Good Neighbor Podcast: Davie
Good Neighbor Podcast: Davie
Good Neighbor Podcast: Davie
Eps #7 Bringing Creativity to Life: How One Artist Transforms Spaces and Souls
What happens when creativity flows across seven different artistic mediums? Meet Sandra Kimzey Wimbish, a versatile artist whose passion transforms spaces large and small through murals, mosaics, and more.
From her home in Clemmons, North Carolina, Sandra has built a creative life that spans public art installations and intimate home pieces. She recently finished projects ranging from a 13-inch garden gazing ball using intricate tile mosaic techniques to community murals in Kansas and Carolina Beach. Whether creating large-scale public art or adding a "splash of something" to a kitchen or bathroom, Sandra's adaptability shines through her work.
"My favorite medium? Whichever one I'm working on right now," she shares with a warmth that reflects her genuine love for the creative process. This flexibility has allowed her to work with diverse clients including homeowners, businesses, churches, and community organizations. Beyond creating art herself, Sandra has dedicated years to teaching both children and adults, helping them discover their own creative voices. "I think one of my passions as an artist is to inspire other people to explore their creativity, whether they think that they aren't creative or whether they think they are," she explains.
What makes Sandra's journey particularly inspiring is her largely self-taught path. While blessed with an encouraging high school art teacher who nurtured her early talents, she's spent her adult life continuously learning through workshops, studying master techniques, and hands-on practice. The result is an artist comfortable with everything from live painting events to collaborative community projects.
Ready to bring some artistic magic into your home or business? Visit sandrawimbush.com to see examples of Sandra's work across different mediums and connect with her about your project ideas – whether you have a specific vision or just know you want something special but aren't sure what.
Sandra Kimzey Wimbish
skwimbish@gmail.com
sandrawimbish.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Karen Wood.
Speaker 2:Well, hello, I am here today with Sandra Kimsey Wimbush and I'm Karen Wood with the Good Neighbor Podcast, also with Advanced Neighbors, and so I'm so excited to have Sandra here with us today. She is a local artist and has a very extensive background in some really neat, neat things, so I'm excited to talk with her and let her share with you what she does. So welcome, sandra.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here, Karen.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome. So tell me, where in the triad do you currently live? I live in Clemens Clemens. Okay, beautiful, right beside us here in Advance Davie County, that's right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, actually our house backs up to Tanglewood Park, so this morning on my walk I actually walked across the Yadkin River Bridge.
Speaker 2:So very close. I love it, I love it. So tell me again you have an artist, visual artist background?
Speaker 3:Yes, Tell me what that is so really my whole adult life I have, either part-time or full-time, been pursuing art and creating on a lot of different levels, with different mediums and in different applications. I've used it with with business and pleasure, and so I've just combined it. I've also taught for many years, both children aged students and adult students children aged students and adult students. I think one of my passions as an artist is to inspire other people to explore their creativity, whether they think that they aren't creative or whether they think they are just to encourage them on that journey, because I think, you know, we get so much pleasure as humans when we express ourselves and our unique thought process or vantage point, so I love helping people get there.
Speaker 2:I love that too, because sometimes some of us don't feel that we are creative, so having that person pull that out of us is is definitely something I think that's very, very valuable to, as you said, be able to express yourself as you really are, so I think that's awesome. What is your favorite medium as far as with visual arts?
Speaker 3:Oh, wow. My answer usually is whichever one I'm working on right now. Okay, you know, there are some artists focus on one or two mediums and I just happen to love seven different ones and so, and combinations of them. Um, when I'm doing a mural, boy, there's nothing better than a mural. I just finished a big tile mosaic project. That is a land, it's called a gazing ball. It goes in your garden and and you just create this beautiful pattern on it and I just finished that. So, you know, when I was doing that, it was like oh, this is my favorite. I want to do these all the time. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, so for me, I just have a lot of pleasure in the mediums that I've pursued and tried to refine and improve my skill through the years.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that gazing ball like how large?
Speaker 3:is. Is that it? It was on a 12 inch diameter base of a polystyrene ball and then you build up from there, so probably now it's it's a 13 inch or a 13 and a half inch diameter ball. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, okay, gotcha. And you had mentioned murals, one on a building in Kansas.
Speaker 3:I've worked with a community in Kansas, with their arts council, the last two summers to create murals for them and then, just prior to that, I was in Carolina Beach for a weekend. They had a great mural festival, so we were live painting. They provided four foot by eight foot pieces of plywood that they had prepped for us and all weekend long we were, we were there painting. There were, I think, 18 artists in various parts of this park so they're actually hanging up. If you happen to go to Carolina Beach this summer, go to the lake park and they're hanging up there and they will be auctioned off in early September.
Speaker 2:Oh, OK, so what when they auction that off? What do those proceeds go to?
