CONVERSATION WITH ARTIST & ATHLETE MK WINTZ
Who are you, where are you from and what do you do?
Oh my gosh such a loaded question, well my name is MK I'm from Cincinnati Ohio and I lived in Ohio all through college where I started my career as a chemical engineer. Then changed my life completely to kind of rediscover myself by moving to Colorado Springs where I lived at the Olympic and Paralympic Training Center as a bicycle racer for about 2 years and then made my way out here.
For racing bicycles as a member of the USA cycling Elite Sprint National development program so I'm a cyclist and when I was in Colorado Springs I kind of rediscovered my love of art so through cycling I realized that I needed kind of a creative Outlet again um I needed a way to like connect with myself um and arts really helped me ReDiscover me who I am.
That's actually how we met through crochet. I just think that it's so wild to go from being a chemical engineer, to being an artist to being a professional like an Olympic cyclist. Those are three massive categories of being and you just kind of like to do all of them so well. Mk's art is awesome, you can check out her work linked, she recently did this piece which I just want to touch on, because it's really cool.
The gallery of Hermosa recently did an exhibition called game on game on and it the theme was basically the intersection of sports and art so how do Sports and art relate to each other which is who I am who you are as a human being.
I was just really Blown Away by the thought process that went into the work that MK entered into this exhibition, two of the pieces, specifically one of them, the 10,000 hours concept.
Ten Thousand Hours by MK Wintz
I was talking with Kimie over at Gallery of Hermosa, I just kind of was sparked by the idea I'm not a very good literal artist I can't like actually like draw things yet cuz I haven't taken the time to practice it so I don't have a super literal way going about my art but the idea of kind of 10,000 repetitions and practicing something over and over again and how can you get better at something well the best way is just to do it you have to have that time you have to have that experience you have to allow yourself to make mistakes to correct them but also being a an Olympic Athlete and an engineer like those was you needed to put 10,000 hours into both of them and so yeah and so that's where the the kind of concept came from was was kind of this idea of allowing failure and change allowing growth and I was really hoping by the end of the piece that I would have something really beautiful like these perfect little marks on the paper and that my last two lines would just be almost perfectly consistent, spoiler - they were not and you'll see they get worse and worse.
I just love the feel of it is just so natural like you can see where she was on a run and each little mark is so good and then…
It's like like you know oh no like I had to get more ink or my dog jumped on my lap at one point I dropped the paintbrush no it's a really really beautiful piece so I just wanted to like that yeah really really cool um and I've got another one coming out soon um I was going to bring it by but I forgot it's the ocean waves so it's a watercolor very thin line watercolor well it's very similar to the property so I just diluted the watercolor down very slightly so that I had kind of that same Inky consistency but a bit more transparency variation so you kind of get this like deep that's you're I can hear the scientist in in I can't help it like I there's like art like that are like oh I want to you know blah and you're like but the properties of a like
There's your scientist!
Can't help but I like the analytical side of things too.
So that leads us to our next question, how did you get started as an artist like let's just kind of focus on that because that's kind of how we met through your artwork so uh how did you get started as in art like how did you find your path?
I'm going to give a huge shout out here to the Cottonwood Center for the Arts in Colorado Springs. They are this amazing amazing group that hosted, well they did all sorts of calls for entry but then they had open gallery spaces. It was a really collaborative environment for artists to kind of launch to get started, very cool um, they did this thing called, Open Critique.
So I did um one of their open monthly they called them artist cafes where people can come in and talk about an art topic or their artwork, then afterward there is a critique, I'd never really done art critique before. I'd seen them from when my husband was in art school but I'd never experienced one or tried it out for myself and so to see that kind of as an adult and have the opportunity to bring in my art and have people talk about it, was really empowering.
So you brought in your art piece and then people critiqued it..
Yeah, kind of over coffee yeah.
Wow, that's really lovely.
It was. It was great to have people say “oh I like what you're doing” or whatever but it's really wonderful when you can actually talk about what you did or what you were trying to do and what can you do better or differently. As an artist that's very cool, you're really getting the feedback from the art community. It was really cool and it really gave me the opportunity to kind of lean in at the time - I was doing crochet wall tapestry with roving wool roving. I did some like Egyptian cotton that was really cool uh with some wall paint so a couple of like mixed media kind of pieces but primarily focused on crochet.
That was actually my next question um, what is your favorite material to work with because you've named a bunch of materials now and so I'm curious if your favorite material is like that wool kind of more fiber art since that's what your focus is…
A detailed look at MK’s crochet work
I just love exploring,I love making things. I really do love working with wool, I'd love to do some more wall tapestries out of the wool out of the Roven. Explore some Egyptian cotton. It has such a soft silky drape to it that I just think is really beautiful.
