Office + Community Engagement Coordinator

 

Artist, educator and advocate, Calder Kamin transforms trash into beautifully crafted creatures and opportunities to inspire others to be creative and courageous about the future. Nature’s endless ability to reuse and adapt motivates her to eliminate waste and reimagine it as art.

Calder’s creative reuse art projects and public workshops have traveled to museums across the states including The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art American, The American Museum of Natural History, The Contemporary Austin, The i.d.e.a. Museum, and The Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Plastic Planet, her 2016 solo exhibition at Women & Their Work, was supported by a Mid-America Arts Alliance Artistic Innovations Grant and the subject of an episode for the PBS series Arts In Context. She was the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art’s Art Truck Artist, the first AIR at the Beach Museum of Art, and Artist-in-Residence at Breck Create, Landmark Apartments, and the DoSeum, San Antonio’s Children’s Museum, which earned Calder’s second Mid-America Artistic Innovations Grant for the culminating exhibition. She was a 2024 Resident Artist at Bryn Du Mansion, The Wassaic Project, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Aquarium Gallery, Camp Stomping Ground, and Bunker Projects. 

Her recent and upcoming exhibitions include Ivester Contemporary, Sherry Leedy Contemporary, Presa House Gallery, The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, Webster University, The Breckenridge International Festival of the Arts, The Mobile Museum of Art, and The Wolf Museum of Exploration and Innovation. The City of Austin recently commissioned Calder’s first permanent public art project for Mary Moore Searight Park. She appears in the 2023 Craft in America episode PLAY on all PBS stations and the PBS app and on the Disney Channel 2019 celebration of the Little Mermaid to share inspirational messages about creative reuse.

From 2020-2023, Calder was a board member of Austin Creative Reuse, a non-profit that diverts community waste to artists, crafters, and educators as resources. She supports these centers wherever she travels. Calder has an extensive background assisting artists with professional and business skill development through art organizations, universities, and municipal government. She holds a double Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute.