Kim Stringfellow is an artist, educator, writer, and independent curator based in Joshua Tree, California. She is a Professor Emeritus at San Diego State University’s School of Art + Design. She received her MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000. Claremont Graduate University awarded her an honorary doctoral degree in 2018.
For the past twenty years, Stringfellow’s creative practice has focused on the human-driven transformation of some of the American West’s most iconic arid regions through multi-year, research-based projects merging cultural geography, public practice, and documentary into creative, socially engaged transmedia experiences. These art-centered projects combine writing, photography, audio, video, installation, mapping, and community engagement to explore the history of place while examining how the landscapes we inhabit are socially and culturally constructed. She is primarily interested in the ecological repercussions of human presence and occupation within these spaces. By focusing on distinct subjects, communities, or regions, she attempts to foster a discussion of complex, interrelated issues for each site while exposing human values and policy agendas that form our collective understanding of these places.
Stringfellow’s projects have been commissioned and funded by leading organizations, including California Humanities, Creative Work Fund, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Seattle Arts Commission, and Desert X.
She is a 2016 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Fellow and a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography. In 2012, she became the second recipient of the Theo Westenberger Award for Artistic Excellence. The award honors the achievements of contemporary women who work in photography, film, and new media, transforming how we see the American West. To coincide with her receiving this award, Jackrabbit Homestead was exhibited at the Autry National Center’s Irene Helen Jones Parks Gallery of Art from September 13, 2014 – August 23, 2015. Jackrabbit Homestead was featured in the 2021 edition of the prestigious biennial exhibition Desert X.
Stringfellow is the author of several books including Greetings from the Salton Sea: Folly and Intervention in the Southern California Landscape, 1905–2005 and Jackrabbit Homestead: Tracing the Small Tract Act in the Southern California Landscape, 1938 – 2008, both published by the Center for American Places. The Mojave Project Reader series is published under her imprint, Kim Stringfellow Projects.
She has received multiple grants from California Humanities. Acting as project director for The Mojave Project, she received the prestigious California Documentary Project (CDP) Production Grant for New Media in 2015; the CDP Research and Development Grant in 2014; and a Humanities for All Quick Grant in 2022 for The Mojave Project Webinar Series.
Stringfellow was previously the co-editor for ARID: A Journal of Desert, Art and Ecology and is a regular contributor for KCET Artbound. Stringfellow was featured in KCET’s LOST LA Desert Fantasy hosted by Nathan Masters released in October 2018.
I am available for select writing, photography and audio freelance editorial projects. View my photo catalog at https://kimstringfellow.photoshelter.com.
Profile photo: © Stella Kalinina 2022
