Impact — Kristy Caldwell

TMI:

My creative work explores two main areas: 1) How imagination shapes perception and facilitates empathetic storytelling, and 2) How literacy nurtures imagination as a tool of personal liberation.

I also translate these themes into curriculum through project-based assignments and connect with communities through events that promote literacy.

Recently, at Queens College

1. Jia Qin Lin / 2. Jiahao Yu / 3. Farhin Puspita / 4. Thais Mendez / 5. Altish Jawaid / 6. Hayko Reyes

Portrait: Person and Place, 2024
Select undergraduate Illustration II/Illustration Portfolio illustrations for a non-linear narrative portrait project on the intersection of identity and place. The full series of 19 pieces will be placed on long-term public display in Queens Hall, scheduled for Spring 2025. Images © the individual artists.

1. Home Is a Hibiscus in Summer, Scarlet Hernandez / 2. Home Is a Silent Plate of Fruit, Vivian Luo / 3. Home Is a Basketball, Jeremiah Rorie / 4. Home Is a Garden, Jenny Mao / 5. Home Is a Fig Tree, Jenny Lin / 6. Home Is a Pine Cone, Habin Moon / 7. Home Is an Empanada, Diego Pichizaca / 8. Home Is a Detente, Sofia Caraza

Home Is: Illustrating Objects of Memory, 2024
Select undergraduate Illustration II/Illustration Portfolio illustrations, created for a project that explores the question, ‘What is home?’ through layers of meaning in a single “memory object.” The full series of 20 pieces is on long-term public display in the Linguistics Department. Images © the individual artists.

1. Gesture drawing / 2. Creating relationships from musical triggers / 3. Group work to develop live-action, 3-panel comics

Theatrical Composition and Gesture for Illustrators, 2023–2024
In-class workshop developed with theatre director Kelly O‘Donnell, designed to connect the language of narrative across disciplines. Featuring actors Imani Pearl Williams and Kelly Letournou.

Previous imagination-focused workshops/courses

1. Course calendar / 2. Sample warm-up exercise / 3. Sample ideation exercise

Active Imagination: Ideation Process for Creatives

Minneapolis College of Art and Design Continuing Education (MCAD), Spring 2022/Fall 2023
This remote, five-week course introduces a world-building process grounded in imagination, memory, and dream. A range of nontraditional exercises in a supportive environment encourages students to consider deep focus and empathetic observation as daily tools of making, in order to deepen their existing creative practice. The heart of this technique is a deep focus exercise the group practices together during class meetings. In the final week students are encouraged to take steps to develop new work directly from the technique, in the creative discipline of their choice.

1. First workshop session in a private event space donated by Sai Organics in Astoria, Queens / 2. Second session: hybrid-format show-and-tell / 3. Sketched “artifact” by Rumi Hara

Active Imagination for Visual Storytellers

City Artists Corps grant, 2021
This grant-funded mini-workshop focused on using dream content to develop a catalogue of personally meaningful creative material for use in personal and professional work.

Community engagement

1. Live drawing / 2. On stage with the band / 3. Theatrical reading / 4. Audience participation / 5. The team

“Scout Camp” Music and Live-Drawing Event

Channel 3 Kids Camp, 2019
Sponsored by Scholastic, this event brought the characters of the Bobs and Tweets book series to life through an interactive concert of original songs by The Bonefish Band, directed by Kelly O’Donnell, and live drawing (my job) at an inclusive camp facility in Andover, CT.