TED Community » Kimberly Kradel

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• A reply on Conversation: Have You Ever Had An Unexpected Spiritual or Emotional Encounter with a Building or Built Structure?

  May 23 2011: One can also have a "spiritual" connection with art or architecture without ever believing in anything but self. Creative projects exist to move people in some way, and, in some way, that moves the spirit of the viewer. Religious faith or religion doesn't play a part in the question at all, unless one reads the question that way, which maybe you did.

• A reply on Conversation: Have You Ever Had An Unexpected Spiritual or Emotional Encounter with a Building or Built Structure?

  May 23 2011: Oh yes, images I do have :)
  
  http://paris.artist-at-large.com/photographs/basilica-saint-denis-gallery/
  
  All of the Kings and Queens of France were buried there, and there is a long story to the church ... The coronations were held at Reims cathedral.
  
  I had learned about it in Art History class and then forgot about it. Didn't even bother to see it when I first got to Paris the first time... I was probably there four months before I entered the cathedral and only because I was visiting a friend who lived a few blocks away.
  
  Here is my story/introduction to it: http://paris.artist-at-large.com/2005/04/15/saint-denis-basilica/
  
  Within the last six months I have found a possible clue as to it's hold on me, although it hasn't been totally researched and authenticated. But before that I had always thought that there may be some sort of past life connection - in the building of it or living around it, or something ... I really did stop questioning it though and just appreciate it for what it is.

• A comment on Conversation: Have You Ever Had An Unexpected Spiritual or Emotional Encounter with a Building or Built Structure?

  May 22 2011: I, for some reason, am deeply connected to the Basilica of Saint-Denis, just north of Paris. On every trip to Paris, it's the first place I go to visit and I also always visit it the day before I leave town. I do like Gothic architecture in general, but that particular church has a distinct hold on me.
  
  I also love Romanesque architecture. I like architecture that feels like the environment it was built in.
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  A reply on Conversation: What has been your most exciting, most pivotal, most life-changing "museum moment"?

  May 22 2011: The d'Orsay is my favorite museum of all time. I love wandering around there.
  
  I think that Frida Kahlo exhibition was the same one that was shown at SFMOMA a few years back? I really liked it too!

• A reply on Conversation: What has been your most exciting, most pivotal, most life-changing "museum moment"?

  May 22 2011: Yes, I totally miss the days when museums were empty. Of course, it's good for them to have the income/ticket sales, but the experience of going to an art museum is much different now than when I was in art school in the 70s or even when I went to London, Paris and Rome in the mid-80s.
  
  In the 70s my hangout was the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. I used to love to go there and sit with the Renoirs. I'd go every Saturday. But we also did art school field trips there with our painting and photography classes.

• A reply on Conversation: What has been your most exciting, most pivotal, most life-changing "museum moment"?

  May 22 2011: Thanks Lindsay :)
  
  It was fun to know him - although I knew him in Pittsburgh before he got famous and only saw him twice after he moved to New York - once when I visited his studio in NYC and another time when he was visiting the SF Bay Area. He was a great kid and full of creative energy. Pittsburgh was a bit of an incubator for him, as it was for me, but it couldn't hold him (nor I, come to think of it :).
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  A comment on Conversation: Wealth and power have been our conventional measures of success. What definition will better sustain us now and how can we move into it?

  May 17 2011: Someone once said that I was the "richest poor person" that they knew. It was the biggest compliment I've ever received in my life. The idea of success is all in one's attitude - about life. Success is a concept. It's definition is what ever idea you buy into. Each individual defines their own success. Success has nothing to do with money and everything to do with how one lives their life. The way to recognize this and change this thought pattern in society is to consciously and constantly start conversations like the one you did by asking your question.
  
  When I was really young, I thought that by the age I am now my life would be so completely different than it is. By that metric, I am completely unsuccessful and an utter failure. Instead, my life has been full of experiences that I could not have imagined. And in that I have been successful.

• A comment on Conversation: What has been your most exciting, most pivotal, most life-changing "museum moment"?

  May 16 2011: Yes! Of all places it was at SFMOMA. About five years ago they had a retrospective of work by Eva Hesse. I had never seen any of her work before, and barely remember her being mentioned in art school ... After getting through about 3/4 of the SFMOMA exhibition I sat down on a viewing bench and cried. I had never connected with another artist's work like I did with hers. Some of my work is very similar to hers (although using different materials and not toxic in the making of it) and I could see a real, tangible connection between her work and mine, both in a visual sense and in meaning. It was quite overwhelming.
  
  About twenty seven years earlier, my art school friend Keith Haring had come over to tell me about an exhibition of Pierre Alechinsky's he had just seen the day before. He was so animated and full of emotion about that show. It took me two and half decades to have that similar experience and really understand what he went through.
  
  Experiences like that are once in a life time, amazing events. I've never gotten over it.

• A reply on Conversation: Have you reinvented yourself, or started a movement?

  May 16 2011: Oh yes. Consumerism is an illness. I've chosen not to have credit cards in my life and I try and be as debt-free as possible. I did an experiment about twelve years ago where I got two credit cards and used them for about a year just to see what it was all about and to make sure that I was making the right decision for myself. I was. Each time that I used them during that year I felt like I was stealing or being somehow untrue to myself. Because I don't purchase, or have the ability to purchase experiences on a whim, I don't immediately get to do a lot of the things in life that I would like, but when some experience does come my way, it's very sweet.
  
  Edit: I should say that Consumerism is more rightly an illusion that has been put upon us, as I don't want to imply that anyone who shops for anything is ill!

• A comment on Conversation: Who do you trust more to help you understand world events, the press, politicians or your friends/family, or someone/something else? Why?

  May 15 2011: I don't think I "trust" any one person or outlet for news/information. I do read newspapers, blogs, news sites online, watch my twitter flow for random newsy posts - that's how I found out about the earthquake in Japan - and listen to the radio occasionally, usually NPR. I try and get a wide spectrum of details and then form my own opinions, or the whole story rather than the just a piece ...Television news has fallen out of favor with me because it's so hype driven - when I was a kid I trusted Walter Cronkite as I got older I watched Peter Jennings, but now I rarely watch television news. I think the whole medium is shifting or morphing into something else, and it's too early to tell which direction it is going into.