Several times in my life I have utilized the “look before you leap tactic.” I take risks, they’re calculated risks, but they’re risks nonetheless. Right out of the gate I moved to a city I couldn’t afford with no job prospects and an art degree. I signed a lease for an art studio with no idea how to pay for it. I have burned my entire life’s work and sold everything I owned to journey across Europe with my best friend. So when the opportunity arose to move back to my home state and help a couple of friends build a movie theatre it seemed pretty tame in comparison. I was wrong.
Fall of 2018 I packed everything I owned into my Chevy Malibu and drove from Washington to Indiana. Two of my best friends had been working toward the construction of an independent movie theatre in Indianapolis, bringing the city the kind of cinema multiplexes do not offer. As I have had a plethora of diverse jobs, I love movies and my friends, I wanted to help in any way I could. The theatre was meant to begin construction the month I returned. Alas, it did not. Another theatre company, with more money and a more centralized location beat them to it. Progress on my friends’ theater was halted as all involved scrambled to come up with a new business plan and ideas on how to move forward. As I mentioned I like to have a plan and now my plan was completely out of my control.
I took a job at a brewery. I met a lot of great people and it was actually quite cathartic being required to haul around thousands of pounds of grain, beer, and kegs on a daily basis. But all the while I knew I had moved here to help build something I believed in. As 2019 crept in I felt as if I had left a life in a bigger city, having had an art studio, magazine articles, podcasts, and a world of possibility. I felt like I had lost things I had worked so hard to build and it threw me. In this situation of doubt and uncertainty, I realized the one thing I could control was my art. I alone was in charge of my creative output. As art has constantly provided my escape over the years I set to a project. For the calendar year of 2019, I would create a six-inch square drawing every day. Every single day. This way by year’s end, if we hadn’t started theatre construction, if I was still driving to work at 4 a.m. to haul around kegs, I would still have 365 original works of art and that was no small feat.
Someone dear to me suggested I call the project Small Drawings High Hopes after the song High Hopes by the band Panic! At The Disco. This title could not have been more apt and little did I know just how much it would come to mean. And so I set to work on a project that would see me return to Seattle, once again drive across our beautiful country, fall in love, experience heartbreak, manifest the construction of a museum, build a studio and gallery in Pike Place Market, experience a pandemic, and all the while come to realize that I just want what I’ve always wanted- to help people. And so now, partnering with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, in a time of supreme uncertainty for all of us, I hope you’ll follow along as I explain this project. I will strive to provide some mental support through art and just connect with other human beings. You’re not alone. Your thoughts, the highs and lows, the big ones, the small ones, the happy moments, the quiet ones- they’re all valid, they’re all part of this thing we’re in together. As Panic! said: “don’t give up, its a little complicated… (gotta) have high, high hopes for a living.”
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Kyle Krauskopf
Co-Founder Atlantis Collective Gallery
Check out his website at kylekrauskopf.com
Getting ready for Atlantis Collective Gallery Grand Opening
NOW TO GO VIRTUAL FOR 7 DAYS!
Small Drawings / HIGH HOPES
Starting on April 10th at 6 pm PST!
Instagram LIVE: @kylekrauskopf