Ep. 214 Kim Dacres is a first-generation American sculptor of Jamaican descent, who lives in Harlem and practices her studio work in the Bronx. She primarily uses rubber from recycled tires to create sculptures celebrating the influential forces in her life such as family, friends, artists and musicians.
Dacres was born in the Bronx and has a Bachelor’s degree from Williams College in Political Science, Art, and Africana Studies as well as a Masters in Teaching English as a Second Language from Lehman College City University of New York. She spent over a decade in New York City public and charter schools working as a teacher and middle school principal.
Now, in her second full time career as an artist, Kim has had solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, and Palm Beach, FL as well group exhibitions internationally and within the U.S., including Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists Since 1940 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Black American Portraits at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Sounds of Blackness at The Metropolitan Museum of Manila in the Philippines, Godhead – Idols in Times of Crisis at Lustwarande in the Netherlands, and Bronx Calling Part I at the Bronx Museum as part of the esteemed AIM – Artist in the Marketplace Program.
Kim is the recipient of the Artadia New York Award Grant in 2022 and the Bronx Recognizes Its Own (BRIO) Grant in 2023. Her work is in numerous private and public collections including – The Beth DeWoody Collection, the LACMA collection in Los Angeles, The ICA in Miami, the Nasher Museum at Duke University, and the International African American Museum in South Carolina.