{"id":42271,"date":"2022-02-10T01:45:04","date_gmt":"2022-02-10T08:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lewis-man-tried-to-produce-one-art-piece-per-day-he-didnt-quite-make-it\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:06:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:06:27","slug":"lewis-man-tried-to-produce-one-art-piece-per-day-he-didnt-quite-make-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lewis-man-tried-to-produce-one-art-piece-per-day-he-didnt-quite-make-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Lewis man tried to produce one art piece per day. He didn\u2019t quite make it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Kevin
Kevin Lambson\u2019s art is on display at the Dolores Public Library through the end of the month. (Kala Parkinson\/The Journal)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cWow, that art is amazing,\u201d Kevin Lambson joked as he strolled into the glass-lined gallery of the Dolores Public Library, effectively introducing himself as the artist behind the myriad creative mediums lining the wall.<\/p>\n

As Lambson put it, he would never turn down the opportunity to talk about himself. But as it turns out, he loves talking about others just as much.<\/p>\n

While he officially works as a commercial artist, and slips into the world of fine art when he can (he believes the main difference between the two is reliable income), Lambson\u2019s art career really launched by the age of 10.<\/p>\n

Much like any fourth grader, Lambson liked to draw, but he wouldn\u2019t say he was any better than the next kid.<\/p>\n

It was around the time Star Wars came out, and a classmate asked Lambson to sketch R2D2. It turned into a pivotal moment for the just-born artist.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn that moment, I self-identified as an artist,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, this must be my thing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

His oil creations on display at the Dolores library were the product of a so-called \u201cpush\u201d in which he challenged himself to fashion a painting a day for a year.<\/p>\n

Sometimes he hides the date or \u201cbad puns\u201d into his paintings.<\/p>\n

\"Lambson
Lambson leans into his imagination, as evidenced in this painting. Lambson\u2019s sister one day mentioned the phrase \u201cwatching your figure.\u201d It replayed in his mind, and surfaced the idea of \u201cwatching something like a hawk.\u201d The word \u201cfigure\u201d is often abbreviated to \u201cfig\u201d in textbooks, and so he manufactured the concept of \u201cwatching your figs like a hawk,\u201d depicted here.<\/span>Kala Parkinson<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

While he didn\u2019t quite meet his 365-piece threshold, a new repertoire of 70 paintings marked the most Lambson had ever created in a year.<\/p>\n

Not all were good, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, most of them aren\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s kind of like playing the odds, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

The fast pace taught him to be more decisive in his art.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that we all have like a power of imagination, right?\u201d he said. \u201c\u2026 And so it\u2019s just the ability then to take that and go from a concept, a strange concept in my head to something that I can share.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much like the swirls of color in his paintings, Lambson\u2019s relationship with art has ebbs and flows.<\/p>\n

Not in the sense that he ever departed from his passion \u2013 except, maybe, a brief stint as a mechanical engineer, which didn\u2019t go very well, Lambson said \u2013 but in that he has immersed himself in different projects as his interests evolved.<\/p>\n

Perhaps his proudest endeavor is his 20-year effort to replicate the motion of the human body in a physical model.<\/p>\n

He has found other fluid sculptures to be \u201cwoefully inadequate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a human could do it, I wanted my mannequin to do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Lambson\u2019s creative spirit has seeped into the fabric of his family life. For example, he is 15 years into building a straw bale house \u2013 one of the primary reasons he chose to raise a family in Lewis, although he thought it would take only six months, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot knowing everything sometimes \u2013 it\u2019s kind of like the blessing to be ignorant, to be able to just say, \u2018I don\u2019t have all the answers right now. I don\u2019t know what this is going to be like, but I think I can do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Kevin
Kevin Lambson's art on display at the Dolores Public Library this month.<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"One
One of Lambson\u2019s models of the human form, which he hopes to one day mass produce.<\/span>Kala Parkinson<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

And if you visit his house around Christmastime, there\u2019s a good chance you won\u2019t see a conventional tree. It changes every year \u2013 one year it was his water heater draped in lights and garland.<\/p>\n

In the future, he\u2019d like to teach others.<\/p>\n

He has in the past, leading classes in Photoshop at the Orme School in Arizona, and instructing a group that swelled to about 10 children and one mother in exchange for a midwife\u2019s services delivering his first child.<\/p>\n

Lambson has an Etsy shop under the title ArtsyQuirksy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lambson\u2019s artwork is on display at the Dolores Public Library<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[363,246,1060,44,28,638,167,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-42271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-arts","tag-arts-general","tag-arts-entertainment","tag-dolores","tag-headlines","tag-library-and-museum","tag-local-news-lead","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85281,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42271\/revisions\/85281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42271"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=42271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}