Advocate Extraordinaire
Champion’s life has been colored by art from the start
Tallahassee-born Amanda Karioth Thompson has worn many hats, each of them an artistic creation of her own devising. Now, the former assistant director at the Council on Culture & Arts in Tallahassee has decided that her years of cultural and arts experience can serve an even wider audience.
Thompson’s new company, AKT Artful, is designed to assist artists and galleries, collectors and museums, foundations, companies and governmental organizations with all of their cultural projects. Judging an art exhibition, acquiring a piece of exceptional sculpture, designing an arts and education program, curating public art and the business of arts marketing — amazingly, Karioth Thompson has had experience in each of these vital subspecialties so necessary to providing cultural experiences in a community.
The History and Culture Trail Project represents one of the largest infusions of outdoor public art in Tallahassee-Leon County history. Amanda Karioth Thompson is overseeing the selection of featured artists including Toronto-based Yasaman Mehrsa, who completed two 20-foot-tall murals, jointly titled We Are All One. Photo by Alicia Osborne
Karioth Thompson says her interests were “programmed in at the molecular level.” With a master carpenter grandfather; a musician grandmother; her mother Sally Karioth, an educator and public speaker; and father, Gerald Ensley, an author and journalist, only-child Amanda knew from the beginning that hers would be a life colored by art.
In elementary school, there was theater and a passion for the way art classes made her feel. She wrote and staged plays and puppet shows for young friends, choreographed dance routines, designed multistoried doll houses and sewed constantly. She even showed early entrepreneurial impulses by renting out the family VHF tapes.
Her path seemingly set, Karioth Thompson plunged into college, earning a bachelor’s degree in studio art and two degrees in arts education. And although her early jobs were far afield — working with an attorney who specialized in death penalty cases, and later, as an organ and tissue donation coordinator — “the concepts of life and death are inextricably linked to art, culture, history and heritage.”
Amanda Karioth Thompson is overseeing the acquisition of public art for the Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency’s History and Culture Trail. Tallahassee artist Mark Dickson’s 15-foot-tall sculpture In Honor of the Worker is one of 12 new pieces of artwork so far collected. Photo by Alicia Osborne
The always explorative Karioth Thompson expanded her scope to include working with the public as a special events producer.
“Weddings, grand openings, corporate events — all taught me to listen to the needs of clients and think about the details that would make their event truly special,” she said.
In 2006, Karioth Thompson went to work for COCA. She is grateful to the creative people she worked with there. She said each day was steeped in seeing, feeling, talking about and advocating for art and cultural opportunities within the community.
“Probably, I am most proud of the arts education grant I initiated which provides funding for arts educators to innovate and grow,” she said.
Her purview while at COCA was broad enough that one day may have found her hanging an exhibition at the airport or at City Hall, writing an article on school-based arts programs, or administrating the details of a government project. And now she hopes to share her expertise with others through AKT Artful.
Like many high-energy creatives, Karioth Thompson says she needed to push the reset button at some point.
She hated to leave COCA, but it was the right time. Almost immediately, freelance arts consulting gigs came her way.
One side of Yasaman Mehrsa’s two-faced mural, We Are All One. Photo by Alicia Osborne
“To my surprise and delight, it went so well, I decided to formalize it into a company,” she said.
Karioth Thompson considers herself “multi-lingual” — fluent in artist, government and education.
“I can translate one to another for my clients and help regular folks interpret those languages, too,” she said.
That is exactly what AKT Artful is currently doing with projects with Capital City Bank, the Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency’s History and Culture Trail, the Downtown Improvement Authority’s acquisition of a sculpture celebrating Tallahassee’s 200th anniversary, and Karioth Thompson’s work with Big Bend Cares and the Gadsden Art Center and Museum.
“Wherever there’s a need, I’ll be there to make it artful,” she said.
