It’s scary calling someone whom you have never met. You ask for their number from a mutual friend, and then you call them at 9:15 p.m. and they answer, and you ask if they could meet with you. You are complete strangers.
Maybe that’s what made speaking with Kiley Wilson so refreshing. We were strangers. I had sat down at the table, and she was getting her coffee. I didn’t see her until she was starting to sit down at another table and was looking around, probably trying to decide which person in the room was me. I only knew what she looked like because I had looked her up on Facebook the night before.
I called her name, and she saw me and came over and sat down. After 30 minutes of raw conversation, she got up to leave and I hurriedly wrote, “She’s honestly just so kind and sweet and cute and I can feel her power and energy and it makes me want to stand by her side and see what happens – because she’s going places and she’s unafraid.”
Red hair, white tennis shoes, t-shirt, leggings, beautiful soft skin, freckles, cutest smile. Kiley Wilson is a sophomore art and psychology major and someone I really believe is going to do something great in this world.
“What do you wish people understood about the life of an artist or an artists’ work?” I asked.
“It’s hard to see from an outsider’s perspective exactly what the art department looks like,” she said. “I think it’s more confusing looking from the outside, but once you’re in it, you’re kinda absorbed into the community.”
I was struck by her wisdom and the force with which she spoke. Kiley is not lost, she knows what she wants and what she loves and what she believes in, and she’s pursuing it. She doesn’t mind answering hard questions. She doesn’t mind admitting when she doesn’t have an answer at all. She’s unashamed to be herself. I think that’s why I felt so comfortable skipping the questions you normally ask when you meet someone for the first time, like “Where are you from?” And really, it doesn’t matter where she’s from. She’s here and she’s making art, and that’s enough.
I asked Kiley what made her angry. After thinking for a bit, she answered with, “I don’t know if angry is the word, but I get very frustrated when I get stuck. I guess trapped is a better word. I want to be free. I want to fly around wherever I want.”
As soon as those words came out of her mouth, I knew I had something deeply in common with this human.
“When do you feel the most free?” I asked.
“I think an easy one is when I’m in the act of making,” Kiley said. “I connect very strongly when I’m in nature – and circles, there’s something so compelling to the human, about a circle.”
She began to explain that when there’s a circle, our curiosity is going to move us to look in the circle. Then she told me about one of her works last semester, a piece made of three doors with a circle of pinecones on the doors. I immediately pictured the work, as I clearly remembered seeing it in the hallway of the PAC. And yes, I was compelled. I was compelled by the circle and by the connection of nature and a circle, the two things that Kiley mentioned when she spoke about feeling free.
Kiley and I are no longer strangers, and because of a 30-minute conversation, I will now think of her and freedom every time I view a piece of art with a circle. I want to have more conversations with her. And I want to ponder the meaning of a circle, why we humans are so compelled by it.
Circles, cycles, nature, art, the act of making.
People, humans, connection, strangers, talking.
Red hair, white tennis shoes, t-shirt, leggings, beautiful soft skin, freckles, cutest smile, Kiley Wilson.
“It really comes down to working with your hands – the actual act of working with your hands – and then doing that with other people.”
With other people, that’s what this is about.
Photo Courtesy of Tamara Friesen
