{"id":54170,"date":"2020-06-10T07:42:54","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T13:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=54170"},"modified":"2020-07-28T09:20:54","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T15:20:54","slug":"v-kim-martinez-investing-in-art-and-the-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/v-kim-martinez-investing-in-art-and-the-community\/","title":{"rendered":"V. Kim Martinez: Investing in Art and the Community"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Simon Blundell<\/p><\/div>\n

Art majors may start out thinking they just want to learn how to make art. When they study with Kim Martinez, they learn a lot more: how to work collaboratively, how to build community, how to secure grant money, and how to invest their art with meaning.<\/h4>\n

Within the first three years after she joined the faculty at the University of Utah in 2001, Martinez had already begun to stretch the campus boundaries to embrace <\/span>the whole metropolitan area. First in the city of South Salt Lake, and later with schools, businesses, hospitals, and, most recently, Murray City, she has formed collaborative partnerships to bring art and art students into public places.<\/h4>\n

You can feel her excitement as she describes the process for producing nine big murals for Murray City schools in 2018. She and students from her murals class at the U of U worked with schoolchildren to design the murals. \u201cWe met with fifth- and sixth-graders to develop drawings,\u201d<\/span> she explains. \u201cWe gave them painting prompts: \u2018What\u2019s your favorite thing in school?\u2019 \u2018Where do you go for safety?\u2019 \u2018What do you like to do?\u2019\u201d She and her college students then took these drawings and put them together, adding historical information requested by the city, including<\/span> the old brick foundry and the big Indian head sculpture in Murray Park. Once the designs were approved by the city and the schools, Martinez and her team set up a painting studio in the historic Murray Mansion ballroom and invited Murray Junior and Senior High School students to paint alongside the college students.<\/h4>\n

Lori Edmunds, cultural arts manager for Murray City, was impressed with the way Martinez worked with students all the way from kindergarten to graduate school. \u201cShe was able to adjust emotionally with them and was\u00a0able to talk to them on their level. That was really <\/span>impressive,\u201d she says. The nine murals, all under the theme \u201cWe Are Murray,\u201d are connected by a purple path that runs through each. Edmunds says they wanted each mural to depict what is unique about each school, while showing the students, \u201cWe\u2019re all connected.\u201d<\/h4>\n

In addition to helping build community between the University and mural sponsors or collaborators, these projects help students feel like a community among themselves. \u201cWe are a commuter school, but I found that students<\/span> can graduate and not have one friend,\u201d Martinez says. \u201cThey get in their cars [after class] and go home.\u201d She understands they are busy, but working in teams to design and create murals provides a space for them to get to know each other and share stories.<\/h4>\n

The Salt Lake City native started at the U herself as a biology major. To help pay her way, she worked for an ad agency, learning ad illustration on the job. The agency worked a lot with inventors and product developers.<\/span> \u201cSomeone would tell me something they were inventing,\u201d says Martinez, \u201cand I could draw it for them.\u201d This led to designing luggage, sportswear, and other products, including<\/span> gloves and luggage for the Winter Olympics. These skills came in handy in other ways: as a student with not a lot of money to spare, Martinez managed to convince a furniture store to trade a sofa for her design skills. Though she was doing well as an artist without a degree, she finally decided <\/span>she wanted to be a painter. She graduated from the U as an art major in 1998.<\/h4>\n

Martinez\u2019s interest in community-based art <\/span>emerged in college. She decided to pursue an MFA degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago because she believed it would give her the credentials and credibility she might need when seeking partnerships with government and private organizations. But she still didn\u2019t know exactly what direction this might take her until one day she thought, \u201cI paint big, so I can paint murals.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Two years after starting as a professor at the University of Utah, Martinez taught her first murals class. She had developed a working relationship with Tim Williams, the Parks and Recreation director for South Salt Lake. Driving around the area, she realized the city was about 70 percent rental units, a \u201cpink ghetto\u201d of single moms. She and Williams thought, \u201cLet\u2019s make murals and make this a community for art. We would drive around in my car and stop at businesses and ask them if they\u2019d let us paint on their buildings,\u201d recalls Martinez. They obtained matching grants from the Utah Transportation Authority (UTA) to fund their project.<\/h4>\n

