$180K in Art School Debt—and She’d Do It Again | Kristin Calabrese

Painter Kristin Calabrese joins Javier Proenza to discuss her development as an artist and her commitment to painting, from studying at the San Francisco Art Institute and UCLA to building a life and practice in Los Angeles. She reflects on growing up between Massachusetts and Arizona, running away as a teenager, the relationship between personal history and artistic practice, and her continuing search for a visual language that can accommodate realism, abstraction, photography, and experimentation. The conversation also considers class, art education and student debt; the ethics of representing homelessness; curating and artist-run spaces; and the economic realities of sustaining an artistic life. Calabrese discusses Serious Topics, the Inglewood artist project space she runs with painter Joshua Aster, as well as her belief in painting as a medium and the importance of artists supporting and collecting the work of other artists.