When Art is a Family Affair
How to work as partners in life & creative endeavors
This Weekend Edition of Ecstatic is by Natalie Louie Colby
Daniel and May Kytonen are Seattle-based visual artists who have described themselves as “partners in life and creative endeavors.” They have exhibited their work in galleries throughout the Pacific Northwest.
As a recent artist-in-residence through the Seattle Residency Project, Daniel invites viewers to reflect on their inner thoughts and past experiences through his 3D designs and paintings, experimenting with numerous forms, from digital concept art to installation projects made from acrylic sheets, LED lights, and spray paint. May currently works as the residency manager for Fuller Seminary's Brehm Residency and actively participates in the artist-run gallery, Soil, while exploring her mixed Taiwanese heritage and East Asian American identity through paper, digital collage, yarn, textiles and other mediums.
My relationship with May and Daniel began in a different context, when they worked as campus staff ministers at Gonzaga University. Through their mentorship, my understanding of God’s creativity deepened. As preparation for her Close/Divide exhibition in 2018, May invited a number of Asian American women to her kitchen table to twist yarn out of newspaper that would be used for large tapestries. I felt honored to contribute to a friend’s artistic process and to connect with other East Asian American women over our experiences of searching for belonging in the communities that we grew up in. Little did I know that the knitted red thread in each piece would become a recurring symbol that would emerge in my prayer life from time to time, reminding me that beauty can emerge from one’s shallow and deepest wounds through biblical faith.
Daniel and May most recently collaborated to create the project, Anterior Periapt, a monument that looks at the past and future by examining their personal and historical family values. Recently, I had the chance to sit down with the couple over Zoom to discuss how their relationships with each other and their newborn daughter, Eevi, have influenced their art. Answers are edited for length and clarity.
Natalie: You’ve called yourselves partners in life and in creative endeavors. Now as a family of three, how have your relationships with each other shaped your individual art practices as well as your collaborative ventures?
May: I was just pregnant with Eevi, so I think of Eevi as being a part of the process in making Anterior Periapt. Oh. It looks like I need to go feed Eevi. [leaves screen]
Daniel: This is going to be hard to do [laughs]. Anterior Periapt was the first full project and collaboration we did together. May was pregnant with Eevi at the time. The goal was to have equal input, so we wanted to find a medium that could make it possible to do that. I feel like our ideas have constantly melded in our individual work; it’s impossible to not have each of our ideas inform our work. Anterior Precept was one of my favorite things that I’ve made. In this project, we focused on collections of different things from home; we had the flowers from our wedding in there, cultural objects like the Fu Lion bookends, a steamer basket, and a fruit bowl. I’ve always been interested in lights because they harken back to stained glass art, and the sun is a unified force that is keeping us alive. I’m interested in using various language forms in my work, even as the medium changes, making things that are vaguely “language shaped” into literal objects.
May: [from off-screen] Language forms are like unspoken prayers.
Daniel: Yeah. Language forms represent something that isn’t fully understandable. We spend time every couple years thinking about ideas for projects and keep an ongoing documentation of those thoughts. As for my concept art, it’s definitely a different world: several standalone images or snapshots showing a story. Pretty much everything I’ve done has been about stories, and how important stories are to our lives to make meaning of things. I think we are constantly filtering our experiences through different frameworks to figure out our lives. There’s definitely been an element of thinking about being a father to Eevi. I’ve got a series coming out about having a child, which is a big awakening for one’s future in general. It’s helping me to have hope for the future, where she hopefully lives beyond my lifetime. I wrote a speculative short fiction in college about a father and daughter surviving an apocalypse that has influenced my work.
May: [re-enters Zoom frame] I feel like the story is an exploration as he enters into fatherhood, and of society’s potential positives and negatives for Eevi in the future. It’s like a creative mind exercise in a way. In Anterior Periapt, we were building this monument of what we want our future to look like as a family. Even though that was our first real collaboration, Dan was always behind the scenes helping me during my projects, building things, like at the Seattle Center when I was pregnant and not able to bend down and pick up stuff. So there’s both a physical and conceptual collaboration. We’re always cheering each other on. We’ve had our separate art practices and collaborative ones. Now that our daughter is about to turn six months old, I’m wondering what the new normal for us is with artmaking. I made something for the first time in a while last week, and it was only for thirty minutes. Motherhood has been a big reset for me. I have questions about what my art practice will look like in the future. Much of my work has been about my belonging, but now, similar to Dan, I get to help build a new world for Eevi through art. We’re sort of breaking up the idea of “art is life” and “life is art.” Life and art inform each other. Making art is like a prayer, just like how waking up with Eevi can be prayerful.