Martinez continued to work with South Salt Lake for about 10 years, and then the city took over and started to do its own things. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what my role should be,\u201d she says with satisfaction: a visionary and a catalyst. Today South Salt Lake has a vibrant \u201cArt Factory\u201d and a variety of community-based art projects, much like the vision that began with Martinez and Williams 15 years ago. Travel its streets for very long and you\u2019ll likely run into a mural project she directed, like the magical carousel mural on the side of the Bonwood Bowl or the \u201cStep Into Art\u201d mural near 2700 South where you are invited to step inside a painting by famous artists like Whistler or Munch. Martinez\u2019s mural classes have painted on buildings, in Primary Children\u2019s Hospital, the VOA Youth Resource <\/span>Center, Esperanza School in West Valley City, and on many other interior and exterior walls all over town. \u201cWherever we go, we want to build relationships,\u201d says Martinez.<\/h4>\n
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Step Into Art mural, near the corner of 2700 South and West Temple, photo by Liberty Blake.<\/p><\/div>\n

Building relationships is also a big component of a 3-year-old landscape painting residency Martinez leads in Montana each summer. The University\u2019s Humanities Department maintains the Taft-Nicholson Environmental Humanities Education Center in Centennial Valley, a compound that includes living quarters for staff, visitors, and artists-in-residence. Accessed by a 15-mile gravel road that Martinez warns can blow a tire, the property offers students magnificent views for painting, along with moose, bears, egrets, and trumpeter swans. Enrollment in the summer course includes room and board, as well as transportation, at reduced costs, thanks to a generous donor. During their week there, students explore, paint, and attend lectures by environmentalists, astronomers, geologists <\/span>and others. When they return to Salt Lake City, students create a larger studio painting with references from the experience<\/span> and learn how to curate an exhibit of the work they produced in Montana for the U of U\u2019s Gittins Gallery.<\/h4>\n

Martinez admits, \u201cI don\u2019t practice a lot of plein air painting, but I love the process. Some people like to go fishing. I\u2019d rather go painting and see if I can catch something.\u201d Kendyl Schofield had never painted outdoors before signing up for the residency. \u201cIt\u2019s so different than painting in the studio,\u201d she says. \u201cKim was such a great teacher. She\u2019s extremely knowledgeable and can give you all the technical information, but she wants you to really experience<\/span> where you are, bugs and all.\u201d Schofield has continued to do plein air painting and would sign up for the residency again in a heartbeat if she could. \u201cThat\u2019s part of what I\u2019m trying to share with students,\u201d says Martinez. \u201cThe love of making things. I\u2019d rather go sit in nature for 10 hours and make a painting; that\u2019s who I am as an artist. I\u2019m definitely a romanticist.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Martinez didn\u2019t always know she wanted to teach, but teaching seemed a good place to start after leaving graduate school with student loan debt to pay. Today she can\u2019t find the lines between teaching, research\/art making, and community service. \u201cThey\u2019re all combined,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t really know which is more important \u2014 teaching or studio practice. For me, in my brain, they blend. I\u2019m really invested in my teaching; it\u2019s such a creative process. How do I keep students invested and want to keep going? Because art can be really frustrating,\u201d she says. The elimination of art in high school curriculum has made teaching art at the college level more challenging. \u201cSome of the people coming into the department now may not have had an art class.\u201d Furthermore, cursive writing is no longer taught. \u201cThe hand-eye coordination is vulnerable,\u201d she observes. \u201cThey have good skills in other ways, but their eye-hand coordination is different, so we have to work more on that with them.\u201d Schofield describes Martinez <\/span>as \u201cinvested\u201d in her students. When she signed up for Martinez\u2019s drawing class, she was warned by other students that Martinez \u201ccould be very intense.\u201d Don\u2019t take her class if you can\u2019t handle a lot of homework, they advised. But, says Schofield, \u201cI\u2019ve never had another professor who cares as much as she does.\u201d<\/h4>\n
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\u201cTantalus: Swede Town,\u201d 2017, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 84 inches<\/p><\/div>\n

Though teaching and administrative duties keep Martinez very busy, she finds time to do her own painting. She works in series and each series may take as long as five years to research, develop and complete. Currently, she is working on one she calls \u201cTantalus,\u201d after the figure in Greek mythology who is forced to stand in a pool of water below a fruit tree with low lying branches that are always just out of reach. Though still in the early stages, two paintings from this series already debuted in the faculty exhibit at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in the fall of 2018. \u201cThe series is a metaphor for how we deal with the land,\u201d says Martinez. \u201cSome people get resources and some people don\u2019t. Seventy percent of people who live in toxic waste areas are people of color, primarily Latinas and blacks. I wanted to understand why. I wanted to feel it and have conversations.\u201d<\/h4>\n

