Kit Clark is certainly an outlier when it comes to the east and west coast centered art worlds and even the artists we have highlighted here
at ishotkatemoss.
Self described as an "old black dog", Kit was born in Appalachia in 1980. He indicated that his bio simply
could state that he “should be dead”.
“My early life and formative years were full of violence,
drug abuse, legal problems, homelessness, mild mental arrested development, and
a lot of time wandering around in the woods.” Kit attended a state university
in NY for two years in his mid twenties where he studied liberal arts before
being kicked out due to a lack of attendance. “I had a raging heroin habit and
family issues.”
Kit has been making art since he was a child and simply
desired to create “something sacred out of trash”. He draws, dabs and strokes
at found source images, turning the normal or mundane into a surreal, special
and enchanted presence.
iskm: How would you describe your work?
Kit Clark (KC): My work is a bit like future primitive
graffiti tattoo magick. My creations are illuminated illustrations on
templates. Maybe most concisely described as ‘folk art’. My steady medium for
the last handful of years has been collage. More recently I have also been
using ‘sigils’, a magical glyph that represents intent. I have always worked
with themes of nature, esoteric, occult, life cycles.
iskm: Why do you choose to draw on the images the way that
you do?
KC: Most of the symbols I'm creating are automatic writing,
doing my best to fit the subject. The symbols that appear are just what come
out of me. I've seen many different glyphs; they've existed since humans
created the first image.
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Kit Clark's portrait of John Burroughs: "Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all - that has been my religion"
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I use paint pens and ink to illustrate an already existing
photo. It's a process constantly in transition. I've seen a lot of this type of
work … people drawing on photos is illumination like the monks drawing on
manuscripts, which is i think fitting because these folks I see doing this all
seem to have a spiritual perspective.
iskm: How do you select the source images?
KC: I work from found materials. I have a pretty daily
routine where I get to my local library, where there is a magazine exchange, I
look for fashion magazines, as often they have higher quality full page
black/darker pages for their ads, most expensive magazines do. I use the black to
tear up and re-affix as backgrounds on my collages, and sometimes I will find
images that I draw on. I do my best not to buy my source material but to work
from what has been discarded. Sort of a thing from my mountain culture is to
use what you have.
iskm: Why kate? Why did you choose the specific image of her
that you did?
KC: I chose kate moss, because it chose me. I tend not to
work with fashion themes; though, I am very interested in form and function,
and with the idea of a person a huge portion of the world thinks fits some ideal of
beauty. In a way she's a modern Goddess … I illuminated her.
iskm: Do the specific symbols have certain meaning? Are they
Appalachian symbols?
KC: These are not Appalachian symbols in
particular. I feel that I am drawing mostly from runic forms. Lines and
dots. Sometimes I think they look futuristic, yet sometimes I think they
look ancient.
The symbol on the forehead of kate moss is called the
leviathan cross. It is the alchemical symbol for sulfur/brimstone. I don’t use
such a symbol on all of my works, I tend to use lunar symbols more. This crux
though has been sort of appropriated by Anton LaVey, from the Church of Satan;
some of his followers, and some of the folks who are around occult use it as
the satanic cross. In that way I'm inferring that there is something nefarious
to the point of kate moss. Not her as a soul, but her purpose to us as a
culture, this ideal Caucasian woman. It's a theme that's said a lot of ways,
however if I say too much more I feel like there's little room for viewer
interpretation. If someone isn’t aware that it’s alchemical, or that its
adopted by some Satanists, or that it has a little infinity loop in it, maybe
it will be seen as just pretty.
iskm: What does being Appalachian mean to your work?
KC: I am constantly more concerned with nature than with
cities. Financial issues abound in Appalachia. Up and down the mountains people
are poor with money but rich with spirit. There's a lot of folklore, music,
crafts, storytelling plus community and family. In the mountains the veil
between the mystical world and this reality gets thinner. Some people call it
superstitious, but we call it aware. Not everyone is though. A love of the
woods seems to be very big part of my attachment to this. Nature is the
greatest artist. My family came here in 1645 from Scotland. I'm 13th
generation. My family mixed in with Algonquin later on.
iskm: Why do you have a black dog as your totem?
KC: My spirit animal is the black dog. In European legend
he's a harbinger of dark times. In Native American medicine the black dog is a
guide to the lost, through darkness, and onto more lit paths. One doesn't pick
their totem, it's revealed to them through vision quests, dreams, and words
from other people in the medicine. Why I have it as my totem I cannot rightly
tell you because I didn't choose it. Why I have a totem though is because I
come from that bloodline, and I'd like to go back to that. I'm looking forward
to a future primitive world.
iskm: Which photographers/artists would you most want to
most see involved in ishotkatemoss?
KC: Keith Haring and Michelangelo. I think Haring
because of his illustration style, I'm sure he'd do what I'm attempting to do,
but much better. And I'd like to see what Michelangelo would make of kate because
he always hides something magical in his work, a reference to something. I'm
curious what features he'd accent more, whereas I feel like I chose the cheek,
I think he would say that the soul is in the eyes.
Thanks so much Kit. I highly encourage people to look at
more of Kit’s work, which can be seen at: www.instagram.com/kit_clark_. Truly beautiful, powerful, poignant and illuminating.
Observe. Slow Down. Shoot. Submit.
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