Artists Calder Kamin
SUMMER 2026 RESIDENT · MAY – AUG
Calder Kamin
Recycled sculpture & workshops
Calder Kamin is an artist, educator and environmental advocate based in Austin, Texas, who transforms trash into intricately crafted animals and plants. She joined Manchester AIR at The Factory on Willow in Manchester, New Hampshire, for the Summer 2026 session.
Background
Kamin grew up in Texas sculpting animals in clay, and she holds a BFA in Ceramics and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute. Her focus shifted after she found a dead kestrel beneath a window on her walk home, a moment that led her to make the impact of people on the natural world the center of her work.
About the work
Kamin hand-cuts, weaves, crochets and glues discarded plastics, including bags, bottle caps, straws and foam, into foxes, birds, deer and other creatures. Many of her subjects are animals that thrive alongside people in cities, scavenging what we throw away, just as she scavenges her materials. Her guiding idea is that nature never wastes, so neither should we, and her message is a gentle one: not perfection, but consideration.
Education and community are central to her practice. Kamin leads hands-on workshops for children and adults, and serves on the board of Austin Creative Reuse, a nonprofit that redirects community waste to artists, teachers and makers.
Selected highlights
Featured by Craft in America and on PBS
Speaker, SXSW EDU 2019
Artist in residence at the DoSeum (San Antonio’s children’s museum) and Breck Create in Breckenridge, Colorado
First artist in residence at the Beach Museum of Art; Art Truck artist for the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
2024 residencies at The Wassaic Project, Oak Spring Garden Foundation and Bryn Du Mansion
