Caroline Meek

Bio

Caroline Meek is a queer poet and potter from Kansas City, KS. She recently completed a Bachelor’s degree at the University of Iowa, where she studied English & Creative Writing with a focus on poetry and publishing. Upon returning to Kansas City, she pivoted to pottery with a year-long apprenticeship at Epic Arts, a small community clay studio in Strawberry Hill, Kansas City, KS, and fell in love with clay. She now serves as Epic’s co-manager and outreach coordinator, on behalf of Community Housing of Wyandotte County (CHWC). She’s passionate about cultivating creative community and helps organize artists and events for Downtown Kansas City, KS’ Third Friday Art Walk.

artist statement

“I've often wondered whether making art is a justifiable way to spend my time given the reality of climate change, social injustice, and so on. Slowly, I'm coming to terms with the fact that action, progress, and momentum have no singular form of expression—some issues need to be addressed from all sides. There can—must, maybe—be a sort of activism and advocacy within the practice of making and observing beautiful things. It’s a cathartic, healing, perspective-shifting habit. Every poem that rings true for me, every piece of human-altered clay powerful enough to make me catch my breath—every one of these has contributed to the way I see myself, my community, and our environment. 

I believe you have to care about something in order to preserve it, to fix it, to maintain it. You have to remember that it’s there in the first place. And this is the role of artists, I think, at least some of them—to contribute to the collective self-awareness of the human race. Pointing us toward the beauty inherent in our environment, reminding us of the bigger picture. Nature is not an exclusive landscape; we are all parts of the same thing.

I’m constantly looking for new ways to translate experiences between genres, mediums, and senses. It is the most genuine way I know how to exist in the world—like a kid pointing out every little thing to their parents—Look! Did you see that? What does it mean? My action, then, is an attempt to do the same for both myself and others. My action is holding up a mirror and saying Look, see what it does when you turn it like this? Remember how this is all around us, all the time? Remember how the ocean makes you feel?”