Wilson Kemp

= Division III =

This article is part of a Climax Div III Issue. By Kendell Richmond, Staff Writer

"I was coming back from the bonfire that happened the first night and a ragged man named Moses found me and led me back to Hampshire with a really psychedelic walking stick,” said Wilson Kemp of his first memory at Hampshire. He wasn’t sure if Moses was a professor, a student, or just some man who hung out in the woods. But the next morning, when he woke up slightly hungover and thought back to the previous night, he was sure he had gone to the right school.

When Wilson arrived at Hampshire in the fall of 2005 he intended to study photography and sculpture. However, his life took an unexpected turn when he was inspired on a Jan Term trip his second year. “I took one drawing class in Chile, and when I came back I decided to try my hand at printmaking as a way of elevating my drawing to art, as opposed to the doodling I had been doing all my life,” Wilson said.

The inspiration for Wilson’s Div III, titled SECOND NATURE, was the culmination of his entire third year, the spring of which he spent on the Hampshire Cuba program studying with “art wizards” Norberto Morrero Pirez and Lesbia Vent Dumois. “The relief aspect was completely inspired by the reusing and reducing that made Cuban art possible throughout [the supply shortage] of the revolution. Printmaking is something you can do anywhere, anytime,” Wilson said.