CARBONDALE — For most people, creativity and math are as far apart as two things can be. But it’s just not that way for Andrea Korber. Architecture, she said, is a real blend of these two ideas. It’s also how she’s made her living for the last six years. A graduate of Dartmouth and Harvard, Korber, 32, lived in Atlanta and Boston before moving to Carbondale last fall. She now works at Land + Shelter by day and makes her colorful, non-representation monotypes whenever she can. Unlike the results of most print-making processes, with monotypes, each piece is unique, the product of multiple additions of paint.

“I think I’ve always kind of approached art as an engineer and engineering as an artist,” she said, adding later she couldn’t imagine giving up either.

What first drew you to art? “Oh, well, the absolute joy in elementary school when you walk into the art room.”

“I don’t think I was drawn to it. It was just me.”

Describe your work. “Abstract, mostly two-dimensional. I’m very interested in there being some sort of phenomenon represented.”

“It doesn’t look like an apple or an elephant or a person. It looks like a liquid.”

While her pieces might end up representing something tangible in the end, she said, that’s not her intention — at least not consciously. While realist painters are trying to use paint to look like something else, she’s trying to let it resemble itself.

“The way masters do in a very representational way, I think I’m doing in a very abstract way.”

What are you trying to say with your art? “I don’t think I have a desire to communicate with the art work, really. I’m always happy to hear what people have to say about the artwork and what it means to them, but I’m always surprised by it.”

In the future, she said, she might not name any of her pieces. Sometimes a word just suggests too much to her viewers.

“It almost seems like people see what you call it. I’d almost rather they didn’t.”

What keeps you motivated? “I think it’s that same thing that makes folks around here go for 10 mile jogs.”

“It’s this great head cleaning, really reminding me what it’s like to be a child.”

What is the purpose of art? “I think it’s just an expression of a creative impulse. It has, like a consciousness behind it.”

“The joy of living. I think that’s what art means to me.”

“We all get to dance a little bit to the same beat if we’re all looking at the same sculptures and knowing the people who made them.”

What’s the most important thing in your life? “The people in my life, I think. Yeah. I don’t think I’m a creative loner.”

“Those relationships, knowing the people I know. That’s the most important thing in my life.”

Contact Stina Sieg: 384-9111
ssieg@postindependent.com