About Kim Keelor
"My intention is to compel the mind and enliven the spirit
while supporting planet health and constructive mindsets."
Kim Keelor, Carolina Artworks
Artist Statement
My overarching goal as a multi-disciplinary visual artist is to compel the mind and enliven the spirit through work serving as meditations on nature, common journeys, and uncommon sights, while supporting planet health, constructive mindsets, and other creatives.
My artwork can be flat like a painting, 3-D, or it can be presented as a combination of forms arranged as an installation. My pieces are fiber-centric and are often created through the ancient process of wet felt making. By incorporating techniques like sculpting, random weaving, needle punching, and even found objects, I transform the fiber bases into unique assemblages that better express the atmosphere, idea, or moment I want to convey.
The scope and size of my work is expanding, as exemplified by a large-scale, climate emergency installation that is close to completion in my studio. It is created from foraged materials, industrial waste wool, and post-consumer plastic and represents our Center’s first large, collaborative installation.
My studio, Carolina Artworks, is in a small, non-profit facility called the Cowee School Arts and History Center located in the Appalachian mountain-town of Franklin, North Carolina which is where I reside. It is a supportive atmosphere where we work collaboratively to serve the largely low-income, rural community as one of the only arts-related venues. I serve as an instructor there, and in other locations in the Carolinas. I provide classes at other locations and for special or private events upon request.
Resume
Kim Keelor is a fiber-centric, multi-disciplinary artist living in the mountains of far western North Carolina. She is a resident artist at the Cowee School Arts & Heritage Center there. Keelor's work has been selected for more than twenty juried exhibitions since she began showing professionally in 2020, while living in Charleston, South Carolina. She was awarded Best of Show prizes at the 2025 Art League of Cashiers-Highlands Summer Colors Fine Arts Exhibition, and at the Palmetto Hands Fine Craft 2024 Annual Juried Exhibition – a show with more than three hundred works. Keelor earned Honorable Mention and Traveling Show prizes at the Charleston Palmetto show in earlier years. Examples of where her work has been shown or sold include the Bascom, the Fine Arts League of Cary gallery, and Uptown Gallery in North Carolina; the Middleton Place Museum Shop, Charleston Artist Guild, Preservation Society of Charleston, Blue Ridge Arts Center and Anderson Arts Center in South Carolina, plus locations in Georgia, California and Colorado.
Keelor is leading a collaborative, large-scale, climate crisis art installation being constructed in her studio. It will be exhibited in the Carolinas in late 2025 and 2026. She is largely self-taught, influenced over a lifetime spent living in the southeastern US. Painting and crafting for much of her life, Keelor's practice became more intentional beginning in 2018, with cultivation in multiple mediums from instructors at the John C. Campbell Folk School, Taos Art School, Redux Art Center, Gibbes Museum of Art, and Southeastern Fiber Fair, resulting in a heavy emphasis on the ancient, sustainable process of wet felt making.
In 2022, Keelor completed an artist residency with the Working Artist Studio Provisions of Scotland on the Isle of Skye, marking the transition from her earlier careers to professional artist. The spectacles she witnessed while working as a journalist and communications strategist also influence her practice. Keelor holds a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism from Western Kentucky University and an M.S. in Leadership Studies from The Citadel. She is a member of the Bascom, the Macon County Art Association, and the Art League of Highlands-Cashiers.
Her selection for exhibitions and awards are as follows:
2025
– Best of Show award. Land, Water, Wind: Isle of Skye. Art League of Cashiers-Highlands Summer Colors Annual Fine Arts Exhibition, Sapphire, NC
–Dry Falls V. Fiber Art: Embracing the Craft, Core Art Space, Denver
– Cooking is no profession for a woman: a tribute to Chef Nathalie Dupree. Cowee School Arts & Heritage Center, Franklin, NC (installation)
–Various works, Artist Instructor Show, The Bascom
2024
– Tawney, Bourgeois, O'Keeffe and the Hats of the Master Potter, The Bascom (installation)
– Best of Show award. Becoming Iron: Josephine and Betty, South Carolina Palmetto Hands Fine Craft Annual Juried Exhibition, North Charleston, SC
2023
– Land, Water, Wind: Isle of Skye, The Bascom Annual Member Show, juried, Highlands, NC
– Convergence: Land, Water Wind, Isle of Skye, South Carolina Palmetto Hands Fine Craft Annual Juried Exhibition, North Charleston, SC
– Land, Water, Wind: Isle of Skye, Palmetto Hands Fine Craft Annual Juried Exhibition, North Charleston, SC
– Grant, $1000. Cowee School Arts & Heritage Center, Artist Support Grant
– Land, Water, Wind: Isle of Skye. Arts League of Cary Annual Juried Exhibition, Cary, NC
– Dr. Brown Knows, Summerville South Carolina Public Works Center Fiber Exhibition, Summerville, SC
2022
– First Place in category. Victory Garden Renewal, Southeast Animal Fiber Fair, Asheville, NC
– Victory Garden Renewal, Chattahoochee Weavers Guild annual juried exhibition juried, Dunwoody, GA
– Common Journeys, Charleston Artist Guild Exhibition, juried, Charleston, SC
2021
– Shem Creek Shrimper, Corkhouse Gallery, Small Works exhibition, juried, Savannah, GA
– Miniature Rainbow Row, Corkhouse Gallery, Small Works exhibition, juried, Savannah, GA
– Dr. Brown Knows, South Carolina Palmetto Hands Fine Craft Annual Juried Exhibition, North Charleston SC
– Abstruse Spaces, Redux Contemporary Art Exhibition, juried, Charleston, SC
– Carolina Reverb, Anderson Arts Center Fiber Exhibition, Juried, Anderson, SC
– Carolina Reverb, North Charleston Artist Guild Pop Up Juried Exhibition, North Charleston, SC
–Carolina Reverb, Anderson Arts Center, Anderson, SC
2020
– Window Box Colors, Blue Ridge Arts Center Annual Juried Exhibition, Seneca, SC
– Leveling the Bubbles, Redux Art Center Juried Exhibition, Charleston, SC
– Honorable Mention, Reaching up on Church Street, South Carolina Palmetto Fine Craft Art Annual Juried Exhibition
– Traveling Exhibition Award, Reaching up on Church Street, South Carolina Palmetto Fine Craft Annual Juried Exhibition
– Shem Creek Swinger, South Carolina Palmetto Fine Craft Annual Juried Exhibition
– Leveling the Bubbles, SIY Gallery, San Francisco, online/juried
– Mama K’s Table, Pickens County Museum of Art, and History Annual Juried Exhibition
