An Interview With Ida Patton

Ida Patton is one the leaders at Studios Inc. She has held the position of office manager for the past year. She is pursuing a BFA in Painting at the Kansas City Art Institute and will graduate May of 2018. She spends her free time traveling, painting, and photographing the world around her. We sat down with her to discuss art and her experience at Studios Inc.............Q:How did you come to be at Studios Inc?A: I was bartending full time and felt  unfulfilled in my own creative endeavors and I wanted something that would provide more artistic drive and would give me a new set of skills. Q:What has been your favorite part about working at Studios Inc? A:One of the most unique parts of the job is seeing the importance of everyone's role. We have a small team, but all of our roles are equally important from intern to director.  Our Assistant Director, Robert Gann, really inspires me with his curatorial skills and I have been able to work with him on installing and arranging work. All of the interns have taught me more than I would have imagined as well. And Colby? He is such a fun and fearless leader. I am honored to work alongside him. Q:What originally got you into art? What is your preferred medium when creating art? A:  I come from three generations of painters on my mom’s side. It isn’t something that I chose, but something that was in me. I started as  a Printmaking major and after a year, I switched into the Painting Department. Two years into my college career, I left for a year and started taking photos... a lot of photos. I think anytime you try other mediums you start to learn about what you were doing before and where you want to go next with your work. I started working with clay and I found the glazing process to be challenging and refreshing since you can not see the true glaze color or the way it interacts with other glazes until it is fired.  It’s the same thing with shooting film. I am always thinking about  color relationship with painting, but with ceramics and film there are so many unknowns that I find it a lot more difficult to control the end results. Q: What/ Who do you derive inspiration from? A: I don’t have a set of artists that I look at specifically. I really like Alex Kanevsky and Jonas Wood. I draw most of my inspiration from  my day to day life. I initially started taking photos as a starting point and a reference for paintings. I am constantly thinking about the relationship of the nearest space, objects, color and taking that into my work across all mediums. Q: You have traveled all around the world, do you ever see what you have seen abroad sneak into your work in unexpected ways?A: It is pretty directly related. I wouldn’t say that is the reason I travel, nor the reason I create. I spend so much of my free time traveling that it will inevitably inspire my work. I think I am still riding the wave of Australia because the landscape itself and colors are so vivid.Q:Could you tell us about your current show that is up at PT’s coffee? What was the driving force behind it? A: It is titled Home, which comes from the point of view of somebody who has not had a set residence. I have moved 23 times in 23 years which gets pretty old and it makes it more difficult to stay somewhere. When I started traveling I thought less about a physical home more about home as something you carry with you. The twelve images that are hanging are all pieces of what I would consider home, the people and places that have led me to be who I am now. It is realizing that you don’t need to have a home, to have a home. It is not needing to search for a place to belong but simply being.Q:How would you define Home, do you think it is the cliché that home is where the heart is?A: I think it a sense home truly is where your heart is at. When you think of the word home it changes depending on what season of life you are in. The people around you definitely effect that season of life and ultimately become home to us... so do the landscapes and the objects we surround ourselves with. Home is more of a feeling than a place for me.Q: What are your goals as an artist? How would you define success for yourself?A: I would really like to see some of my prints on a  larger scale. I think my ultimate goal as an artist is to be satisfied with my own work. That is something we all struggle with; finishing a piece and feeling like your goals  you had when you started the piece of work were accomplished by the end of it. I don’t really see myself working as a professional artist. I am more drawn towards working toward social endeavors and working for not for profits. It would be wonderful to find a career that marries these two parts of myself.