Date of event: April 28, 2012, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Kristin Grahn Kyono is a San Francisco artist specializing in mixed media painting and printmaking. Kristin’s work appeared in group exhibitions at San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, SomArts Gallery, 111 Minna, and California Modern Gallery, among others. Solo exhibitions include San Francisco’s Henry Gifford Hardy Gallery and Thirsty Bear Brewery. Her work was published in the 2010 edition of “American Art Collector”. She has painted commissions for several hotels, including Ritz-Carlton in both San Francisco and Dubai.

“My art is about reinterpreting my urban experience. I am inspired by the city’s diversity, and the juxtaposition of engineered and natural forms. As I walk through the city, I sense a cacophony of ideas presented by signage, architecture and infrastructure. I look for an underlying visual or conceptual relationship to give a situation new meaning.”

Kristin’s art reflects the sense of cultural fusion experienced by many urban Americans. She was born into a Scandinavian-American family in Seattle, and later married into a Japanese-American family in San Francisco. Kristin enjoys the diversity of cosmopolitan cities – and how it manifests visually in signage, architecture and infrastructure.

“My artistic process is a combination of photography, printmaking, drawing and painting. I snap photos from buses and street corners and overlay them to create a springboard for abstraction. By obscuring some aspects of the imagery, and strengthening others, I re-invent the landscape.”

Kristin earned an M.F.A. from Academy of Art University in San Francisco and a B.A. in Studio Art and Sociology from Whitman College in Washington State. In addition to painting, she also works as an Educator at the Palo Alto Art Center and the  Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

“I mix imagery and formal elements to convey meaning on multiple levels of experience. Buildings, branches and graphics dissolve into the sensual experience of surface, color and line. Each artwork shows a unique history of marks and fusion of mediums, much like the urban environments they reflect.”

Flax had the pleasure to work closely with Kristin as the curator of the Mission Artists United exhibit, and she was a Live Artist in August, 2011. For more information, please visit Kristin’s website: kristinkyono.com.