Kim Reasor is a San Diego-based artist who works both independently and in art-science collaborations. Reasor was born in London and raised in Texas and Colorado. She studied life drawing and landscape painting in addition to earning a BFA in art history at Metropolitan State University of Denver. From 1990-2015 Reasor produced oil paintings of the built environment. From 2017-2018, she completed coursework in environmental hydrology, geographic information systems, and data visualization at San Diego State University. In 2016 Reasor began working on art-science collaborations such as a series of oil paintings visualizing snow microbiology of the Finnish Arctic. She is a co-author on a Nature: Microbiology paper (she worked with the first author to improve a figure). In 2019, she was part of a National Science Foundation investigator’s outreach effort in Utqiagvik, Alaska which involved teaching local children about the effects of climate change and the loss of Arctic sea ice via art and science. As the 2020 Climate Science Alliance Art Fellow, Reasor completed a body of work communicating strategies for climate change adaptation and wildlife habitat linkage in Southern California. Her work is also in the permanent collection of the San Diego Museum of Art.
STATEMENT
My work illuminates the overlooked and invisible through exploration of discarded landscapes and hidden worlds of science and nature. After years of documenting industrial and urban landscapes via oil painting, I began to work directly with scientists on art-science collaborations. These collaborations, while interesting and fulfilling on their own, exposed me to the realities of climate change in a way that was impossible not to confront in my work. In 2016, while working on a project to document snow microbiology in the Finnish Arctic, the snow melted weeks ahead of schedule and I was unable to complete a planned second set of paintings. In 2018, while I was studying data visualization and learning about climate warming stripes, a UN report was released which tried to raise the alarm—that we had mere years, not decades, to reduce carbon production drastically if we want to avoid the worst effects of climate change. A year later, I went to Utqiagvik, Alaska to do art outreach as part of an NSF-funded project. The project turned out to be teaching local fifth-graders about the science of Arctic sea ice loss and how that was affecting their local community. This was yet another moment of reckoning and these three experiences have led me to reluctantly accept that climate change is no longer a vague threat that lies decades in the future. It is here now and I am now creating work that deals with the new age in which we find ourselves—the Anthropocene.
CV
EDUCATION
1999 BFA in Art History, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA
2018 San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA
SCIENCE-ART AND RELATED EXPERIENCE
2021 “Using Art to Explore Children’s Perceptions of Their Arctic Community in a Changing Climate” (EGU General Assembly 2021, session EGU21-16449/EOS7.3 - 'Effective communication of scientific & place-based knowledge of Arctic change: understanding interactions between indigenous & local knowledge, and natural & social science perspectives')
2020 “Connected Lands. Connected People” Climate Science Alliance
2020 “Voices of the Sea Ice: Engaging an Arctic Community to Communicate Impacts of Climate Change” (EGU General Assembly 2020, session ITS5.9/EOS4.14, Trans-disciplinary aspects of researching Arctic change: science communication, outreach and education, integration, monitoring, modeling and risk perception)
2020 Outreach artist for National Science Foundation funded project, Utqiagvik, Alaska.
2019 “Global phylogeography and ancient evolution of the widespread human gut virus crAssphage” Robert A. Edwards et al, Nature Microbiology Vol. 4 October 2019 1727-1736.
2019“Soup N’ Science: Utilizing Art to Present Science Data”, talk with David Lipson. UIC Science, Barrow Arctic Research Center, Utqiagvik, AK, October 18.
2017 Kim Reasor and David Lipson, “The Art and Science of Snow Microbiology: Data Paintings of the Finnish Arctic,” poster presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, New Orleans, LA.
COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS
2018 “Inaugural Art and Music Festival”, A Ship in the Woods, Escondido, CA (multi-media collaboration with David Lipson)
2018 “Embers of Life: A Science-Art Journey to the Finnish Arctic”, Art Produce Gallery, San Diego, CA (multi-media collaboration with David Lipson)
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2015 “Parallel Dimensions”, Noel-Baza Fine Art (at Art Produce Gallery), San Diego, CA
2013 “Kim Reasor: New Paintings Noel-Baza Fine Art, San Diego, CA
2011 “Unexpected Landscapes”, Noel-Baza Fine Art, San Diego, CA
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2022 “Legacy: 25 Years of Art and Community”, Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA
2022 "30th Annual Juried Exhibition" Athenaeum Music and Art Library, La Jolla, CA
2021 "Collecting San Diego: Selections from the Dijkstra Fine Art Collection" San Diego History Center, San Diego, CA
2021 "Sowing Seeds of Universal Language", Mesa College Art Gallery, San Diego, CA
2021 “In Good Company”, Art Produce Gallery, San Diego, CA
2021 “2021 Juried Biennial”, William D. Cannon Art Gallery, Carlsbad, CA
2019 “Inside/Outside”, Project PAINT, the Prison Arts Initiative, Art Produce Gallery, San Diego, CA
2016 “Urban Banality”, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
2015 “Under the Same Sky”, Noel-Baza Fine Art (at the San Diego History Center)
2014 “California Dreaming: an International Portrait of Southern California”. Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA/Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA/Palazzo della Provincia di Frosinone, Frosinone, Italy
2014 “23rd Annual Juried Exhibition”, Joseph Clayes III Gallery, Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, La Jolla, CA
2014 “New Contemporaries VII” Perry Meyer Fine Art, San Diego, CA
2014 “Altered Landscape”, CSU San Marcos Art Gallery, San Marcos, CA
2013 “Nature Improved”, San Diego History Center, San Diego, CA/Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA
2013 “Outside, Selections from the Doug Simay Collection”, Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA
2012 “Three Artists Paint The City”, group show, Noel-Baza Fine Art, San Diego, CA
2011 “Lucid Dreams”, Noel-Baza Fine Art, San Diego, CA
ART RESIDENCY
2016 Finnish Bioart Society “Ars Bioarctica” Science-Art Residency, Kilpisjärvi Biological Station, Kilpisjärvi, Finland
FELLOWSHIP
2020 Climate Art Fellow, Climate Science Alliance, San Diego, CA
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
“Recycle Yard.” San Diego Museum of Art. San Diego, CA. Donated 2016.
“South on Broadway.” Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Kansas City, MO. Acquired 2008.
City of Aurora, CO.
PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
Bram Dijkstra, Ph.D., and Sandy Dijkstra, Del Mar, CA
Doug Simay, San Diego, CA
R. Ley and L. Angenent, Germany
SELECTED MEDIA COVERAGE
Pelto, Mauri. “Spaces and Places: Collaborations Emerge at American Geophysical Union Meeting,” SciArt Magazine, Vol. 29 (February 2018), https://www.sciartmagazine.com/spaces--places-the-american-geophysical-union.html.
Larson, Thomas. “Consume, Discard, Repeat: The Industrial Landscapes of Kim Reasor,” San Diego Reader, (June 1, 2016).
AWARDS
2022 Honorable Mention, 30th Annual Juried Exhibition, Athenaeum Music and Art Library, La Jolla, CA
2021 Juror’s Choice Award, 2021 Juried Biennial Exhibition, William D. Cannon Art Gallery, Carlsbad, CA