Hi there! Wondering what I’ve been up to lately?
April 25, 2025
Introducing the Brown House Collective
6-9 PM @ 2534 Brown Ave. Knoxville, TN
Join us for the very first exhibition with the Brown House Collective on Friday, April 25th from 6-9 PM. This introduction show will feature work of the creators of BHC, Jaden Michael Lynch, Karly Jean Kainz and Trisha Ram. During the opening there will be musical performances from Knoxville bands including, Sunfold, Miss Apartment, and Jesse Newcomb.
Created in 2024, this project was created as an ever-evolving platform for creatives. After meeting at Trader Joe's and bonding over many conversations on art, the idea for Brown House Collective emerged from the desire to see more exhibitions dedicated to Knoxville’s experimental art. The Brown House aims to cultivate a welcoming and inclusive environment where art, dialogue, and community can flourish.
Ongoing!
Everything But The Work
An Instagram platform for creatives, a collaboration with Ashley Diane Saldana
Created in 2024 by Ashley Diane Saldana and Karly Jean Kainz, Everything But The Work is a project focused on unveiling the everyday ideas that are behind one’s practice. With individual practices that are greatly informed by their everyday life, Saldana and Kainz created a platform that asks artists to dig deeper into the subtleties of the mundane, through their surroundings and routines. After seeing numerous platforms and sites that heavily focused on the end results of one’s work, both Saldana and Kainz saw an opportunity and asked, “How could we show someone’s practice without actually showing their work?” Existing solely on Instagram (for now!) Everything But The Work is an ongoing project of exploration and vulnerability allowing artists to share insights into their practice, but never their work.
June 1 & 8, 2024
OutsmART: Pots and Plants Workshop
1-3 PM @ NMSU University Art Museum
Over the course of this two-part workshop participants will decorate their own planter, create a macrame hanger, and repot a houseplant into their handmade planters.
Day 1: Saturday, June 1, 1:00-3:00 pm
Using underglazes in a variety of colors, participants will decorate clay planters and trays made by Karly Jean. After the workshop, Karly Jean will fire the planters and trays so that they are ready for part two!
Day 2: Saturday, June 8, 1:00-3:00 pm
With the planters and trays glazed and fired, Blanca Martinez will teach participants how to make their own macrame plant hanger, a skill she learned from her grandfather. Once finished, participants will choose from a variety of houseplants to take home in their planters and learn about proper plant care.
May 9, 2024
Making as Knowing · When I was Here, Thinking of There
5:30-7:30 PM @ NMSU’s University Art Museum
Making as Knowing · When I was Here, Thinking of There features an installation by MFA candidates: Karly Jean Kainz and Blanca Martinez. In this two-person show, both artists explore ideas of home and personal ritual through repetitive actions tied together through layered connections to place. Viewers will be immersed in a full sensory experience as each artist transforms the space into their perceptions of domesticity.
Renowned independent curator and writer, Leslie Moody Castro, describes the exhibition as, “a culmination of years spent building, connecting, reflecting, and experimenting. It is an exhibition that toggles both time and place, a reflection of a present moment through the past with the juxtapositions and dichotomies that are always illuminated through both place and time. Making as Knowing · When I was Here, Thinking of There is a world built both strong and soft. It is of one knot, one mold, one loop and one slab, held together through a foundation of one stitch, and fire that gives the form its place.”
Making as Knowing · When I was Here, Thinking of There will run from May 9 - July 20, 2024.
June 29, 2023
Together: Conversations and Collaborations
6-9 PM @ La Mecha Contemporary, El Paso, TX
This is a collaboration between Ashley Diane Saldana and Karly Jean Kainz as an investigation of their individual practices, finding ways to merge them together through technique, material, color, and object.
This collaboration brought Electric Collections 01 + 02, as two investigations of play and experimentation for the two artists.
More info on La Mecha Contemporary.
Dec. 2022 - Feb. 2023
Yours Truly Ceramic Artist
833 E. Center St, Milwaukee, WI
“Yours Truly is a contemporary art space in the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We are a cooperatively-run ceramics studio, and we also host shows, events, workshops, sales, and more. The studio & its events are organized and facilitated primarily by the resident artists and is led by Molly Hassler and Taylor Bucki. The studio has two electric kilns, throwing wheels, glaze materials, and more. Yours Truly was founded in 2017 by Basha Harris, Ethan Kastner, and Meg Zimont.”
During my time at Yours Truly, I worked on the production of Tethered Places and Sacred Spaces, inspired by my time back in Wisconsin. These several months were filled with great conversation and support from my peers at Yours Truly.
August 5, 2022
Conditions of Control, a collaboration with Ashley Diane Saldana
4-10 PM @ CAV Gallery, Las Cruces, NM
This project is a collaboration between Ashley Diane Saldana and Karly Jean Kainz as an investigation between human interaction and technology in relation to the sustainability of plant life. Searching to understand the complexities of how the role of technology plays in life, Conditions of Control tethers between the controlled and uncontrolled, as evidence to the ways awareness and human connection are crucial components in the care of biology. Ceramic vessels shelter and construct a landscape of study, experimenting with various interactions of care by choreographing light, water, and sound to simulate artificial and natural environments. Some rely on human interaction while others are created through automation with technology. Each of these environments determine the treatments numerous plants receive, while others solely represent life without care that then in turn become neglected.
More info on CAV Gallery and the founder, Marcus Xavier Chormicle
April 16, 2022
Sweet Rituals and Strange Memories
11-2 PM @ Casa Otro, Las Cruces, NM
The processes of growth and change inevitably instigates opportunities for collaboration, whether we recognize them or not. This exhibition is the result of seven artists working collaboratively at a critical juncture in their academic and professional careers. They challenge one another’s formative processes, exploring the shifting influences of time, place, ritual, and memory.
The exhibition will be held in two phases. Phase I begins with the end product—work made specifically for the exhibition. Phase II will shift the focus from the “objectness” of the finished works to consideration of the external forces and material transformations of each artist. Phase II, co-curated by Karly Jean Kainz and Lynne Maphies, will reveal the processes and materiality of making, evolving the project into a different exhibition altogether.
Participating artists are: Karly Jean Kainz, Yashoda Latkar, Blanca Martinez, William MOREE, Gus Ramirez, Ashley Diane Saldana, Carlos Lee Sullivan.
This exhibition is the result of the semester-long Graduate Seminar Course on Professional Practices in the Department of Art at New Mexico State University, in collaboration with the Casa Otro Residency Project.