If Kay Erickson‘s goal is to avoid creating mundane, emotionless and non-reflective images, she’s absolutely succeeded in our book. Kay travels around the world while recording her photographic visions. Black & white film is her weapon of choice. She also uses photo oils and various photographic toners in order to create her unique, archival photographic expressions. There’s just something about her images that stirs up emotion. “I want the spirit of the place or object in my photographs to come through… If I can make someone see the beauty of a solitary moment in time, then I’ve succeeded in my visual interpretation.” Cheers to that, Kay. You know what else is super awesome about this girl? The fact that she holds workshops for children and adults—in all areas of photography. She’s covered things like: hand-tinting black & white photographs; how to get better results using your 35mm camera; learning math through photography (ages 7-13); photographic presentation: matting & framing your photographs; archival storage and preservation of your photographs and negatives.

Kay Erickson is one of the many talented artists we’re featuring this weekend at our “End Days” event. We threw a few questions her way; make the jump to read what she had to say…

Introduce yourself to Lost In A Supermarket readers:
Started taking photographs at age 7 and always cut everyone’s heads off. Now I leave the heads on, but am considering starting to take them off again…I shoot black & white film and print on fibre paper, then sepia tone the prints. I also shoot digital color.

What do the words “End Days” mean to you?
End of what days? There may be the end of some days that would be welcome. The end of the bush era for instance, the end of the plague, the end of a war…Somethings must end in order for the next level to begin.

What would you like people to say about you and/or your work when you’re gone?
That it opened their eyes, made them see differently, made them notice things in a different way.

What-outside of other artists or heroes-has influenced your art the most?
Seeing things through new eyes, traveling and seeing other cultures and values.

Of all the work you’ve created, can you name a couple that you have a special love for or connection to?
The current Calcutta 2 Varanasi series displayed at this exhibition because it was unplanned, using my ‘sketchbook camera’ and just a lucky visual experiment on a train in India. I normally shoot black and white film, and this was digital color but still exposed what I felt about the passing scenery and people. The lighting reminded me of the Old Masters paintings, and I had it for an hour or less.

If you were Lost In A Supermarket, what aisle would we find you in?
The sale DVD section where you can find old classics for $9. or less.