CAROLYN SIMS

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MY ART RELATED AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BY CAROLYN SIMS

As a child growing up in rural Brandon, Mississippi, (near Jackson), I spent many hot, barefooted days with friends and cousins, roaming the woods, following streams, playing and inventing games, plays, toys, playhouses, with seemingly limitless imaginations. My parents, R.S. and Ina Bell Cannon were very supportive of my creativity, especially when they needed bulletin boards for their classrooms to help motivate their students. It is my highly stimulating, rich country background that has influenced my creativity and love of nature and life. I often call upon these experiences to capture a mood when I am painting.

I spent my junior high and High-school years schools in Jackson, MS. schools. My artwork today is influence by the unusual art projects at Christ the King Catholic School and by my 9th grade art teacher at Brinkley High School, Paul Campbell, who is now a prominent artist in Jackson. After receiving a Bachelor of Science degree from Alcorn (A&M College at the time) State University I spent 5 years in Detroit, MI, teaching high school science. During that time I took an art course at a community center on the east side of the city. The instructor taught me oil painting techniques and I've been hooked ever since. I now work almost exclusively in oil on canvas. While completing a Master of Arts degree at the University of Detroit I married and moved to Chicago, then to a suburb of Chicago, Country Club Hills, where my beautiful twin daughters, Alecia and Tracey, were born and where I still live.

When I was able to reproduce my work, I was encouraged to begin selling it 1993. My preferred subject matter includes portraits, stillifes and abstracts. Many of my abstracts are more surrealistic in nature, in that they generally have a hint of representational art images which have been modified to appear unrealistic, as in “Folded Faces.” Others are purely abstract (or nondistinct). I have developed a distinctive style, showing movement and giving a viscous, 3-D effect to folds and shapes on the canvas, which is becoming increasingly recognizable in the art community.

I also write poetry, do woodworking, work with stained glass and clay sculpture, design and make dolls, handmade note cards, jewelry, etc. I love learning, creating and experimenting.

I have been a board member of the Creative Artist Association, Inc since the organization began in January, 2005. Some of the places at which my work has been displayed are: Blackberry Harvest Doll House Museum Shop in Homewood, IL, the DuSable Museum gift shop and art shows, Annie Lee and Friends Christmas art show and in the gift shop, the N.A.A.C.P. office in Chicago, A.K.A. African-American Art and Craft Show, College of DuPage in DuPage, IL, Expo for Today’s Black Woman in Chicago, Art in the Park in Oak Park, IL, Seaway Nation Bank and their Arts and Crafts Show in Chicago, the Quaker Oats Company in Chicago, James R. Thompson Center in Chicago, Chicago Renaissance: A Festival Celebrating African American Art, held at Chicago State University in Chicago, RAW art shows and the South Shore Cultural Center in Chicago.

I won an Award of Distinction for my oil paintings and one of my paintings, "Passion," hung in the DuSable Museum of African American History for 6 weeks in 2003. For the month of September, 2005, I exhibited as a solo artist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In February, 2006 my work was exhibited at the Richard J. Daley Center, The ETA Theater, and the South Shore Cultural Center in Chicago.

Media: I appeared as a guest artist on the Jennie’s Reflections television show, and on the WKKC radio station in January and February, 2006, respectively. My work is presently displayed on digital signs in several businesses in Chicago, including Army and Lou’s Café by the digital signage company Engage Everyone.

Carolyn Sims