Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Setting her artist free
UA professor and Fayetteville Underground board member an advocate for art.
At 3 Cinnamon Crescent in Kingston, Jamaica, young Sharon Killian loved to gaze up at the sky. She did it as often as she could, between rounds of caring for her younger siblings and washing clothes in an outdoor tub. She soaked up the vibrant blue that lived beyond the mango and banana trees in the yard.
“When I had to be up, doing something before anybody else, I caught myself looking at the sky, really sucking it up and the amazement of it,” she says.
They owned their family home, a cinder block construction, which was built on land cleared by machetes. And though it didn’t have running water, there was a nearby river good for bathing. Her father made a living as a cabinet maker and her mother sometimes worked at a factory, but still life was tough for a family with six children.
Relying on her status as a Cuban national, Killian’s mother made a scouting trip to the U.S. and when she returned home in a taxi, she wore a tailored canary yellow jacket over a smart black dress to deliver the news that the whole family was coming to America. It made her the neighborhood celebrity.
“We were like, ‘Oh my god, mommy!’ And ran screaming around. It was amazing,” Killian says. “We hugged her up, and the neighborhood kids were hugging [her] too. You can imagine the revelry. She took over … my [hand washed] laundry and the very next day we had running water.”
Shortly after, 12-year-old Sharon stepped out of the Kennedy Airport in New York, donning her very first coat that was little more than “an extra layer of skin” for someone who hadn’t experienced below 75 degree temperatures.
And though she only ever returned to Jamaica once in the decades since, that wild, breathtaking blue stayed forever in her mind’s eye. It’s the subject of “Jamaica Blue,” a five panel set of abstract paintings she released in recent years — three of which reside in private galleries in Washington, D.C. and Fayetteville.
Killian’s work has been shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Edison Place Gallery, also in Washington, the Weiss Gallery in Maryland and the Bentonville Fine Art Show hosted by Black Art in America.
Tyson Foods is the latest to scoop up her abstract artworks, acquiring six works for its permanent, private collection at the corporate office in Springdale.
“Her art is just fabulous,” says friend Pam McCorkley Buncum. “Some of it [stems from] a natural sense. It’s a gift.”
“Like all things, it can’t [work by] just being talented, you have to work at it,” says Marty Burggraf, another friend. “Sharon does work at it, and I think her new stuff is even better” than previous works.
Locally, Killian’s solo exhibits have graced the walls of Carnall Hall at the University of Arkansas, 21c Museum Hotel’s Hive Gallery, Fort Smith Trolley Museum, Fayetteville Public Library, the Arts Center of the Ozarks in Springdale and others. As president of the Fayetteville Underground board of directors and a professor of art at the University of Arkansas, Killian
has become a vocal advocate for artists and the effect of art on our daily lives.
“She’s very positive and vibrant,” says Angela LaPorte, UA art education director. “She’s full of life, and as a teacher that seems to motivate and challenge students.”
WORKING MY ART
& THE LAND
Sharon Killian came to Arkansas by way of Washington, D.C. Her husband’s family lived here, and by the time they returned, the couple’s help was needed to care for his elderly parents and their cattle farm.
“She’s incredibly selfless, to move to Arkansas from D.C. and … take the farm to keep it from going under,” says Dr. Kim Agee, a friend.
When Sharon and Charles weren’t decked out in coveralls, boots and bandanas to care for the cattle and chickens — a far cry from the urban life they had enjoyed — Killian found a number of ways to get a pulse on the community. Instead of shying away from activity, she found it better to give her mother-in-law new experiences by taking her with her wherever she went.
She became an active presence for the Northwest Arkansas African American Heritage Association (and once president), Senior Democrats of Northwest Arkansas (where she was once vice president) and Fayetteville Rotary Club.
Meanwhile, she learned the ropes of cattle farming and has been building up business by dry aging the corn fed, free range beef and selling it to local eateries, such as Hugo’s, The Hive, Greenhouse Grille and Woodstone Pizza.
“She’s one of those people that I swear to God, I don’t know where she gets the energy,” Burggraf says. “She’s on several boards and just totally dynamic. She really, truly believes in giving to the community.”
“She’s very personable … has a lot of energy and is really connected with the community in many ways,” LaPorte says.
A few years ago, when the Fayetteville Underground lost its former location on Center Street, Killian rolled up her sleeves, joined the board and took on the complicated task of finding a new location and orchestrating the move, all while keeping the nucleus of artists together, Agee says.
“She’s played a big role in that,” he says. “She’s very goal directed, identifies a problem, thinks through possible fixes and doesn’t just say, ‘You do this and you do that,’ but just does it. She gets to work. She’s a very determined woman.”
When she’s not serving Northwest Arkansas through one of her chosen nonprofits, Killian can often be found in one of the bachelor of fine arts critiques on campus, which involves lending structured feedback to student artists to help them improve on their projects, make connections to art history and find greater relationships among their body of works.
Though she’s been a professor for only a couple of years now, that teaching gene seems always to have found ways to express itself over the years. Whether walking through art galleries with friends or explaining her work at an art opening, Killian has a way of imparting knowledge in an easy, approachable way that makes guests of all art levels feel comfortable to share.
