Karen May

Karen May (b. 1950) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans collage, ceramics, drawing, painting, poetry, and fiber art. She returns to motifs related to gardening, cats, and dolls to conjure childhood memories. May refers to her art as a “memory tool,” explaining, “If I have to remember my mom I can draw a picture of my mom. One way or the other I’m always thinking of my mom.”

In addition to themes of personal history, May also frequently works on found ephemera from art publications, co-opting the imagery with her own line-work and text. In 2023, seven of these mixed-media detournements were acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Karen May has worked at NIAD Art Center in Richmond, CA since 2011. Her work has been published and exhibited widely in the Bay Area, notably at the Oakland Museum of California, Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, and Personal Space Gallery in Vallejo, CA. A two-part solo exhibition entitled Karen May: ArtForum Interventions (2024) was presented by the Arts Center at Duck Creek in East Hampton, NY. 

In Karen May's work, the boundaries between media and styles commingle. She shares, “Some of the things I’m making are collages, some of them are maps. What I do with the maps is I work on them and then they turn into collages. And the same with a book.” 

May is always looking for source material, favoring found text with which she creates poetry about her daily life. She is attuned to the lyrical potential in her conversations with peers as well as those with her own inner voice, “Kitty,” who variously takes the form of a cat or Karen’s younger self. Karen explains, “Like if I see a stop sign, I find some words that I don’t have on the paper and I put them there, yes. Some words I find when I’m having a nice time out with my brother. Kitty told me ‘Karen, come up with a poem.’ She’s more of a poet. She said, ‘It’s going to be good for the NIAD center, let’s try it.’” 

May’s family is deeply important to her and continues to be an inspiration for her across her practice. Karen uses her art as a “memory tool.” Over the years, she has drawn many portraits of her mother. Describing one such work, Karen shares, “This is a picture of my mom and me. My mom’s name was Madeleine May, my father was Wallace G May. My father and mother are up in heaven now. If I have to remember my mom I can draw a picture of my mom. One way or the other I’m always thinking of my mom.” 

These portraits often shift playfully into abstraction. Many drawn and fiber works contain fields of geometric designs: triangles, diamonds, and grids which Karen describes as “shapes that are special to me.” Sometimes these structures reference initials of family members (the M for May is also an inverted W for Wallace, etc.). Other times, the arrangements represent calendar squares, flower petals, swimming fish, and pointy cat ears. A significant subject for May’s work is cats. She walks us through her process: “Well first I draw the head, that’s always the first part, oh you draw the body then. Then you draw the whiskers up. Last, she draws in the tail.” May is also enthusiastic about creating cats in clay: “I made it out of clay and Kitty said it looked so pretty. But also Kitty told me that it wasn’t done and you needed to add a head, the eyes, also the ears, the nose and the mouth. Kitty said ‘how about a hat?” 

May has a sharp eye for fashion and loves working in fiber arts, including dressmaking and doll making: “Sometimes I make fashion dresses. I try to be easy with myself. Sometimes I make a picture of something, maybe Karen or her mother or a dress.” In addition to her interest in fashion, May enjoys the rhythm of working by hand on a loom, explaining, “One of the things she does at the center is weaving, over and under, over and under. Some of it I do by hand, I go knitting along the way.”

When asked how she would like to end her artist statement, May reflected, “The way she sees it is we need love in different ways. Be nice to one another.” Another idea that came to her was ending on a poem that she frequently recites, “Roses are red/violets are blue/sugar is sweet and so are you.”