Artist Profile Series: Lyric Kinard

Lyric Kinard
Cary, North Carolina

1. What is sitting on the edges of your work table? A folder of images for thermofax screens. Quilts I haven’t put back away after my last trip. And a nerf gun my son is working on painting and modifying.

2. If someone looked beneath the surface, what could be revealed that we might not know about you?  That I sometimes feel like a fraud as an artist, but I am able to shove that devilish voice aside and carry on.

3. What occupies the space between your sewing machine and your cutting table?  They are on opposite sides of the two rooms of my studio. So - a mannequin, a quilting machine, an ironing station, a wall, a closet full of finished artworks and blank canvases and wire baskets full of fabric and notions.

4. What is the most exquisite moment in your artistic life?  That time when I lose track of time, when I am able to forget expectations and let the art and the process take me where it will.

5. Do you have daily rituals in your studio?  I think about daily rituals, I would love to have daily rituals, but haven’t the discipline to do them. I’m usually just rushing from one family or business deadline to the next.

6. Reflecting on the quilts that you have made, which one stands out to you?  Bach Cello Suite was a breakthrough piece for me. I had spent time analyzing all the elements that made my heart sing when I looked at others work, then purposefully created a work using that kind of texture and shape and pattern. It made my own heart sing.

7. What do you have an affinity for in your work?  Subtle but complex layers of texture. Geometry juxtaposed with a little bit of disorder.

8. What kinds of patterns do you use in your work to create interest and texture?  I like subtle patterns, a repeated direction of line, a repeated shape. Background things that add just a little bit of interest on closer inspection.

9. What personal iconography is identifiable to you exclusively in your work?  Hard question as I don’t think I’m the only one exclusively doing my shapes and colors and textures. But - a clean geometry, the jusctoposition of simplicity and complexity.

10. What was your inspiration for the Best of Dinner at Eight?  A long running series that I keep returning to, initially inspired by a stone mill wheel. The series has carried me elsewhere but that sense of movement, time, and the heaviness and simplicity of that circle continues to intrigue me.