"Forecasting" & painting Kentucky weather // Artists Respond Guest Blog
The following guest blog was written by Artists Respond microgrant recipient Ceirra Evans about her supported painting series. Learn more at kyrux.org/microgrants/2024, and find more of Ceirra’s work online at ceirraevans.com.
Eastern Kentucky, place-based narrative is integral to my oil paintings. My paintings use the history of oil painting, folk art, and illustration to create a stage where rural Kentucky’s people, setting, and culture are the main characters. WIth the help of the 2024 RUX Artist Respond grant, I’m beginning a new painting series that covers a topic all Kentuckians can connect with across differences: weather.
Let me tell you how I got there.
In 2023, I was blessed to have my solo show A Wild Weed at Perspective Gallery in Paris, France. In this show, I exhibited paintings that expressed my relationship to Kentucky’s landscape through images of backroads, fishing, and even skinny-dipping. This was a huge opportunity to showcase my experience of Kentucky culture to an international audience. It was the beginning of moving away from my earlier works that were more personal in story; yet, I wanted the work to be bigger– both in material and subject.
In 2024, I had my solo show Be Careful Out There at Moremen Gallery in Louisville, KY. In this show, I explored my Butch identity and where it intersects with the parts of me shaped by my home and my upbringing. These works involved louder political discourse than earlier paintings, but there was still room for this work to reach more people. My next show needed to be even bigger, and I wanted to turn even more to a collective approach over an individual approach.
Sso-Rha Kang, curator at The Carnegie in Covington, KY, approached me after this show about the idea of ritual. After her conversations, I was beginning to think about how artists use ritual to place ourselves in time – often informed by current events. With the increasingly inclement weather in my state, from tornadoes in western KY to floods in eastern KY, the issue of climate change remained on my mind and heart. Imagery around this issue and how it connects to my home and my upbringing only continued popping in my mind, almost ritually.
After Be Careful Out There, I went to pitch my idea. I didn’t have enough resources to begin painting these ideas. However, I knew I had to put my foot out before even knowing there was a place to land. Institute 193 is an integral institution for Southern creatives and their voices for over 15 years. With nothing but an idea, I made my pitch to Institute 193. I said I wanted to create a show that held large paintings, showcasing the rites and rituals through Kentucky’s temperate climate. Then, Institute 193 said yes!
After two big shows, I had no materials. I knew the show would take place in about a year. But, before I could get started on the actual paintings, I needed stretchers, canvas, and painting materials to build my canvases. I found out about the Artists Respond grant that Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange (RUX) was awarding, and it felt like the stars aligned.
During my years in RUX (2022-2023), I listened to many folks in agriculture talk about how the landscape of Kentucky is being affected by climate change. This informed my increasing awareness of the issue of climate change and how it impacts my home and my people. I thought it would be so full circle to receive a RUX grant to depict the stories of how Kentuckians experience inclement weather, especially given that I gained accessibility to language around the issue through RUX connecting me to different people and places. Then, I found out I received the grant!
My goal for the group exhibition at The Carnegie in March is to show rites and rituals through a rural lens, while depicting imagery that initiates political conversations around climate in Kentucky. For the Institute 193 solo show in June, my goal is to depict narratives of Kentucky’s weather through seasons as a mode of expression of culture and place.
The Artists Respond RUX grant has supported me to allow me to build the canvases needed for both of these shows in 2025. All of the paintings have been started, so I’ve been hunkered down getting ‘em done. It is a joy and a privilege to dive into creating this series, and I can’t wait to invite all of y’all to come take a look.