The Art Box - Episode 4 - Meet Kippy Spilker

I grew up in a small northern town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan—a town of about 2,500 people. Living on essentially a farm with no barn, and no real tv to mention, I spent a lot of time out in nature.

When my parents were enrolling me for kindergarten, they were told I was an artist because I was apparently the only kid who drew outside the lines of the area provided on an aptitude test. My mom was also a very talented artist, in that she could copy almost anything. Photos, drawings, no matter what, she could reproduce it, in pretty much any medium she attempted. I spent my childhood trying to draw the things she drew. Some people belonged to book-of-the-month clubs in the ‘70s—she subscribed to craft-of-the-month and every month we would create something new together.

Art remained a passion of mine, and at age 16, thanks to Rotary Youth Exchange, I spent a year in India, studying Graphic Art at Sophia Polytechnic in Bombay (now Mumbai). I learned a lot, but came home with a greatly diminished level of confidence in my abilities. Even winning the “Most Outstanding Artist” award at my high school graduation didn’t bolster me, and I went to Western Michigan University as a Psychology major. One day, in a general humanities lecture hall of about 300 people, I got caught drawing during the professor’s lecture, and asked to stay after class. That professor’s name was Richard dePeaux, and that day (and continually, through my college career) he changed my life and I soon was an Art Major with a Psych minor, and my first year of classes was waived. I could no longer deny that art was going to be a part of my life. Later in my college career, a Life Drawing professor, Jon Clemens, saw me struggling one day and took me outside to issue a challenge that once more would change the course of my art career and, really, my life. I owe an awful lot to those two gentlemen.

After college, I moved to Nevada, and a couple months later got a job as a Graphic Designer for an automotive catalog. They had way too many artists, and not enough work, so I took the opportunity to better learn the software (back then the magic combo was Photoshop, Freehand, and QuarkXPress). I would find magazine ads that I admired and try to recreate them, pushing myself to learn. This was in 1995, before the internet was really prevalent, so there were no online tutorials or anything. In February 1996 I left the catalog to become the Art Director for Motorcycle Industry magazine.

In about 2001 I got tired of paying for stock photography, so I decided to become a photographer. How hard could that be, anyway? Haha. I joined a Yahoo! chat room called #TheDarkroom, and found an amazing mentor who was a professional photographer in Australia.

The motorcycle magazine folded in 2010, and in 2011 I got a job as a designer at the corporate headquarters for the local newspaper company. Within 4 years I was managing a team of 12 very talented designers and really enjoying the associated challenges and rewards. In 2016 I got a call from a friend who had left the newspaper company a couple years earlier and was now working for Nevada Magazine. Their Art Director was leaving, and was I interested in interviewing? It was hard to leave my team at the paper, but it was too tempting to get back to my roots, as it were, with magazine design. And so I got the job, made the switch, and that’s where I find myself now.

During the pandemic, I fell in love with stained glass work, so in my spare time I do that as well. I’m still relatively new to it, but just this year finished my first design made from one of my own photos. I hope to do more of that in the future.

I’ve enjoyed a modicum of success with my photography, including having a few photos chosen by the National Geographic editors as both Editor’s Choice and photos of the day in their Daily Dozen program. I sell some microstock, and do some commissioned work, but these days I (along with my husband, who is also a photographer) prefer to volunteer my time and talents to causes that touch our hearts. We have photographed dogs and cats at local rescues to try to help them get adopted, spent many years photographing fundraisers for the local Greenhouse Project which teaches kids to grow their own food and supports local food shelters, and also many years photographing local Cancer charity benefits. Currently, we volunteer our time with the Carson Valley Trails Association, to help raise awareness of outdoor opportunities in our area.

One of my greatest joys is being a conduit between the magazine, the tourism industry, and local Nevada photographers. I think we have an amazing resource of local talent, and being able to support them with a place to share their work, as well as providing the tourism industry with views of Nevada shared by people who love it, well, it’s a win-win. I get very excited when we can publish a photographer’s work for the first time, and I love encouraging younger kids to get involved with photography as well. I’m interested in many areas of visual creativity, but photography is really where my deepest passions lie.

Contact Kippy at: 
kspilker@nevadamagazine.com