Speaker 3:Half of them go to the organization that sponsored the event, which is Carolina Beach Mural Project dot org. Carolina Beach mural projectorg, and throughout the town of Carolina beach there are numerous murals that they've funded and selected artists for. So I just found out about them less than a year ago and and then, when this mural fest came up, I submitted to it and it was just so much fun. I love live painting and I love the interaction with folks that come up and, you know, talk to you about your art or ask you other questions.
Speaker 3:So I do those kind of murals that are more what I would call public art and I've done installations. I lived in Raleigh for a number of years and I won an art grant and created a mural mosaic combination in a park there, in one of the city parks. So I do those larger scale murals. But I also do something like if you want just a little splash of something in your bathroom or your kitchen, or if you want a small mosaic wall hanging for your screen and porch, all those kinds of things, or your bedroom or in a business, if you want some lettering or some kind of art on some of the walls, I do any of those.
Speaker 2:Okay, I was actually just going to ask about for businesses. I would think that would be a very unique thing for business to just brand themselves or, you know, have something unique in there.
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely. I've also worked with churches several times and created things, both mural style art and then also just wall hangings, and some of those I've even engaged like during a service and had some of the congregation working as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sounds really really neat and especially, like I say, the murals, I would have never thought of that having in a home. I mean, you just see those things and you think buildings or businesses and something like that. So having a unique piece in your home is very interesting to me.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, you know, I think, depending on what your home is laid out like even if you have an entryway and you just want something it can be as simple as just um kind of line work, maybe the outline of of plants or trees, so something very simple and that isn't so detailed. You know that it's gonna cost you thousands and thousands of dollars, something that could just be several hundred dollars and and just be a few hours of work for me once I get the design and work with you to figure out what it is you want.
Speaker 2:Got it? So where? What is, I guess, your background or how? Um? Did you formally study art or did you just come to this through a hobby or passion, or so I probably have been doing art as long as I could hold a pencil.
Speaker 3:I really don't remember a time when I wasn't drawing in my life. So I loved art from the very get go and I, growing up in a small town in Kansas, I had the same art teacher for junior, high and high school, okay, and he was phenomenal. He was one of these teachers that not only encouraged his students but he also said any idea you have, let's figure out how to do it. I love it, you want to explore this? Let's go? Yeah. And so I came out of his nurturing you know, just thinking, oh, I can figure this out, I can do it. I didn't study art formerly for my college, but all through my adult life I definitely have been studying and learning and growing. You know doing workshops or you know studying the skill of masters so that I can learn from their style and their techniques masters so that I can learn from their style and their techniques.
Speaker 2:So a lot of self-taught, and I think that's admirable because, again, that's where you learn your true style and with all the things that you gravitate towards and you study and learn and hone your skills on that. So I think that's awesome.
Speaker 3:That's awesome, thank you.
Speaker 2:So tell me how a business or an individual would get in touch with you if they wanted to do something very special, like you said, on the mosaic and the murals for either in their home or their business.
Speaker 3:Sure, so there's a couple of ways that people can get in contact with me. First of all, I have an art website, ok, and that is just sandrawimbichcom, okay, and if they go there, it has a lot of different pages, it has a lot of different examples of different kinds of art that I do, and it has there's a page that shows murals and a page that shows mosaics and other things, and so then there's also a contact form there. Okay, they could easily just do that, just say, hey, I heard the podcast with Karen and I want to, I want to contact, I want to talk about, I have this idea or I need something, but I have no clue what I need. Okay, you know those kinds of any anywhere if they already know what they want. If they have no clue what they want, I, you know those kind of any anywhere if they already know what they want.
Speaker 3:If they have no clue what they want, I'd love to start a conversation with them, okay. Second way they could get ahold of me is just through email. Okay, and my email is s k and then my last name, w I m b I s h at gmailcom, great, I also am on Facebook and Instagram and I have an art page, sandra Wimbish Art, on Facebook and on Instagram. It is my full name, sandra Kimsey Wimbish, and they can contact me. You know, just send me a little private message on any of those platforms, okay, so?
Speaker 2:great. What we'll do is we'll be sure and post this contact information for the listeners so they can reach out, and then I definitely encourage them to go to your Facebook and Instagram pages to see your work and get a feel for your style and what you can do for them.
Speaker 3:Yes, Thank you.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, I appreciate you talking with me just a little bit and sharing a little bit about your background and kind of what you do, and would love to have you back and we can get into detail on different mediums or even some upcoming projects and things like that that you have that you're working on. That would be great.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Yeah, that'd be wonderful.
Speaker 2:Okay, awesome. Well, thank you again for sharing with us what you do and again, I hope that you guys will go to sandrawimbichcom check out her work and reach out to her if you've got a project that you'd like some help with.
Speaker 3:Sounds wonderful. Thank you, karen. Look forward to hearing from folks.
Speaker 1:Yes, Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPDavycom. That's GNPDavycom, or call 336-559-3044.