Karina Vogt spent her childhood in the mountains, back and forth between Manitou Springs and Boulder. Her mom’s friends were an eccentric group of artists, intellectuals, and scientists. Her dad was part of a hippy / artist circle in Boulder.

“Our living situation was fluid. Once we lived in a school bus in Sunshine Canyon, outside of Boulder. Another time we lived in an old logger’s cabin in Gold Hill. I did some of sixth grade in the one room school house there.”

She and her siblings were 70s and 80s kids, often marching and protesting. “When I was 15, I was part of the Shutdown House, a house full of teenagers who protested the Rocky Flats Nuclear Plant. We once had 700 people show up and blockade the gates. Hundreds of us were arrested that day, including me, my sister, and my dad.”

In 1986 she took part in a nine month, LA to DC, march for global nuclear disarmament. You can find a documentary of it on YouTube.

Karina has always had two passions in life, one of which is dance - especially ballet and West African style. She was 14 when her mom moved to Portland, and Karina joined a dance company there, for four years. At the time her older sister lived in New York City.

“I never thought I’d live in New York, it was so dirty and hectic. But I visited her for ten days and I looked into dance classes. The students were amazing and vibrant, and the classes were so beyond any classes I had experienced in Portland. The level was over the top. My sister had an apartment with an extra bedroom, so I moved in.”

Immersing herself in the city’s dance culture, Karina studied intensely. “I danced professionally for a company in New York called Magbana, we were a fusion company of modern, West African style, and kung fu.” She got to spend 21 years in New York City, during what she calls “the heyday of dance.” Even better, she met the love of her life, Lee.

Over time Karina came to find the city too dirty, too loud, with too much industrial vibration. “Lee and I were on the same page, we wanted to be back in nature, it was important to our well-being.” They planned to move to California, after a quick stop in Nederland to visit her dad, who had built a house here.

Which brings us to Karina’s other true passion, art. “Art was something I always did, I was surrounded by artists. When I was little I’d take pennies, get them flattened on a train track, and then hand paint scenes of people dancing on them.”

Since she was little she has always had an area that was her painting space. Her dad knew that, and when Karina and Lee came to visit he encouraged them to stay in Ned, offering to turn his woodworking shop into her art studio. “You really don’t get more back in nature than this. Colorado started looking better and better, it’s in my blood, it made sense to come back.” And in October 2019, she did.

Karina and Lee planned to set up, go to local art shows, and get to know the art community in the mountains and throughout Colorado. To establish her art here.

Those plans changed when the COVID hit.

“I couldn’t go to shows, meet the community, meet my new neighbors, or be social. So I got to do 100% art, every day, which is what I love.”

Karina paints. She does beadwork. She makes jewelry.

“Art is really, really, hard work. Hard on my body. I get overuse injuries to my back and thumb, from hours and hours of doing the same repetitive movements. My eyes get exhausted. The paintings I do are elaborate, complex, finely detailed. Some take hundreds of hours to complete, up to 50 layers to get to the depth and dimension I’m looking for.”

It’s not just physically hard. “Art is mentally exhausting. I think I speak for most artists when I say we’re really critical of ourselves. I’ll be working on something and I love it. Then I don’t. Every painting goes through an ugly phase and sometimes I get stuck. I start with the idea of an image and then I have to manifest that idea. What’s in my head is never going to be what’s on the canvas, there has to be a certain amount of improvisational openness.”

I’ve heard it said that art is life, and life is art. Both can be physically hard and mentally exhausting. We go through ugly phases. We get stuck. Plans go awry. Nobody could have planned for where we are today. If art is life and life is art, a little improvisational openness may help us get through this.

[BELLA LORENA: Uccideresti per me.]