We’re looking forward to introducing you to Candace Knapp. Check out our conversation below.
Hi Candace, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: What is something outside of work that is bringing you joy lately?
I am learning to play the Nyckelharpa. It is a Swedish instrument from the Middle Ages which has become popular lately for folk music. It has the range of a violin and is played with a bow but it uses keys instead of pressing the strings with your fingers. It has twelve drone strings that give a full resonating sound to each note. I have known about it for a long time because my husband, Bjorn, is Swedish but have only been learning to play the last seven months. I still have a lot to learn but it is a great joy to just melt into the sound and drift away. I practice several times a day because whenever I see it I can’t resist picking it up.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I have a master’s degree in Sculpture and started working professionally as an artist around 1974. For many years I worked in wood making sculptures for galleries, furniture and statues for churches, carved doors and other things. My husband, Bjorn Andren, worked with me on church jobs. I have done public art, outdoor sculptures in Tampa and St Petersburg, Florida in bronze and epoxy resin. I also made public artworks in wood for libraries and hospitals. Around 2005 I started painting and eventually had shows in galleries and a few museums. It was challenging and exciting to try a new medium. About ten years ago I started making sculptures in clay and just last year five of my clay sculptures were in a show at the Tampa Museum of Art.
Now that I am getting older I have had a chance to pause and look back at all I have learned about art and life. I have just published a book called. “Creative Ways to See – Art Experiments That Change Your Experience of Life.” It has nearly 100 pictures of artworks. It took me two years to make all the art in the book. I feel it has an important message and can help people choose new ways to see the world. “Creative Ways to See” is a culmination of all I have experienced in art and life and I feel a quiet satisfaction. It is available on Amazon books.
That is not to say that I am finished. No, I am producing art and showing when I can. There is always more to explore.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
I was an only child the first nine and a half years and we moved to a new town almost every year so I spent most of my childhood alone and had to entertain myself. I liked reading about inventors, walking around in the woods when we lived near a forest, and making things. My dad was a toy designer by profession but he always thought the best toys were string, paper, sticks, cardboard boxes and stuff you find. I used to think I was magic and that if I concentrated hard enough I could make it rain or make a flower bloom. I have since learned that is not true.
The fifth chapter in my book is about how someone can become a child again so I have thought about this a lot. I have had many years of intense training as an artist and perfected many skills. How could I go back to the person I was at five years old and make art from that mindset? I struggled. Finally it kind of split. I copied nine sections of Rubens paintings with my very adult right hand and then took off my glasses, put paint in squeeze bottles and let my child self draw on them with my clumsy left hand. After several attempts my child self appeared and I think she enjoyed the exercise. I liked having her around.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
I see suffering as a kind of correcting mechanism that causes me to change course or change my expectations. I often struggled to make a living or to live up to my ideals and values. I wanted people to think well of me and value me.
Though I had shows in museums and some success with my artwork, I always felt it was not enough. I felt I had not lived up to my full potential and had failed somehow. I now understand that many artists feel this way.
By sheer luck, I stumbled on a solution to this dilemma! I wrote about it in Chapter 8 of my book, “Is There an Alternate Way for a Dream to Come True?” I had always felt that my artwork should become good enough that I could have a solo show at The Museum of Modern Art or another big institution. This is partly suffering caused by my ego and also guilt at not having brought forth some potential I sensed inside of me. At age seventy-seven I began to realize this dream was not going to come true.
Then I found an answer! I was working on a photography project where I put tiny paintings and artworks in the rooms of a tiny museum. Earlier I had spent a year making tiny paintings for no reason and I had lots of small sculptures I also made, just playing around. I wanted to photograph rooms with different environments and portals to other realms. As I was doing this and taking the photographs it suddenly dawned on me that I was having my big monumental museum show! It became so real because in the photographs my paintings looked ten feet tall. Even if I were to have a big museum show I would never in my lifetime be able to make all these huge paintings and sculptures. Some people look at these twenty photographs and believe it is real. It is real to me too in some other reality. I feel my dream has come true and I am completely satisfied.
Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
For me, the purpose of art is to uplift humanity, to remind people of deeper realities.
There is some contemporary art that is new and challenging to our senses that actually
succeeds in doing this. That makes me happy.
Still there is a lot of contemporary art that is made to shock people or to get attention without offering any real value.
That could be a reflection of the shallowness of our society these days. Many artists just want to find
something that will get the most attention and make them “successful” rather than searching within for the unique artwork only they can bring forth. Those who sell and promote art are also mostly interested in getting attention in the media rather than offering something of enduring value with a deep message.
We are so conditioned by what has gone before that it is hard to define which artworks are of real value.
I suppose time will tell.
Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. Are you tap dancing to work? Have you been that level of excited at any point in your career? If so, please tell us about those days.
Am I tap dancing? I am dancing mentally. I always take on tasks that I am not 100% sure I can do and that makes it exciting. I love problem solving. I remember making an eleven foot carving of Jesus and angels for a church in Lakeland Florida and not being sure how we would get it up on the wall because there are always problems, obstacles. The wall was not flat. We struggled. It feels so good when you accomplish something just on the edge of your abilities.
I was not sure I could be a painter and just spent all day painting for some years, never being satisfied with the results.
When I saw my solo show of paintings at the Museum of Art and Science in Daytona Beach, I was kind of in shock.
I have taught ceramic sculpture once a week for the past 43 years but rarely did any ceramic sculptures of my own until about six years ago. I struggled with that , with finding my own personal images. Last year when five of my ceramic sculptures were accepted into the Skyway show at the Tampa Museum it was much needed confirmation that I was doing okay.
I would be bored doing the same thing over and over again, yet I know that kind of consistency creates and brand and makes one more commercially successful. I prefer to try new things and keep my life interesting. It’s an adventure to challenge myself. In a way I do have a brand because however many different things I do, people seem to recognize that it is all made by the same person.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.candaceknapp.com
- Instagram: candaceknapp_artist
Image Credits
The first is a picture of my show in Dec 2024 of artworks from my book at Arts on Douglas Gallery, New Smyrna Beach,Florida.
and the rest from the book.
All photographs are by my husband Bjorn Andren and he would like to be credited but I have permission to use them.
