Two days after closing his exhibition on Montco’s Central Campus in Blue Bell, artist Kurt Kindermann held an informal gallery talk with students and community members in the Fine Arts Center Gallery, answering questions and discussing his work.

Kindermann, a Jenkintown native, spent 11 years living in a small town in central Virginia, where he created his abstract relief sculptures while coping with challenging personal experiences. The show was the first of its kind at Montco and ran from Sept. 6 to Oct. 27. As he raised his son and practiced his craft, Kindermann challenged himself to assemble meaning from his recent experiences and created innovative, layered pieces using digital design programs, woodworking skills, handmade paints and other found elements such as reclaimed wood and printed materials including dress patterns.

The artist describes his work as “… experiments in creating things I hadn’t seen before. I wanted to make something different and approachable.” The pieces are constructed in layers and colored to represent humans or animals, sometimes in relaxed poses, and other times, in motion.

Kindermann discussed ways in which he is always learning and expanding as his skills have changed and improved since he earned a Certificate in Painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He also discussed the business side of being an artist, explaining the value of networking, the importance of marketing, the need to be self-motivated and how to tap into the emotions of one’s own life to find inspiration.

Kindermann now lives and works in Boston, where he is working on a new series.