Today we’d like to introduce you to Kim Rose Adams.
Kim Rose, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Becoming a full-time creative entrepreneur felt like cracking a Morse code without the manual at the beginning, but it hits the center of the Venn Diagram for me. If you would have asked my kid self, who was designing stickers on her dad’s printer label paper in her closet and drawing pictures of sunsets with crayons in her backyard, she probably would have said, “yeah!!”. College was an expensive path that provided no classes about the business side of art and yet expanded my skills set by providing access to so many different studios. I was the late night girl in the darkroom lab by herself on the New Orleans campus, trying to feel my way through what is a poetic and necessary medium of capturing existence. I was also the girl who dropped out of college for a year and tried an apprenticeship as a muralist and tattoo artist before enrolling back in college because I still loved those kinetic mediums of creating something from nothing.
Bits of all of those skills I learned in print-making and illustration classes, graffiti-style wall art, and designing images to “pop” on skin became the not-so-random mix of what I do today as a multi-disciplinary visual artist. Somehow after swimming through the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina in 05’ and choosing to work with a Vans Warped Tour merchant all the way up to SLC, Utah, I landed intentionally in Eugene, Oregon to wrap up my education in this new outdoorsy terrain. That was where I settled for 6 years after I finished my degree, and the focus of my work then was multi-fold: skateboarding-inspired painting, punk-inspired illustrations, and pictures of nature from hiking this beautiful state. I met so many nice people there who still follow the progression of my creative work.
After lugging my art from show to show, I figured out that I needed to live where the inspiration is at, so I hopped over to the Oregon coast. Ever since 2013, it has been game-on for me out here, especially with having watery landscapes where the ocean meets land in some wild places that will never be developed because of the Oregon Beach Bill. We need wild places or we disconnect from everything that sustains us, including our respect for, appreciation of, and fear of that wildness. Four years more of managing other people’s businesses and slinging pints, I decided to jump off that edge and rely on myself to figure out how to make money at my work full-time. Making batches of things and selling them through my Etsy shop since 2008 and figuring out how to scale up my income through wholesaling reproductions of my images is how I got here. That and a lot of self promotion – you have to want it more than anything else, which for me meant working 7 days a week for most of the last 9+ years.
So I say that I am inspired to find places without humans or signs of human development in order to capture wild beauty, though that is hard because we can mess up pretty much everything wonderful with careless industrialization steaming ahead under corrupt administrations. My creative work gets me in touch with nature, to the point that I became a volunteer wildlife rescue and transport driver, tree planter, invasive weed puller, and litter collector. It has been the full force at times!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
If only there was a road map to make this path smooth, ha! One of us needs to write that book. Truly though, it is a different and ongoing story of progress and setbacks for all of the creatives I have met.
Now that I am almost 10 years in and moved over to one of my favorite small beach towns, the biggest challenge is finding the time to unravel and unfocus that I had to myself in the beginning! It gets busier, and then things like corporate buyouts in the hospitality industry and transfers of small local business ownership pull the rug out from me in the form of lost relationships, and those are my main buyers. The goal is getting enough of a customer base to feel secure and then building that back after each corner crumbles, all the while creating new illustrations and photography imagery.
There is always the unexpected project around the corner though, so I have been teaching myself to take it in stride, sip the coffee, and smell the roses. Maintaining a personal website, an Etsy shop, local accounts, and searching for more opportunities takes time, but that is how I get myself out there. Always stay hopeful, let what isn’t working fade away, and try new things with the notion that it might fail and be okay with that. Onward!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My main medium is landscape photography, and I shoot with a Nikon DSLR now. I chase natural light to create a lot of ethereal, painterly images of our world as it exists. I love moody overcast days for shooting waterfalls and the gigantic sweeping hot pink horsetail clouds during sunsets. I get asked sometimes if my photos are paintings, and that lets me know that I am on target! I am known for creating beautiful postcards and have those in a lot of shops on the North Coast of Oregon for people to take home as keepsakes.
A year after shooting around the south end of Big Sur, I got discovered by a hotel in Pismo Beach, where they put several of my large prints inside, and there is a group of gorgeous custom-designed modern vacation homes in southwest Washington that exclusively decorate with my photography throughout. Such locations as these are where I like to have my work so visitors can be inspired to spend time in the beautiful outdoors, and it is a huge compliment to have them in well thought-out spaces. I would say this is the medium from which my animal spirit speaks without words.
In the last 8 years, I have organized several international photography trips for myself, which brought me to Western Cuba, the Yucatán Peninsula, Scotland, the Big Island, and most recently Iceland. These trips are physically and mentally challenging, as the main goal is to get the shots, despite a tight sleep schedule, miles of driving alone, unpredictable weather, and off-roading hazards in wild places. My motto for my first two weeks in Iceland became, “I didn’t die today,” as a way to laugh off the stress of the rigorous physical work. Maybe one day I will have the perfect roadie companion, who knows! But I don’t expect anyone to love what I do as much as I do or follow my inspiration on a dime.
Illustration has become another strong medium for me in the last 3 years, and I had almost left it behind in my 30’s. I brought in my old skills from the tattoo shop and taught myself how to digitize and color my drawings in Photoshop. Now I have a growing catalog of mostly coastal-inspired designs with some special effects papers, which I wholesale to shops. Wholesale is one of the biggest portions of my sales, and I serve close to three dozen businesses who buy my work. This medium is one way to express joy, humor, and contribute to culture using relatable imagery.
My most niche work though is wood-working, specifically in restoring historical nautical elements for design projects and pairing that with some maritime knot work that I learned from a captain. I have been sought out by Disney World, Ralph Lauren, hotels, and interior design groups looking for what I do. Restoring old growth cedar relics from early American commercial fishing and pairing that with eye spliced hemp rope in long strands is the crux of that design work, which has ended up in bars, a local library, as set design on ‘Hawaii Five-O’, and many other places. I think this is a skill I have had in my pocket for awhile, since I built light boxes for my photography using plexiglass in my early 20’s and continued on with building my own picture frames and quite a bit of my own furniture and interior décor. My decorating style is dark Americana with a focus on the industrial, coming from a tomboy aesthetic of repurposing old or found objects that just need some hands-on love. I feel like an arm is missing when I don’t have my tools nearby.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
In the last 3 years, I became a very sober individual as a matter of health and productivity. I like to call it a “dating superpower” because it cuts through the phonies, keeps me steered away from incompatible behaviors, and prevents a lot of dead end second dates. My last job before jumping into self-reliance was a very social one serving beer, and I did not imagine that I would ever be here. Sobriety and fitness have been immensely helpful in healing the deepest aspects of a prior PTSD diagnosis. I have gradually come out of that and its pervasive sleep disorder in this time period and produce more Delta waves in my sleep patterns now (this is the goal!). To wake up from a nightmare without a rapid heartbeat is a true sign of feeling sanctuary within my own body and mind.
My new favorite thing this year is to wear colorful wigs, since I enjoy playing around with personal aesthetics and don’t have the patience to dye my hair anymore. Most of my piercings have come out, I’ve got some cool grey streaks just coming in at 44, and wigs have become one of my new sources of joy.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://notyoureverydaydreamer.rocks/
- Instagram: @designbykimroseadams
- Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/KimRoseAdams
