Artist Statement
My early perceptions of the world were developed in emotionally and geographically unpredictable spaces. I examined the people in my life for social cues and patterns of behavior to provide a survival guide for what felt fundamentally uncertain and dangerous. In time and with cultivation, an old network of coping mechanisms has become a honed sensitivity through which I examine, question, and celebrate the subtleties and difficulties of relational interactions. My art practice uses abstraction, chance, and process as primary tools to investigate the unspoken rules on which we build our personal and collective lives. Often borrowing the language of cartography, I use a variety of mediums to chart inner terrains into external artifacts, asking questions about the experience of way-finding and way-making.
Bio
Kimmy Noonen earned her BA in Visual Arts from Mount Vernon Nazarene University and her MFA from the University of Chicago. She has had the pleasure of being exhibited throughout the US and Stockholm, Sweden. Noonen taught at Judson University for four years, ran a commercial photography business for nearly a decade and established a support community for creatives in the Church. Noonen is mother to two daughters and spends most of her time with them and her husband in their home on the Northwest side of Chicago.