Sophia Lucente
    Staff Writer

Anne Rowland Kidd is riding a swelling wave forward in the name of art and industry.

A senior, she is majoring in New Media and Design, a division of the art department which, according to its page on UNCG’s website, “balances the progressive building of conceptual and technical skills with creative problem solving and prepares students for advanced courses in digital video and photography, web design, graphic design, animation and related topics.”

Kidd specializes in photography, but says she also enjoys experimenting with mixed media projects.

An active member of on-campus academic life, she has also participated in a number of extracurricular endeavors. She currently serves as Executive Editor of the Coraddi, the school’s 118-year-old arts and literature magazine. The zine, which features both visual and literary artistic work of UNCG students, is published biannually, now in bound-book format.

“I absolutely adore this publication and feel very passionate about it, being the oldest publication at UNCG,” Kidd said of the Coraddi in an interview with the Carolinian. “My dream career is to be an editor of a magazine so I take this experience very seriously.”

Before serving as Executive Editor, a position which she has now held for one and a half years, she acted as the organization’s Art Editor. The most recent issue, number 117, was released in the spring of 2015 in two volumes, spanning roughly 150 pages each. Literary works included in the Coraddi are comprised mostly of poetry and prose, and include a handful of short fictional works. The visual art section is dazzlingly diverse – featuring digital, watercolor, charcoal, oil, collaged and photographic work – and highly reflective of the talent and resources present in UNCG’s art department.

She also was Vice President of the Photography Club for a year. She cites the organization’s collaborative and relaxed nature as a strong educational tool as she refined her photography skills and became familiar with methods that were not necessarily being taught in the classroom.

As a photographer, Kidd cites heavy influence from landscapes she observes in city settings. Many of her pieces present elements of directness and industrialization.

“Most of my photography revolves around color relationships and formal elements such as linear and geometric qualities found in architecture,” Kidd explained, describing her style as primarily minimalistic.

The abstraction she wishes to capture lies unsuspectingly in everyday themes; one piece, “Untitled,” centers on the fractured edge of a tennis court that, in its odd framing, looks more like a letter F and forces the viewer to consider its rich swatches of blue and green and its heavy, disruptive cracks. The piece is one of several that make up a series and a self-published book she refers to as “Unplaces” in which she attempts to represent “painter-like qualities between color and form” and suppress any traditional concepts of physical location.

Greensboro, with its dingy, angular buildings and zig-zagging skyline, is certainly not the sole source of this inspiration. Kidd was born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina – a place many would consider the architectural mecca of the southern state – where she attended Broughton High School and graduated in 2011.

She has also traveled to Europe twice, once with a study abroad program organized by UNCG’s Consumer, Apparel and Retail Studies Department.

“Traveling absolutely inspires my work because I thrive artistically when exposed to new architectural spaces,” Kidd said of these experiences. “I’m also a pretty restless person, so traveling and being on the go are what I really look forward to.”

Kidd’s restlessness is evident in her academic career as well. She has taken a number of courses outside of her assigned path of study, such as those in CARS and in Women’s and Gender Studies. Kidd says she has benefited from them immensely, especially in developing an understanding of art through a fashion-world lens and in discovering authors and theorists she would not have otherwise been exposed to. Her hope upon graduation is to work in an editorial position for Condé Nast, a NYC-based mass media company whose publications include Allure, Vogue, Wired and The New Yorker magazines.

She finds the incorporation of art into social and utilitarian spheres exhilarating. Her grasp on a photo’s prowess is far from superficial.

“I’ve been interested in photography basically my entire life; photographs oftentimes mean more to me than any other material possessions,” she said. “The way you can capture a moment or time with a photo has always fascinated me, being the nostalgic person that I am.”

Until her graduation, Kidd plans to continue her involvement with the Corradi and find time to unwind with her Greensboro-based friends. In terms of artistic projects, she wants to experiment further with ink, perhaps in an effort to recreate some of her photos in that medium.

To reinvent herself one day in New York is an avenue that lies just around the corner. Until then, she is armed and ready with all that academia and the artistic world has given her.

“I think that the realization of the importance of art in my life came more gradually than just one particular moment,” she reminisced. “The progression I’ve made during my student career at UNCG has just built on that importance with the classes I’ve taken and the refinement my work has gone through each year I’ve been here.”