Meet Carol

Since the 1970s, Carol Vollet Kingston designed costumes and sets for the ballets of many choreographers including Alvin Ailey, Choo San Goh, Talley Beatty and Gerald Arpino, and her work has been presented at the Paris Opera and Reggio Emilio, the Singapore Dance Theater and the Sydney Opera, the Royal Swedish, the Royal Danish, at Lincoln Center in New York and the Kennedy Center in the US, and at theaters around the world. Then, a decade or so ago, she began to devote herself to large works and installations that include drawings and paintings, on canvas, naugahyde, and plastic RP screen, sometimes with soundtracks, photographs, electro-printing and construction. She draws every day (even on the treadmill), takes endless photographs, and experiments continually with scale and medium. Technique, she says, must seduce the viewer into looking.

Much of Carol's work has been ironical and political; her drawing installations, “Words Spoken and Unspoken” and “Everyman” were shown in Capetown and Johannesburg, respectively, in 1999 and 2000. Some of her “Wild, Wild West” pieces were shown in London, in 2003, exposing a world of good and evil in an ambivalent culture. The four installations collectively known as the “Last Supper” series -- featuring contemporary political leaders, with ironic reference to Leonardo -- have been variously shown in the United States and internationally through the past two decades. The studies from which that work developed (both drawings and paintings) were being extended as a continuing series of commissioned portraits.

Carol’s most recent body of work, using a vivid palette, includes the series "Floating" and "Mapping" and "Crossing," which have been shown in New York, Paris and Australia, the Rice Gallery of Fine Art in Kansas City, the North Shore Architectural Stone Gallery in Long Island, the Beijing Art Fair, the San Francisco Art Fair, the Gallery M. in Vienna, the Shanghai Art Fair, the Asia Contemporary Art Fair, the A. Jain Gallery in New York and the Gwanghwamun International Art Festival in Korea.

Carol is currently contemplating a new body of work that seeks to capture the dissonance and fragmentation that exists beneath the surface of our interconnected world. Our world has become a cacophony of voices, each shouting its own truth, each demanding our attention, and each vying for a piece of our consciousness. Through a blend of various artistic mediums, she will explore the tension between the torrent of information and our ability to truly understand and empathize with one another. She hopes to inspire conversations and actions that bridge the gap between humility and hubris.

Academics

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY (B.F.A.) — Syracuse, NY
SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS — New York, NY        
ART STUDENTS LEAGUE — New York, NY
LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY (M.F.A.) — Brookville, NY

FACULTY, LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY — Brookville, NY - 2000-2019
FACULTY, NASSAU COMMUNITY COLLEGE — Garden City, NY - 2000-2010
FACULTY, ST. JOSEPH'S COLLEGE — Patchogue, NY - 2000
INSTRUCTOR, NASSAU COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART — Roslyn, NY - 1999-2000
BOARD MEMBER, LONG ISLAND ART LEAGUE — Huntington, NY - 2007-2009