How would you use Egyptian cotton?
Oh the same way you just hand crochet it.
You can get it, like you can get wool, you can get Egyptian cotton like in a wool ball?
Yeah so the wool roving, you can get it in different sizes but it's just raw untwisted wool that's been combed kind of like a large strand so if you think about it like really thick wool. Yeah and they do the same thing with the cotton pre-spun so it kind of becomes this big kind of tubular yarn that you're using basically but then you can just crochet it by hand so you can actually use your hands instead of hooks to create your pieces and then you can use like it's called Ammi technique which is a Japanese word for can't remember the definition but it's about shaping via crochet
So guess we're going to have to research that one
Yeah, I'll show you more but it's been really fun to kind of Explore More two-dimensional art um I've always considered myself quite bad at it so it's been fun to kind of find like more meditative processes and it's something that I've used to help process here um the move here. It's been a little bit of a difficult transition for me coming out here. It's so different from especially Colorado Springs and Ohio, like it's just not the same feeling to live in Los Angeles, finding these little moments of peace, these pockets of places and things that make me feel like me. Give me a little bit of patience to slow down and breathe. Allow room for mistakes and failures because I actually think that's one of the beautiful things about Los Angeles that I see is that people are failing all the time here and it's why there's so much success. Yes, so much success comes out of LA because people fail all the time.
Handmade purse by MK Wintz
I don't think I've ever heard like no, I've never heard anybody describe LA in that way and I actually think it's a really lovely way to describe it because it's so true everybody comes out here and they try so hard they come they try they fail, they try again.
They try something else, they tweak it they lean in. They try different materials they look at different things they you know they're just willing to try and fail and they love that I feel like that's kind of been what I've been exploring since I've moved out here he like well let's just try it let's try 2D again let's try crochet again let's try something different.
I love that like I cuz well cuz that's why I think I also love LA for that reason because you go other places and people are so quick to kind of say you can't do it, that won't work, this is wrong and that's wrong or you have to do it this way if you want to do this thing but here there is just such an openness to people putting themselves out there and giving it their best shot.
Okay so uh let's do last question okay um what is your favorite current inspiration so like most stalked Instagram or person or…
Gosh is there like one thing
It doesn't have to be a person but like yeah a thing, something what are you obsessed with right now
Honestly, I like noticing little details around here. I'm trying to find little things like how can I simplify my experience in Hermosa Beach, how can I bring it down to the bricks in my backyard or how can I capture the flowers without drawing a flower, without painting a flower. How can I capture what I see when I look at like this plant without drawing that plant you know, I’m in such an art mode right now like you have to run with that, when you're in that creative Zone you really have to go with it.
Yeah that's very cool but I think it's also kind of tying into my training. I know that sounds a little silly maybe, but it's like what are the important things that I'm doing on track and what doesn't matter so much, how can I put a little bit more power into the pedal or around the entire pedal. I mean it's so quick we're doing you know 120 revolutions per minute so I'm pedaling four times a second like that's the speed at which I do what I do, it is so quick that it's like I can't make intentional changes to each pedal stroke but I can change how I look at it and how I think about it on the whole.
It's really cool how you were talking about like your use and your art as a moment to slow down yeah and in your training you're just so quick all the time yeah and just the thoughtfulness to like find the details in art and then use that as an opportunity to find the details in cycling like your mind crossover between being an artist and being an athlete is so awesome like I love that it's really fun it's very cool that you live on the line of that, versus you know - I am an athlete and I lost my creative self because this is all I do and who I am. You know it's really nice when somebody can put themselves out there to be multiple things.
“Honestly, I like noticing little details around here…how can I bring it down to the bricks in my backyard or how can I capture the flowers” - Photography by MK Wintz
Yeah you know and I think for me it's about balance like if I become too much of one thing I lose me and it's like I'm still me. I still love all of these silly little things that I do and have tried and have worked on and you know I still love the science of stuff, like I was talking with my coach and I'll dig into the data that comes off our bikes. It’s all the time so I'm constantly looking through that but it's like how do you translate, how do you bring that back up into something that you can actually do about it. That's kind of again then circle back to the art, yeah like what can you do about it and it’s awesome.
Thank you all for reading, please follow MK check out her work she currently has two pieces at the um Gallery of Hermosa and will be yeah very cool and very cool work on her own and just quick other shout out MK also dabbles in photography and has recently been our photographer taking amazing shots of our custom furniture and showroom, so thank you MK