Artist Bio
Kit Collins (she/her) is a public artist and muralist who has created installations for communities across the Northeast, including in Lexington, Brookline, and Lowell as well as Pawtucket, RI; Hampton, NH; and Troy, NY.
In between mural commissions, Kit enjoys working with illustration clients, which have included Brooks Running, the Conservation Law Foundation and the Charles River Regional Chamber.
Kit currently serves as Vice President of the Medford City Council and is currently finishing up her second term of office while continuing her mural and illustration work. She loves opportunities to combine her two passions of community organizing and public artmaking, and is always on the lookout for opportunities to fold more public participation and community engagement into her public art commissions.
Kit originally hails from upstate New York, and moved to Massachusetts in 2011 to study at Tufts University. She graduated in 2015 with a B.A. in Peace & Justice Studies.
Celebrating Let's Dance, Lowell! with City partners, choreographers, and community members in 2024.
CV
Artist Statement
I am a community organizer who loves painting – a muralist who’s motivated by the potential for connection with her murals’ host communities. With a background in environmental justice and public service, I prioritize opportunities to create vibrant, site-specific, public-facing artworks that celebrate, spotlight, and honor the social, natural, historical, and creative environments in which they are implemented. I strive to create works that will not only add liveliness, color and texture to the everyday visual environment, but will also meaningfully resonate with the people that will host them.
While I am practiced and comfortable at having full creative control over a wall, my preference is to create opportunities for clients, stakeholders and future “mural neighbors” to have genuine participation in the design process. Whether I’m facilitating a large-scale community input phase like with my Let’s Dance, Lowell! series in 2024, or simply incorporating the feedback of a project steering committee, I welcome the chance to collaborate with the folks who are making my commissions possible.
When community members are given the chance to peek behind the curtain of the mural-creation process, and feel welcomed into that process, that is when public art becomes community art – art for the public. So in my practice, I have two goals: to meticulously create site-specific, vibrant, thoughtfully-designed, delightful artworks; and to make the mural-creation process into an additive and uplifting experience for the community.
Click to view my CV (document will open in a new tab).