Natalie: As I’ve talked with other Christian creatives about their processes, I’ve heard that there are two camps of Christian artists: Christian artists who make secular art and Christian artists who make Christian art. How has your faith informed your art making process over the years? Do you tend to identify with one more than the other?
Daniel: When I think about this question it makes me think about my experience of creativity in general. It feels like a force or energy in the universe that exists outside of me that is connected to God’s life force in this world, and sometimes I get to tap into that. Contemplation is connected to the process. My work focuses on mystery and liminal space. It’s weird for me to make a delineation. Now, life and art feel more connected, like when we’re taking care of a child and praying. I’m trying to work on being present to the process, and I’m okay with my art not going anywhere.
May: People can see God’s influence in your art whether you’re a Christian or not, but my beliefs do inform my work. I also don’t feel pressure to express my beliefs in my art. I’ve always felt the freedom to work in whatever way that feels right, and I know that God is with me in that process.
Daniel: In my experience, the delineation of what the art world considers to be real art or not often comes down to power based on the opportunities that people have, whether they end up going to art school or getting a certain job. Do those things help you actually be more creative? Maybe. But the way they often end up functioning is as a badge that you can wear to say who’s in and who’s out. May and I are not trying to avoid our faith or spiritual practices. It’s just that they’re already a part of the way that we see the world.
May: Contemporary art is a critique of something. Your art needs to have a message. I have a strong sense that it is through the Holy Spirit’s perseverance and gentle nudging that I’m even on the artist path. I believe that wanting to be an artist is enough to be an artist.
Natalie: You both get to shape a worldview for your daughter. How do you think art and artmaking shapes people’s worldviews?
Daniel: So much of the world has been influenced by TV. Disney has created a world in which people feel loved when they think about their franchise. When I think about how this sort of thing is possible, it makes me think that there is something essential to the power of stories that we have to filter our lives through some sort of story to make sense of them. It’s crazy to see that in science fiction, in which people imagine things that someone else figures out how to actually build. Artificial intelligence was once science fiction stuff and now it is a reality. Art can shape our interpersonal worlds and our world physically. All this makes me think about the power of God’s story, and the transformation opportunity that is built into it.
May: Art allows people to be childlike, to explore and ask questions. We need people who are dreamers who want to expand our understanding of reality in a Kingdom-building way, people who believe in the positive impact and the work of creatives. There needs to be both affirmation of the work and of the artist.
Natalie: And now with Eevi, you get to experiment with this renewed childlike approach to artmaking.
May: I feel this sense of freedom from having to perform to a certain level. Ever since she was born, being curious has been more important for the process. Her presence encourages me to make art.
Daniel: I think there’s a difference between story and creativity. The creativity undergirds the story. There doesn’t need to be an outcome for creativity. There doesn’t need to be a physical thing to prove that imagination occurred. God’s invitation to me has been to focus on that even when I get frustrated and that I’m not more successful.
Natalie: That leads me to my last question: what advice do you have for artists of all kinds who are looking for inspiration and direction in their work?
May: It’s what I would like to tell myself: it’s enough to say you’re an artist to be an artist. Being an artist is more about how you approach the world than the products that you make. The product is the outcome of the journey. God sees your work, your story, and the lengths you went through regardless of whether or not you got the approval of other people. All art has significance and value, but your experiences could shape the things you make in a different way. Artificial intelligence can’t manufacture a Kingdom life – the ponderings, the musings, the hardships, the questions, the joys.
Also, be mindful of the voices you allow to comment on your work. The pressure to commercialize can make you feel bad about yourself. That’s not your true self. I think God delights in us. Don’t listen to those voices that are the opposite of how God sees us. There’s a lot of pressure in the art world; don’t let those voices be an assertion of who you are. Find like-minded individuals who can support you. Art can be a solitary endeavor and it can be easy to get lost in it.
Natalie Louie Colby
Writer & Campus Minister
Natalie is an emerging writer and campus staff minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship from Northern California, currently pursuing a graduate diploma in Christian Studies from Regent College.
“May and I are not trying to avoid our faith or spiritual practices. It’s just that they’re already a part of the way that we see the world.”
Love this! If God is the ultimate creator and informs all creativity in some way, then art (secular or Christian) can bring His truth forward (also reminds me of how Madeleine L’Engle talks about this in Walking on Water).