Who are you and where are you from?
I’m Shannon Kringen otherwise known as “Goddess KRING” the nick name I gave myself when I did a public access tv show of the same name from 1996-2011. I am from San Diego California and Whidbey Island, Washington.
What message do you want people to receive from your artwork?
I do my work from a very intuitive place…I’d say from the “inside out” so I don’t plan what I want to tell the audience per se but I know that my favorite feedback I get is when people tell me after seeing my photography that they notice the texture/shape/color of things that they previously did not notice. A fresh perspective is maybe what I hope to stimulate in the viewers of my work. My abstract paintings are inspired by the repeating patterns and shapes I see in nature. Some of my work appears to me like I’m looking down at land masses from an airplane window. I love to fly places and have spent many hours looking out airplane windows. My poetry is full of metaphor and double meanings. I love to play with the sound and meanings of words and record my voice.
Do you remember your first artwork, when you knew that you where an artist?
I remember loving color and shape and texture and sound and smell from an early age. I was a sensitive child always very affected by the sensual world. I remember drawing with crayons and writing creative stories and poems and memorizing songs and singing them and being really affected by both music and visual art and dance and theatre. I see shapes and textures dance and move in my head when I hear music. I have a form of synesthesia (a “mixing of the senses”) both my parents encouraged me to create. My parents divorced when I was 4 but I was very influenced by them both. My mom is a visual artist working in clay and metal and my dad has written comedy and music and creative stories) I have always loved the sound of words right along with color and texture and shape. I see all the aRts as connected. (I like to spell the word art as “aRt” to make the word itself into a “sculpture”.
Who are your favorite artist and inspirations? 
An Austrian Artist and Philosopher named “Hundertwasser” He believed making art was a religious experience- something that put him in a trance beyond his own individual separate self and in touch with the energy that creates the world. He believe in “no straight lines” and that being in touch with nature was healthy and natural. He believed humans should be awake to being part of nature and not separate from it. He painted and made building facades (he was not trained as an architect but designed buildings that mimicked the shapes in nature and have gardens built in and eco friendly features. He passed away in 2000 age 71. He was ahead of his time. He was also a nudist (I work as a nude model for artists and have for 23 years) I feel a kinship with Hundertwasser. More about him here: www.hundertwasser.com my philosophy in my art is similar to his. I work with cameras and paint improvisationally. I am very kinesthetic and use my whole body when I create.
“Our Greatest Fear”
Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Author: Marianne Williamson
In my photography, I fall in love with shape, texture and light while out wandering. I like to capture what is naturally there but in a way that abstracts it and allows the viewer to notice something new and different about ordinary physical reality. I carefully compose all my photos spontaneously as I am shooting moving the camera angle until I see what looks like a balanced, dynamic composition.
In my painting, I allow my hands to move intuitively on the canvas creating shapes and textures that feel right. I repeat patterns and choose colors from somewhere beyond my thinking mind. I am very inspired by the repeating patterns I see in nature. Plants and animals move me a great deal.
I am taping into my unconscious and go into a dream like state when I create art.
I’m also a big fan of tom petty and tori amos. Have met and painted shoes for tori amos 3 times. She speaks about being inspired by visual art and hearing music come from visual art just the opposite of my seeing shapes when I hear music. I write a lot of spoken word poetry and am influenced by song writers and lyrics. I don’t really read poetry as much as I listen to music. Tori Amos and Tom Petty have both talked about sculpting with sound like visual artists do with visuals. I love the poetry of Jim Morrison as well- his sexual spiritual way of writing I feel a kinship with.
What tools do you use, to create your artworks?
Over the years I have made videos mostly at home alone along with painting onto shoes and canvas and shooting digital photos. I combine my painting and my photography in layers. I have experimented with silkscreening and printmaking and love to paint with acrylics. I love mixing digital with analog using computers. I have silkscreened photos of mine onto t shirts thus combining painting and photography and I have taken photos of paintings and then combined with in photo shop with transparent layers.
I love making video because I can combine movement, my voice/spoken word/poetry with visual art dance and theatre.
I have also recorded my voice and collaborated with some talented musicians.
Where can we see more of your art, what other places has your work been published?
I link most of my work to my main site: http://www.shannonkringen.com/
I self published a book on blurb.com called “aRt, identity and the sacred” http://www.blurb.com/b/4063156-art-identity-and-the-sacred on how my art practice is also my spiritual practice. It has words and 140 pages of my photography and painting and collages.
My photos have been published on many websites including bill moyers and pbs. I share them here:https://www.flickr.com/photos/shannonkringen/
I have three blogs and am very active in social media all linked to my main website. I seek new venues to show my work ‘in the flesh” in the past I have shown at Art/Not Terminal gallery and Center for Spiritual Living and various coffee shops and restaurants. I did some live painting at an art walk once and enjoyed that and would love to do more. I combine my figure modeling with my art also and go on many trips to model for artists, body paint myself and have myself body painted mostly recently by an amazing painting and photographer in the Bahamas named Monty Knowles. I have been figure modeling for 23 years in the Seattle area and consider this more than my day job. It’s an extension to my own artwork. To serve artists as a model and feel the creative energy is a good feeling. My full time job is modeling and making my art and sharing it freely as well as selling some of it and being published. I offer my flickr images as “creative commons” and free to publish. If you Google my name you will find many of my images all over the web! I am a bit OCD and have channeled this into sharing my work online. I have also been in a documentary film called “Typecast Dragon” Seattle cult icon Goddess Kring wrestles with her public access fame as she transitions into a new cycle in her life. A finalist in the 2012 International Documentary Challenge, “Typecast Dragon” premiered Internationally at the Hot Docs Film Festival and premiered in the US at the Seattle International Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Bumbershoot and NW Film Forum. http://vimeo.com/48469913 http://docchallenge.org/2012-Finalists/typecast-dragon.html
and am part of a full length documentary called “Channeling Yourself” upcoming documentary about Public Access Television and Free Speech. Me as “Goddess KRING” was interviewed along with others who had long running shows over the years and it includes past and present footage of what we are all doing now. I am excited to see this. It will hopefully screen at the Seattle Film Festival.
more about that here:
https://www.facebook.com/ChannelingYourself
I write poetry and recorded it into music here:
https://goddesskring.bandcamp.com/
http://www.shannonkringen.com/kringspeak.htm and have my videos here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/shannonkringen
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.” Martha Graham
What do you see yourself doing in 20 years?
I will be 66 in 20 years! Hard to believe I am 46 these days. I plan to be traveling and making art and sharing it just like I am now. I’ll still model too if they still want to draw and paint me. I love being useful to other artists as a model and in art modeling it’s ok to age and gain “character”. I have friends in various countries like Norway and England and Russia and would like to visit them again and take photos and write about the experiences. I’d love to publish more books and do a Ted talk one day that inspires people to follow their bliss more fully. I’d love to go on a world tour and write about book with words and pictures that is biographical, self help and inspirational all in one.
If you could work on a art project with anyone in the world from any period in time who would it be?
I’d love to join forces with Hundertwasser and Yoko Ono and combine buying forest land, saving it as a wildlife refuge, build solar panels and an eco friendly village for people to live in harmony with nature and create art along with taking care of the planet. Grow your own food and appreciate the whole ecosystem and see humans are just one species on this planet sharing it with all the plants and animals.
Any last words you would like to say to the Section 8 Magazine readers worldwide?
I would say do more of what you love and build that up and not worry about the end result. A line I love from a Sting song “Be yourself, no matter what they say”.
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