Once in a while, we get the chance to venture into the unfamiliar and experience something truly impactful. As an artist, new places can dramatically influence the way we create work. For Kahlil, the New York Studio Residency Program provided just this opportunity. Kahlil explains, “When I got there I just started doing. I wanted to show my relationship to the cityscape, the places I was visiting, the things I was looking at. As I drew, I began to claim the paper as a material and to use color as an implied background, like the sky behind all of those buildings.”

Kahlil spends most of his studio time at Craft Alliance and the KCAI exploring clay and its sculptural capabilities. The charged atmosphere of NYC, however, inspired Kahlil to work in a new way. Kahlil notes, “The residency taught me what it truly means to be an artist working hard and trying to do as much as possible with what you have. I also learned the necessity of using your time well and managing it purposefully. A New York minute is unbelievably fast - as soon as you think of the moment, it’s already gone. In the studio, it became a question of how quickly can you wear down a colored pencil to the very last mark?”

It takes time to fully internalize the effect of opportunities like these.  “My drawings don’t feel complete yet, and working on them at home will help me to fully understand my experiences in New York. It makes me think that learning always goes on as you move from one place to the next,” Kahlil said. “Learning is kind of like NYC itself, where everything is built on top of everything else that came before it.”