To research one of her paintings, based on Utah\u2019s West Desert, Martinez drove out to areas around the Morton\u2019s Salt Company mining operation. Though she would normally prefer getting out of the car and walking the area, the site was restricted and she was politely escorted out by guards. So, she decided to hold her camera out the car window and shoot as she went along. \u201cThe paintings are not about one particular location,\u201d she says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t actually exist.\u201d But by walking the land or taking pictures where necessary, she gets ideas and feelings. She pulls it all together in a way that makes sense to her. \u201cThe work is about me standing and being in a place and trying to feel it with my body, trying to understand it,\u201d says Martinez. \u201cJust like plein air painting, there\u2019s something different that happens when you do that.\u201d<\/h4>\n
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\u201cTantalus: Hand Games,\u201d 2018, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches<\/p><\/div>\n

Another series of paintings, \u201c7 Steps Forward, 7 Steps Back,\u201d focuses on migration at the southern border\u00a0of the United States. In addition to reading about migration, <\/span>border security, and the politics of border issues, Martinez went there. She walked the desert routes where migrants have traveled for centuries. She was turned away by border<\/span> patrols with machine guns. She met with a humanitarian group attempting to help migrants through the desert. The imagery she gathered informed her paintings as well as an animated video portion of the work.<\/h4>\n

It is not easy getting into the head of an artist, to figure out how inspiration finds its way to a painting, a series of paintings, and then to exhibits, but Martinez models that for her students. They see that art making doesn\u2019t have to stop with what they know about themselves, what Martinez calls, \u201cbelly button art.\u201d It can also be about what they perceive about community and the world. She is part of an artist collective called \u201cArtnauts,\u201d which was founded in 1996 by Dr. George Rivera at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Artists in the collective use art to comment on social issues, producing exhibits for museums and galleries around the world.<\/h4>\n
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“To What Remote Land is Thy Flight” from “7 Steps Forward, 7 Steps Back,\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

Exposing students to art as social commentary empowers and equips them to develop a broader meaning and context for their own work. \u201cMost students have an idea of something they\u2019re critical of in the world,\u201d Martinez says. \u201cThey\u2019re very sensitive. They have something to say. They just don\u2019t know how to say it. They need someone to encourage them and make them feel comfortable enough to be vulnerable. We try to work with students to give them permission to say what\u2019s there.\u201d<\/h4>\n

If teaching, studio work, and service are seamless in Martinez\u2019s creative life, \u201cWorking with community is the most gratifying thing I do in my life,\u201d she says. And she has been recognized for it over and over. In 2003, she received the Salt Lake City Mayor\u2019s Visual Artist Award for her community involvement and contribution to the Utah Department of Corrections, Veterans Administration, Utah Hispanic Women\u2019s Association, First Step House, and Art Access\/Art Positive! In 2006, she received the University of Utah, College of Fine Arts, Faculty Excellence Award in Teaching, Research, and Service. She also has received numerous grants for community projects, including The National Endowment for the Arts \u201cChallenge America,\u201d through the Utah Division of Arts and Museums; the Utah Transit Authority; City of South Salt Lake; Salt Lake County; Primary Children\u2019s Medical Center; and the State of Utah Division of the Blind and Visually Impaired. Grants have funded 19 community mural projects as well as 118 student travel scholarships.<\/h4>\n

For all the energy, caring, and creativity Kim Martinez has invested in the community and her students, the payouts are huge: public art all over town that reflects the character of the community; and a generation of students who not only know how to draw and paint, but how to connect with each other and their communities through art.<\/span><\/h4>\n
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Community mural project directed by Martinez on the south wall of Bonwood Bowl, 2500 S. Main St., South Salt Lake, 2004, approx. 15 x 120 feet<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

This article was originally published in\u00a0Utah\u2019s 15: The State\u2019s Most Influential Artists (Vol. II)<\/em>, published in 2019.<\/p>\n

You can order a copy at\u00a0http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/index.php\/order-utahs-15\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Art majors may start out thinking they just want to learn how to make art. When they study with Kim Martinez, they learn a lot more: how to work collaboratively, how to build community, how to secure grant money, and how to invest their art with meaning. Within […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":940,"featured_media":54171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[83],"class_list":["post-54170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-v-kim-martinez"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Kim_Martinez-76.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 04:27:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/940"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54170"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54315,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54170\/revisions\/54315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}