“I feel a little bit like an imposter, like an outsider,” says Tom Kilpatrick, current vice president of the Wheat Ridge Art League, “because I’m not an artist in a traditional sense.”
As a board member of the Art League, Kilpatrick hopes to contribute new ideas from a fresh perspective. “I’m a musician and a sound engineer. I do have artistic endeavors, but it feels weird not having any paintings I can show you.”
Kilpatrick has designed and built furnishings for his home. “I start with something functional, and I try to make it as refined and efficient as I can. I see beauty in that.” A bookshelf he built 15 years ago with inexpensive materials is “white pine uprights and OSB shelves. I built it like a piece of fine furniture, just using inexpensive materials. Eight years ago, I did prototyping at the Museum of Nature and Science, taking care of any of the tech needs for the museum’s interactive exhibitions, traveling exhibitions, and lighting, video and sound for live events.”
More recently, Kilpatrick worked for a Denver medical device manufacturer. “I ran the manufacturing floor, was production manager and their most senior technician. “I kind of express my creativity more in a technical way.”
Kilpatrick hails from Longview, Texas, a town about 120 miles East of Dallas and about 60 miles West of Shreveport, Louisiana. “I started running sound and singing and playing in [rock] bands when I was a teenager. I graduated from high school in 1990 and was in choir all the way through school, so I always sang. Instrumentally, I started on drums and then moved to bass pretty quickly. I was lead singer in a Christian rock band with our church.
“My father did generator repair, and I worked for him from the time I was 12, rebuilding engines and learning about the electronics. I was doing well.” He says he might have followed that line of work, but he was attracted to music and the technical support that goes along with playing it: the instruments and amps, the sound and lighting equipment.
So, just how does a “non-artist” fit into a community of fine artists? “There does seem to be overlap with my technical know-how and the art community,” Kilpatrick said. His wife Toni is an artist, so he’s familiar with materials used by artists and maintains a high appreciation for fine art.
When Kilpatrick and his wife moved to the Denver area, they looked for ways to become part of the community. “My interests are pretty broad, but Toni’s are mostly in art and music, so it was kind of a no-brainer to become involved with an artistic community. We found the Wheat Ridge Art League by going to the Carnation Festival—three years in a row—which is the League’s big annual show.” They attended a few League meetings as guests before finally deciding to join.
“When the League asked me to be the vice president I was like, no, I mean, I don’t even, I can’t come in here and show you guys how to draw or anything. It felt weird, but I have served on several boards in the past, so I knew how business meetings go. I felt there were things other than art that I could offer, and I sensed that I could have value on this board. I do tend to push some new ideas.”
At each monthly meeting of the Wheat Ridge Art League, an outside artist is brought in to demonstrate expertise in their particular field. Some artists use an easel, which allows the members to watch the demo from their seats. But some artists, such as watercolorists, need to, or prefer to, work on a flat surface, and this means members must try to view the demo from the best vantage point possible, typically crowding around the artist, which isn’t the best way to get a look.
Enter Tom Kilpatrick. Having expertise in the audio-visual world, in April he suggested to League membership that they purchase a camera and projector system. With the projector attached to the camera, and the camera fixed over the artist’s working area, the artist’s painting or sketch can be projected upon a wall or projector screen in clear view for all the members to better see. He researched to find the best system at a price membership could afford.
The camera-projector system was used for the first time during the June meeting, when caricaturist Alex Ferreira was the guest artist.
Kilpatrick will bring his accomplished background in sound engineering by running a PA for the awards portion of the Carnation Festival Art Show this August.
“You know, very seldom do you find somebody that just does one discipline and that is all they do,” said Kilpatrick. “Generally, they live their lives in some way creatively, artistically.
“And although I do sort of feel like an imposter, I know that I have something to offer to the group. That’s how I feel I can be a valuable member, and that’s why I feel good about being the vice president of the Wheat Ridge Art League.”
