ARTIST STATEMENT

Theo Edmonds, a Culture Futurist® and transdisciplinary artist, blends the realms of art, science, and business to challenge and expand the traditional functions of art within society. Drawing from their rich Appalachian heritage and diverse professional backgrounds, Edmonds' work investigates the dialectics of nature versus nurture, creating a dynamic narrative that examines the role of consciousness, wonder, and identity against a backdrop of societal conformism and economic production. Through Creativity America, they spearhead a neuroscience-inspired initiative to boost the nation's Creative Brain Capital by 25%, marrying conceptual art's aspiration to provoke thought and inspire change with the pragmatic rigor of science to expand systemic innovation within American enterprise. Edmonds' art transcends physical mediums, embracing ideas, language, and systems as source materials to explore new possibilities for organizational and societal advancement, positioning creativity as a collective journey towards renewing and transforming the American Dream within the future of work.

SAMPLES OF CONCEPTUAL & SOCIALLY ENGAGED ART
co-created/Curated/led as Co-founder & Chief IMaginator of IDEAS xLAB | 2012-2018

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Samples of Visual Art & ARTISTIC VIEW

I am a queer, neurodiverse, transdisciplinary artist and culture innovator with a lifetime of demonstrated experience navigating systems that were not designed with me in mind and in challenging and expanding traditional roles of what it means to be an artist within society. My Appalachian roots and diverse professional background inform my work, creating a narrative that excavates the “nature versus nurture” debate. My creative work and research examine contemporary consciousness, wonder, and identity expressions against societal conformism and economic production frameworks.

My visual work serves as artifacts of embodied cognition, encompassing elements of found objects, science, experimental theatre, and poetry in rituals of release and transformation. I synthesize folk traditions with fine art, brain science with myth, and spirituality, exploring the coexistence of the tangible and intangible, the eternal and transient, within the visual expression of memory and motion. My work seeks to foster unexpected think/do collaborations between the seen and unseen forces and is inspired by storytelling narratives ranging across:

ancient cave art to the James Webb Space Telescope images,
songs of Nina Simone and Patti Smith,
works of conceptual artists like Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Beuys, Jenny Holzer and Félix González-Torres, and
Bell Lab’s Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) (1960s) to develop collaborations between artists and engineers by facilitating person-to-person contact between artists and engineers rather than defining a formal process for cooperation.

Series Title: COVID Series: Limitations of Light In a City on a Hill
Created: Louisville, KY | March-December 2020
Medium: Watercolor, Ink and Graphite on Paper
Size: 18in x 24in