About Me 
Kari Kruempel
Book Artist


Welcome!

KK butterfly
First Grade, 1956
 
First let me just say:  Recognition is nice.
State Fair and
                Duluth ribbons
Eagan Art Fair
                awards
    These include:
  • Online Design Award for Eagan Art Festival 2022; Award of Excellence at Eagan Art Festival 2018
  • Published in Fiber Art Almanac, Vol. 4, 2014 (www.fiberartalmanac.com)
  • Second Premium in handmade books (2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017) and in handmade cards (2012) at the Minnesota State Fair (OK, let me just say, in 2018 I decided to stop entering; why buck a trend?)
  • First Place in Fiber at the Art at the Bayfront Park Art Fair 2010
  • Honorable Mention at the Eagan Art Festival 2010, 2012, 2015, and 2017 (I do love those gold stars!)
Beginnings
Tea Party Day
                Dreaming

My art has grown out of childhood daydreaming.
Scrapbooks
Doodling, scrap booking before scrap booking was commercialized, making instead of buying presents, and journaling.
Childhood Diaries
In one of my first diaries I wisely wrote:
"When I first had a Diary I thought you were supos [sic] to write down every thing you did.  Now I know that you write down what you want to."

This followed the several entries in my first Diary that stated:
"I don't know."

Older Journals
Here are some of my older journals.

But there are many more.

I journal daily.
It's like flossing my teeth, I tell people.  If I don't do it, I feel something is not quite right with my day.

More recent
                journals
Journaling to Journals
Embellished
                Journals

My interest in book art arose simply from a need for more journals for myself; I had run through my favorites from bookstores and Target.  I began by decorating the outsides of notebooks with things I couldn't quite throw away—old postage stamps, badges from my dad's postal uniform, beads and bits of ribbon and lace, and all sorts of found objects.  
Early Binding
I progressed to gutting discarded books with titles that struck me—The Ruined City, Death's Old Sweet Song, Needful Things—filling them with blank pages, and embellishing the covers.  These two journals came into being before I knew much about binding and was making up the construction process as I went.
Book with hole
Sometimes I cut away parts of the cover or sections of pages making a "hole" in the journal.  Then I could glue in a 3-dimensional item or a picture that I wanted to see for several pages while I wrote.
Upholstry Books
Eventually I made books also out of other recycled materials such as pieces of fabric, upholstery and wallpaper samples, handkerchiefs, diskettes, CDs, old photographs, and birch bark.
And Then There's Art Journaling
Old Woman, Young
                Child
In addition to writing in a journal every day, I also often explore and reflect with visual journaling.  Usually I address things that are on my mind at the time, for instance aging and childhood viewed from the vantage point of age.
Through a Pandemic
Panemic first
                days
I have found written journaling and visual journaling particularly helpful in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.  This is a page from the first few days when I felt as if a whirlwind, sometimes as powerful as a bomb, was bursting into my life.
Pandemic Feelings
When feelings of frustration, anger, and fear were getting the better of me, I slapped down some red paint and went at it with a black marker and images and words that I found in catalogs and books and that I drew or wrote.
Pandemic Living
But sometimes too I art journaled when I was at peace.  This spread resulted from paging through a couple of magazines and lifting images and phrases that stood out for me at the time.  I was amazed, in fact, at the positive feelings that emerged.
Pandemic Bubbles
And this spread reflects my feelings quite recently (November, 2020) of living in isolation for the most part--in other words, in my own little bubbles.


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