What It Means To Be Broken With Artist Kurt Caddy
Kurt Caddy is a visual artist, a trained theologian, and a dreamer. When the team at D Emptyspace stumbled upon his artwork, we were immediately struck by his incredible use of color.
“Caddy photographs ordinary and even mundane images of places that feel worn, broken, or unresolved. He then uses layers of color to transform these small scenes into abstract pictures of beauty, wonder, and metaphor.”
— Sarah Bernhardt, curator
Caddy lives on a farm in Missouri, has eight children, and is constantly in search of a way to express the point at which pain and beauty meet in our everyday lives. This July, he is an artist in residence at Yellowstone Theological Institute in Bozeman, Montana. His lectures will be on theology and the arts, the role of goodness, truth, beauty, and theological aesthetics. He will also conduct workshops and exhibit his work.
Note from the writer: As someone who identifies as an agnostic, I was worried this interview would be too focused on the Bible, Christ, and theology. I worried that I wouldn’t relate to Caddy (a major problem for an interviewer and a writer!). But as you’ll see from the words that follow, Kurt Caddy’s wisdom, calmness, and respect for all, is abundant in the way he creates and lives. Although the words that follow contain some mention of religion, it should not deter you from experiencing his unique (and beautiful) perspective.
Did art inspire you from a young age or is it something you found later on? Do you remember that first ‘wow, I can make something’ creation moment?
Looking back, I’ve been this way my whole life. I didn’t ‘all of a sudden’ realize I had this huge thing. I’ve never been ‘trained’ to create art. It’s all been my innate way of thinking in terms of color, and shape, and texture, 3D, and expression.
My mom still has a Christmas ornament that I made when I was in first grade. It’s just string that’s dipped in glue and sculpted like a snowman, but I didn’t think “ I’m going to be an artist” at the time. I grew up in a very practical way; go to school, get a diploma, go to college, get a degree, get a job, and so on.
Let’s get a little bit further into inspiration and where yours comes from. How would you describe it? Is it an outside force or something that comes from within?
I think it was interesting that you asked the question, “is it internal or external?” The reality is, it’s both. It’s both almost simultaneously. My goal isn’t to find the ultimate inspiration but rather to get in sync with it. To meld it with whatever is stirring in me. There is something outside of me that’s bigger than me, that I’m trying to connect with.
The word “inspired” means “to be breathed into”. That’s what inspiration feels like to me.
The Hebrew word for breath, or spirit, inspired spirit is “ruak” which means “to breathe in”. In Genesis one of the Bible, God made Adam and he “breathed into man’s nostrils, and man became a life-giving being.” This breath of God inspired him. That’s the core meaning of the word for me.
You’ve served among Native American communities. Has your experience influenced your art?
About 10 years ago, I went to a Native American reservation to work with the Lakota people for the first time. It was Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, a beautiful place. My life at the time was in turmoil. My wife and I were fostering a little girl named Kate who came to us at three weeks old. We never knew from week to week, whether she was going to be taken or if we could finally adopt her. (It took three and a half years before we finally did). We were on an emotional yo-yo, there were loads of sleepless nights, tears, fear, and a festering brokenness.
That’s how I arrived at the reservation.
And somehow in this spiritually mystical way, the brokenness of my own experience collided with the brokenness of the Lakota people. I don’t know how much you know about Lakota Native Americans, but it’s a terrible part of our history. Basically, 100 years ago, people were in the way of what we (the new arrivals) wanted, so we drove them to the brink of extinction… And here I was on their reservation with a group of missionary students trying to ease the suffering of a cultural trauma that spanned generations.
That’s when my particular brokenness with this little girl collided with their brokenness, and something welded us together.
I felt this surge of creativity. I would wake up in the middle of the night and write a poem in the dark. I suddenly started taking portraits of Native American kids that were good in ways that they hadn’t been before. It was clear I was seeing things differently.
One afternoon, I got this desire draw (which was weird, because I hadn’t drawn in 15 years). I sketched out this Eagle head with a Lakota shield in the background. In that moment I thought “this is could be useful. I could use this picture to tell a story about people that nobody knows about. The Lakota people are forgotten. But people will come and see art.”
That was a huge turning point. I ended up doing an advocacy exhibition and I’ve not looked back.
Religion is obviously a huge part of your life, how does that tie into the theme of brokenness you’re exploring?
One morning when I was praying, I asked the Lord, “how does one know when they’re healed?” And I felt this presence say, “you know you’re healed when you’re when you’re ready to be broken again.”
Oh, my gosh, not exactly the most encouraging thing I wanted to hear! But this is what life is, it’s a cycle, it’s connecting with the brokenness of others, moving through your own brokenness, and being broken again. That was a big realization for me and the theme repeatedly appears in my work.
Your photo manipulations are close-ups of various textures, what materials are you most fascinated by?
I’m enamored with the concept of concrete. It’s a thing that’s all around us, a thing that nobody pays any attention to. We walk on it, your building is made with a bunch of it, you come into contact with it all the time. It surrounds us. It’s common, it is ordinary, and it’s often broken, cracked, torn up. Our school just replaced several sidewalks because they were all broken up. I was taking pictures of the broken concrete and now it’s gone through a cycle, it’s all brand new and textureless.
I’m fascinated by the places where they rip up carpet and the glue shows through. As my kids would say, that’s my jam!
