay board, which is wood with a thin layer of clay, and I carve into that clay with an etching tool. I decided to keep a number in black and white; I see them like a film reel, I see them going into animation, the fourth dimension. The other is pure abstraction, though it bridges the surreal and my street art influences. They always evolve as I go, though I have my processes.

You grew up in Chicago. Did moving to Santa Fe have any particular impact on your work?

My work, I feel, bridges a manmade reality with surreal organic forms that exist here in New Mexico. I was influenced by the colors here; the adobe and the turquoise. The vastness of space has influenced creating paintings without boundaries, where it feels like the painting could go on and on. It's more focused here, you just have to find your niche.

People always talk about art in Santa Fe, but it always seems like it's romanticized. Is it challenging to make it as an abstract artist here?

I don't feel I've found the exact right fit in terms of my work yet. It's more of a struggle, but I think over the last 15 years and I've definitely seen a shift, even on Canyon Road. In the past it was more focused on Southwest art and what I'd call 'decorative abstraction,' but I think people have become more open to abstraction here in the last 10 years. But even at my [group] shows, the people who are painting and selling aspens and horses are outselling me. I did paint one horse last year, though. And I sold it.