Kimberly Callas

Artist Statement / Bio

Kimberly Callas is a multidisciplinary figurative sculptor and social practice artist whose work explores the concept of the “ecological self”: the idea that the human body is both a medium and an empathic archive of the natural world. Through life-size polychromed sculptures, reliefs, and large-scale drawings, she merges anatomical form with oceanic, botanical, and celestial patterning to examine how identity is shaped through entanglement with the more-than-human world.

Her ongoing series *Ocean Bodies* investigates embodiment, environmental memory, and interdependence, bridging science and psyche. Callas integrates digital processes—including 3D scanning, CNC fabrication, and 3D printing with bio-filaments—with hand-based methods such as drawing, plant dyes, and layered surface patterning, creating hybrid works that hold both technological and material histories. *Art New England* described her series *Portrait of the Ecological Self* as “unforgettable.”

Callas’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums, earning her numerous awards and grants, including a Pollination Project Grant, an Urban Coast Institute Artist-in-Residence, a Monmouth University Faculty Fellowship, and a Puffin Foundation Grant. In 2020, she won First Place in Sculpture at the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club’s Annual Exhibit in New York City. Her recent exhibitions include the International New Media Exhibit at the CICA Museum in South Korea, the Summer Exhibition at Flowers Gallery in New York City, *9×12* at Dual Galleria in Budapest, Hungary, and *Crossing Boundaries: Art and the Future of Energy* at the Pensacola Museum of Art in Florida.

In 2019, Callas attended the prestigious JOYA: Arte + Ecología Residency in Vélez-Blanco, Spain. During a recent sabbatical in 2024, she was an artist-in-residence at Arts Quarter Budapest, where she presented a solo exhibition titled *Ocean Swimmers (Entanglement)*. She also completed a life-size portrait commission, including a six-foot cartouche relief for the Lambert Castle renovation in Paterson, New Jersey.

Callas frequently engages communities through her *Discovering the Ecological Self* workshops, which she has led throughout the United States and internationally. Her work has been published in *Monmouth Magazine*, *Post Human*, *New Media Art 2020* (CICA Press), *The Huffington Post*, and *Art New England*.

Her lived experience in sustainability deeply informs her art. In midcoast Maine, Callas built an off-grid eco-house and co-founded a sustainability institute, grounding her creative practice in a long-standing commitment to sustainable living.

Callas holds an MFA from the New York Academy of Art and a BFA from the Stamps School of Art at the University of Michigan. She is an Associate Professor of Art at Monmouth University, maintaining studios in both Maine and New Jersey. For more information, visit kimberlycallas.com and discoverecoself.org.

Artist Social

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