It’s from everyday scenes that I find ordinary, broken, unresolved kind of places and bring them into a world where I can transform them, where I can change them. I don’t want it to stay what it is; I want it to be something better than a gray piece of sidewalk that nobody pays any attention to.
So I layer digital colors together. And suddenly, you find yourself gazing intently at something you never noticed before. I think that’s how I raise my children. They come to us in this unresolved place with sorrow and pain and hurt and agony. And we just keep putting layer of love, layer of love, layer of love, until one day you’re like, “boom”. And that’s the process. It takes time, but it’s worth it.
And you paint as well, how does that process work?
Painting takes so much time. And then I don’t do myself any favors because I like to make my own paint from scratch.
I start with minerals, dirt, and ashes. I start by breaking down something that is whole. It’s is an ancient technique in Japan called Nihonga that was made famous in the US by Makoto Fujimura (one of my biggest inspirations).
For example, there’s only one element that makes white: oyster shell. It’s called Gofun in Japan and is made by pulverizing a hundred-year-old oyster shell and then mixing it with hide glue. And that’s how you make the pigment.
At one point, that oyster was a living thing, and now it’s not. And I’m crushing it, pulverizing it, beating it, breaking it.
Doing all these things to resurrect it. Somehow this sorrow of death and ultimate brokenness transforms into something new and beautiful. That is that’s a metaphor that stays with me whenever I work.
I’ve started painting over my photography prints, something that’s been pushing me as an artist in a really great way.
Your family is pretty unconventional, what’s the full story behind that and how do you juggle life as a family man, a pastor, and a visual artist?
I have three biological kids, four adopted ones, and one that adopted us. So when our family gets together it’s 13 people (including spouses)! My adopted kids all came from trauma and really hard places. So they came to us broken and they came to us hurting, but they came to us.
And I thought “can something beautiful come from all this pain?” That’s the question that drives me.
I have so many interests that I don’t feel like I juggle everything, but rather that it juggles me! Somehow, between work, family, art, and my never-ending lists of projects, I find balance. My wife always exclaims, “is there is there ever going to be an end of the things that you’re interested in?!” It keeps me busy, but I enjoy it.
Is there an artwork you are most proud of? Why?
The Lakota people have helped me understand the value of symbolic things. Most of their regalia is very filled with symbols. And so if you see a shield, or a spear, it has a meaning. Even the bead patterns are saying something beyond the pure aesthetic
For example, the pattern above means what’s happening above is reflected below. In all my work, there’s usually a horizontal line, and two colors playing off of each other. Red is a color of sacrifice. Green is kind of a hope. Gold and yellow indicate a higher plane happening. Blue is water, movement, spirit, sky.
This is my father-in-law’s driveway. That’s it. You can’t get anything more common than Arkansas driveway. But here it is, transformed with color. Starting out in a dark red underneath you have the sacrifice of Christ, and then the horizontal line symbolizes a sort of bringing together before exploding into blue, or what I call Grace. I feel like that grace is infinite, and that it’s unending.
What I love about the work above, is that it’s taken something ordinary, something broken and old, and turned it into an expression of Grace. It creates a new dialogue.
You’ve worked as a campus pastor for 22 years. What’s that been like?
I’m don’t overtly do all the right ‘spiritual’ things, instead, I use my faith in the context of life, and that really shakes things up a bit. For example, I tell my students, “When I paint, it’s worship,” and they say “No it’s not, worship is singing.” Then there’s a great opportunity to open a new dialogue.
Once, I asked students, “How do you draw hope?” Then I asked, “What color is hope?” Abstract art is finding a way to paint that feeling you have. Poems, sonnets, art, all that creative intuition, that’s something I try to teach my students about.
Living in a rural area, how do you share your work with others?
I’ve really been enjoying D Emptyspace! It’s just a cool way to share my art and show it to others in context. Plus I can make my work look massive — I wish I could print 8 or 10 feet high in real life! It’s really neat to see my art in a virtual world that I have complete control over — a lot of people have been really really impressed with the visualization.
I also do a lot of Instagram because it’s great to reach people, but it’s always hit and miss with the algorithm. It’s a really flat, limited space that doesn’t really work unless I create things to specifically fit in that space. For example, if I want to share a panoramic work, it ends up looking very weird on Instagram. But in this app, your work shows up as a panoramic, just like you intended, which is pretty cool.
Some parting thoughts to ponder on…
I used to think the goal of life was to be happy and feel good about everything. But you try, and achieve, and search and think “why didn’t that make me happy? Why do I need more money? Why do I need more of this, more of that? And why am I never seem to be content?”
I remember reading an interview with Tom Brady, the successful American football quarterback. He’s won a Superbowl like, five, six times, and he’s the best guy ever to millions of Americans. He once said in an interview, “You know, I hope this isn’t all there is to life.”
Are you kidding me? He’s got more money than he knows what to do with, a beautiful supermodel wife, and well looked after kids. I mean, if that guy is saying “I hope this isn’t all there is to life,” you have to listen.
It always seems to be (at least in religious and spiritual circles), a paradox. A brokenness where we find we find joy and sorrow.
There is no real joy without sorrow. You don’t get the mountaintop without the valley.
You can follow Kurt Caddy on D Emptyspace by searching @kurtcaddy
Canvas prints are available for purchase via Caddy’s Instagram