“We go to Crystal Bridges together, and though I’m not trained [in art history], I enjoy her conversation and interpretation,” says McCorkley Buncum. “It’s just like having any other conversation, it didn’t change at all and was enlightening.
“I got to see it through her eyes.”
“I’m not creative or artistic, but I’ve always been interested in art and things others create,” Agee says. “Sharon is a fascinating person who … patiently answers questions, shows me things she’s done and will answer more questions, put [art] in historical context and give you books to take home” to learn more.
As the educator for a course on public school art teaching, LaPorte says Killian’s teaching gift is that of meeting the students where they are and facilitating their growth as an educator, giving them the space to form their own goals and go for it.
“She teaches them how to think … about how art connects to the world and encourages them,” LaPorte says. “She knows how to ask the right questions to engage them.”
WHAT COMES TO ME
Killian’s own art education blossomed around the time that she arrived in New York City. Living in Harlem, she was near a number of museums that she “haunted” and began creating her own work. Her father used her pieces to decorate the walls of the family home and her high school teachers pointed her in the direction of supplemental art programs available in the city.
She frequented classes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New School for Social Research and its Parsons Design School, as well as the Museum of Modern Art. If it was offered, she showed up.
“I had wonderful teachers who saw something in my art and said, ‘Go do this,’” Killian says. “They introduced me to the programs, and that’s how I got my start. Instead of going to look at the art, I’d go to the education department and say ‘I want to take a class.’”
Her earliest works were bits inspired by life, figurative and still life compositions, something altogether different from the minimalist, abstract and realist representations she makes today.
When the Metropolitan displayed one of her artworks while she was still a student, it was one of the proudest moments of her art career.
As a teenager, Killian was on the yearbook staff and president of her high school class, where she was the voice of reason — one that students legitimately listened to “maybe because I was an artist,” she says. “They all wanted to see my work and were interested that I was doing this other thing.
“It’s amazing, art is good for people. I think it’s good for them to see it and do it.”
Still, it wasn’t her first choice for a college major. When she arrived at the University of Rochester, Killian had one box (full up with a black leather suit, Frye boots and ripped jeans) and an intention to complete the pre-med program.
She picked Rochester because it was far enough from home to give her some independence and because it came with a full scholarship, which is more than she could say for Scripps in Sacramento that asked for $100.
After a while, Killian returned to her love for art and earned her degrees in art history and painting in 1979. She developed her own artistic style by always following whatever it was that best expressed her ability.
“I’d have a certain tension [with art], like a high out of a line or a color or the way colors are juxtaposed,” she says. “I always felt like there was so much out there [already] and I saw so much of it, that I had to be me.
“Whatever comes into my being, I’m sure it comes out in a way that can’t come out like anyone else.”
RETURNING TO HER
FIRST LOVE
Beyond the college campus, it took some time before Killian could really focus on her art fully. She’d started her family and once she moved to Washington, D.C., she took a job at the American Association for Medical Colleges to care for her two children, Jarell and Lindsay.
“My work, my real work in life, was interrupted,” Killian says. “I was still showing [art] along the way, but I was never able to be my whole, full self for any period of time that would develop me [as an artist] that would have been visible.
“Though I wasn’t painting all the time, I was thinking about it all the time. Every time I touched it, it was special.”
It was at that job, managing the offices of applicant relations and school relations, that she met Charles. He was from a different division of the company and in his data-driven sociologist manner, he showed up to her office to meet the people creating the data he worked with. He didn’t expect to meet the love of his life; he just wanted a face for the numbers and a chance to ask questions that would improve the interpretations.
They connected as friends, spending lunch dates talking about history, life, intellectual things, and somewhere along the way, they fell in love.
“When Charles and I were [first] together, it wasn’t the most popular thing to be, to look like him and look like me and be a couple walking places together and holding hands,” Killian says. “But he didn’t, doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter what other people think.”
They married in December 1993 and moved into a small house in Falls Church, Va. — Sharon bringing her two children and Charles bringing his child. He offered to take care of the crew, which freed her to return to her art.
She stretched her materials out over the kitchen table, and her children gasped with wonder. “She’s working!” they nervously whispered to each other when they thought she couldn’t hear. Without the pressure to be sole provider for her family, Killian took a gig teaching art to high school students at Georgetown Day School — part time for a bit, then full time for 11 years, ending only when they moved to Northwest Arkansas.
Now Killian’s studio is much larger, nestled at the base of their home atop Round Mountain, where she has a spectacular view of a valley in the Ozarks and an unobstructed view of the sunset that inspires her.
Doing this, being married to Charles, involved in the community and getting her time as an artist, “is my dream life and it’s been going on for over 20 years,” Killian says.
“The life I had before interfered with my work, my real work that I’ve had inside my head since I was a kid, looking at the blue sky.”
“I’d have a certain tension [with art], like a high out of a line or a color or the way colors are juxtaposed. I always felt like there was so much out there [already] and I saw so much of it, that I had to be me.”