About the Artist

Nested in the deep winding valleys of the Driftless Midwest, Kaija Kjome explores, collects, dreams, plays, re-invents and creates an ever-expanding variety of artwork ranging from paintings, photography, & found object jewelry- to graphic design, sculpture, multimedia & even poetry & music.

Inspired by nature & universal connectivity, Kaija’s works often illustrate the delicate dance and relationship between life and death, the tension and contrast of technology and nature, and the beauty in decay, while striving to bring attention to the details of the commonly overlooked. She is fueled by observing the infinite cycle of creation and inspiration.

Mentored by her artist father, Kaija says she started out a young pup watching Bob Ross & telling stories to her cat while painting “secret bushes” and woodland scenes.
“I honestly can’t remember a time when I wasn’t creating… I like to think there was no beginning, and there will be no end…everything flows infinitely” she says.
She has dabbled in many forms of art her whole life and continues to seek new mediums and unexpected combinations.

She worked as a stone cutter & bathroom designer in 2007 with her father (Clearfork Stoneworks), a sculpture maker in the wood shop of StoryPeople in 2008, and a self employed artist since then. She held a collaborative art show called “The Uncalculated Collision” in 2008, and a self produced art show with her father called “Quid Pro Quo” in 2009, and “An Evening of Art & Music @ Magpie Coffeehouse” in 2010 in downtown Decorah. She showed and sold her work in three Decorah Art walk’s, two Nordic Fest’s, & has sold photography in the Bluff Country Art Gallery (Spring Grove, MN) and jewelry at Fancy Pants (Decorah, IA).

“The idea behind The Echo Exchange is that everything is connected. That we must learn to become aware of the synchronicities that happen everywhere, all the time, & that we must be inspired by them, & create, & continue to inspire… that art, music, & creativity are as essential to life as air & water. These works are artifacts marking my evolution of consciousness… & I hope that they may inspire and shape the lives of those who encounter them.”
–Kaija

She is currently working on a new show called VesseL; an experiential mosaic of sculptures that incorporate elements of natural science and visual representations of the human experience. It asks why are we here at all, and what of this accelerating universal consciousness. –Are we (and our bodies) merely a vehicle (VesseL) created for the universe to experience and to become conscious of itself? It illustrates our body’s connection to nature, and how we experience our environment through our senses, and it asks, where do I end and you begin? It plays a lot between life and death, the concept of ego and the illusions we uphold with our minds to create “reality”
After all, the world is only how we perceive it to be.

“Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth,
that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans;
that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance,
which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

Begin it now.”
-J.W. Goethe