Today we’d like to introduce you to Kree Thawley.
Hi Kree, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Hi! I’m Kree and I use she/her pronouns. I’m a dreamer, a thinker, a maker, a doer, and I’ve enjoyed tapping into my own and others’ creativity for as long as I can remember. I have always been awe-struck by the human capacities to be inspired, to make things, to share those things, and to tell a story. I believe this is a key part of what separates us from other species on our planet – to honor and tap into our creativity, in senses both individual and collective, is an inspiring facet of the human experience. Doing so can heal, empower, and connect. It can build community, amplify voices and perspectives, teach, spark important dialogue and conversation, and it can serve as a mechanism for claiming space. I ended up getting my undergraduate degree in Art History because of all of this and more – learning about, understanding, and analyzing creative responses to the passing of time, paradigm shifts, historical events, and a rapidly changing world and society was so captivating to me.
After graduating, I took the road less traveled. I didn’t consider immediately seeking a job or stability in the normalized sense. Instead, I felt that I needed to quench my thirst for learning in a more experiential way, outside the boundaries of the formal educational realm. In that handful of years following university, two big things happened. The first was using slow travel and backpacking abroad as a way of journeying into who I truly am and figuring out my place in the world and what really mattered. The second was finding my own artistic voice after years of studying those of others. I took an introductory metalsmithing course in 2015 and fell in love immediately, which led to many things – moving back to California for an intensive technical program, subsequently getting a full-time bench jeweler job for a big-name brand, the conception of my own vision/side-hustle/creative outlet, Made in Orbit, and having the opportunity to live in Mexico and continue to learn more artistic techniques. For a chunk of time, it was the dream to be a self-employed artist – who wouldn’t want to just make the things that they love to make all day?! But a growing list of projects, deadlines, and all the necessary back-end work of launching and maintaining a legitimate business, started to make it seem like more of a task or job than an outlet or passion, which terrified me.
I went back to school in January of 2020, something I wasn’t necessarily planning on doing, to work toward a graduate degree in Art Leadership and Cultural Management. I knew I needed to be deeply immersed in the arts, but I didn’t know exactly how that might look. Some of my favorite courses were “Arts Collaboration and the Community,” “Art Policy and Advocacy,” and “Social Justice in Education.” My two-year program had aligned with several years of chaos, unrest, and revolution, culminating in an acknowledgment that history was happening right then. And history is happening right now. And rather than analyze it all through the lens of hindsight as I did when studying Art History, I could find ways to explore the position and role of art in a shifting society and in social justice/change in a contemporary sense. I could find a way to navigate how art and creativity can make a difference right now.
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?
That’s a loaded question and my indecisive spirit wants to say, why not both? I’ve always been interested in notions of balance and duality and the relationship between the micro and macro – I think that things can feel rough or confusing in the short term but smooth in the long, and vice versa. Perception is a crazy thing! Looking back, I think that everything has fallen into place in an inspiring way and that all of my varying interests, experiences, and skillsets build upon each other rather nicely, culminating in the current and fulfilling work that I do….but did that road always feel smooth while I was navigating it? Definitely not. Sometimes I wonder if there even was a road. I’ve done a lot of proverbial bush-whacking, scary soul-searching, and messy learning. I’ve made mistakes and have felt entirely hopeless and lost. Most struggles I’ve experienced along the way stem from larger realities: I am someone who is neurodivergent in a society built for the neurotypical, I am queer in a society built upon heteronormative values, and I’m a female in a society built by and for the patriarchy.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I recently accepted a promotion from Program Manager to Director of Programs at Art from Ashes, a Denver-based nonprofit that focuses on empowering youth through creative expression. Our workshops utilize spoken word, poetry, creative writing, and visual art as tools for cultivating health, hope, connection, and transformation in young people aged 12-24. We do not teach what poetry is or isn’t – instead, we hold a brave and uncensored space, illuminating a path that already exists. We kick off most workshops with a performance by a local poet or musician to inspire the youth and expose them to diverse ways of doing creative work in the community. We then use writing and art prompts to motivate them to explore their own identities, circumstances, perceptions, hopes, dreams, fears, and genuine feelings. We encourage right-brain processing within the workshop space and try to eradicate the left brain’s tendency to overthink, overanalyze, and self-edit. For this reason, we time the youth and give them only 3 minutes to write and create per prompt because it’s more about the healing and cathartic process than it is about a final poem or product. Although the writing is the foundational element in the workshops, the sharing and active listening is just as important and is integral to the “connection” part of our mission. Aside from workshops, we have a Youth Ambassador program and we participate in a variety of community events/performance opportunities for our poets – we want youth to feel comfortable, confident and amplified when using their authentic voices to claim space in a society that doesn’t generally value their perspectives, experiences, and opinions.
A great part about my position is being able to do lots of different things. I am currently training into the Director role, but you can often find me out and about in the community doing outreach work, recruiting facilitators/guest poets/volunteers/youth participants, securing workshop contracts with schools and other community organizations, designing and implementing collaborative projects, and coordinating youth poet performances at various events. I am a trained facilitator who has the pleasure of leading workshops and hearing the stories of these young people firsthand. They blow me away every time! They inspire me, they make me laugh and cry, and they really do give me hope for the future. As they grow up and move through the world, they can play a part in ensuring that the future is aware and empowered, helping to dismantle the system with radical honesty, openness, empathy, compassion, and creativity.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Community is medicine and storytelling is powerful. Stepping into vulnerability is synonymous with stepping into power, even if society has tried its best to convince us that those are two concepts existing at opposite ends of some spectrum.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.artfromashes.org
- Instagram: afaphoenix
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/Art.from.Ashes
