about
Kim Abeles explores society, science literacy, feminism, and the environment, creating projects with science and natural history museums, health departments, air pollution control agencies, National Park Service, and community organizations. In 1987, she innovated a method to create images from the smog in the air, and Smog Collectors brought her work to international attention. Projects funded by National Endowment for the Arts involved her residency at the Institute of Forest Genetics; and Valises in collaboration with Camp 13, a group of female prison inmates who fight wildfires. Abeles is a Guggenheim Fellow, and her work is in numerous collections including MOCA, CAAM, LACMA, Berkeley Art Museum, and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Her public artworks Citizen Seeds along the Park to Playa Trail, and Walk a Mile in My Shoes, based on the shoes of Civil Rights marchers and local activists. Abeles' journals, artists books and process documents are archived at the Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art. During spring 2025 she worked with 200 community members and atmospheric scientists to develop the exhibition, Kim Abeles: Community Smog at the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, Colorado State University Fort Collins.
