A Creative Chat with Audiovisual Artist-Musician Camry Ivory

On inventing new mediums, surrounding yourself with weirdos, and the importance of limitations

Mar 23, 2023

Have you ever met someone and within about two minutes, been completely gobsmacked by their talent? It happened to me a few weeks back, standing in line at the True/False film fest. That’s when I struck up a chat with Camry Ivory and quickly discovered I was talking to a creative genius.

In 2016, Camry, a self-taught composer and musician, set out to try composing music with paint, something she was certain someone else must already be doing. When she couldn’t find anyone doing exactly what she had in mind, she decided to invent it herself.

That’s when she designed the prototype for an instrument consisting of a circuit board and 12 wired paintbrushes, each of which creates a different sound when used with a conductive surface. She calls her invention Coloratura.

Thanks to this recent and glowing write-up, Camry and Coloratura have started to garner a lot of attention—so much so, she recently left her career working with college access programs to continue developing Colortura full-time.

If this video of Camry in action doesn’t give you goosebumps, you are simply not human:

coloratura.art

A post shared by Coloratura (@coloratura.art)

I was ecstatic when Camry agreed to sit down with me and talk more about her creative process. An inventor, creative, and deeply generous soul, she is truly one of a kind.

What’s your creative medium, and how did you get started?

It’s twofold: art and music. It’s a new medium—I still struggle with what to call it! It’s “musical painting.” I’ve designed paintbrushes that allow me to create art and music simultaneously. The end result is a fully formed musical composition and artistic composition. Right now, I use acrylic paint with the brushes, and I’ve also started to dabble in water marbling.

What feeds your creativity?

Being in nature is really important. Coloratura is very technical and unnatural, so it’s important to me to find beauty and inspiration and try to replicate that.

Other people feed my creativity, too. Others doing innovative things. It makes me feel less alone.

The great thing about starting something new is, you get a blank slate. But it can be very intimidating and very lonely. I get inspired by people doing weird things because it makes me feel like there’s hope for me!

I just finished a month-long residency for emerging artists based in Paonia, a small town in Colorado on the western side of the Rockies. I was with three other people who are also creative weirdos—a screenwriter, a ceramicist, and a fabric artist—and it was really nice to bounce ideas around with them and commiserate.

What’s your typical creative process?

People ask me if I think about visuals or music or both, but because I’m trained as a musician, I usually start with the music. I’m always hearing the world through a musical lens, so I will have a snippet in my head, then I’ll come to the canvas and see what it looks like. I’ll try it out…what colors, what notes, do those colors make sense visually? If they don’t, I change the music.

I can create shades and hues, and I use black and white to represent rhythm, but I have a lot of limits: I only have 12 paintbrushes and two hands. I’m trained as a pianist, where you get 88 keys and ten fingers to work with. It’s been hard to adapt. I have to change the way I compose.

I dabble. Sometimes I designate a day as just a music day and I’ll play around with sounds on the software that I use. Then some days I work on artistic technique. I don’t have a painting background, so I’m learning that.

I’m fascinated by how much we don’t know about our brains and how much there still is to learn…looping Coloratura into that, a lot of people see it as a meditative process. And while you do have a finished product, the process of creating and using two senses simultaneously, it puts you into a flow state.

I want to use Coloratura somehow for art therapy. It has the potential to help other people. My background is in higher education, so I’ve been helping people my whole career. And I’ve always felt like I had to choose between my passion to serve others and my artistic passion. I’ve spent so many years helping people follow their passion, and I’m feeling like it’s my turn.

When I came up with the idea for musical painting, I assumed that someone had already created a device like mine. And I kept trying to find that person, but I didn’t find them. So my husband and I created it ourselves.

But if I had had a formal visual arts background, I’m not sure I would have done this because it’s really hard. I was just dumb enough to think it could work!

What’s the biggest misconception people have about what you do?

When I tell people what I do, the first thing they say is, “that would be great for kids” or “that would be great for therapy,” both of which are true, but I want it to be seen as an instrument or a process, all by itself. As just art. Creation for the sake of creation.

People think of them as paintbrushes that make sound versus instruments that create art. I see this mostly when I do live workshops or demonstrations, and they use them as paintbrushes instead of as instruments. They don’t think, “what happens when I use two brushes?” There are so many ways to approach it besides a way to make a painting. And I can’t be mad at them for it! I’m telling them to do something that was impossible a few minutes ago, so it’s a process.

When people ask what you do, they’re trying to put you in a box. When you blow up that box, you can tell if they really care, or figure out that they don’t—and move on with your day.

I don’t ask people what they do. I ask them what their life is about. I don’t care about how you make money, I care about who you are as a person. I thrive on pushing people out of their comfort zones. I always find people who are open to it, or at least pretend they are!

What do you do when you’re afraid you’ll run out of ideas?

I have the exact opposite problem. I have too many ideas and not enough time or energy to manifest them all. I have analysis paralysis a lot! I don’t know where to start.

Especially when I have so many different ways to manifest an idea. I have a music snippet in my heart, and when I played piano, I didn’t have to worry about which instrument to use. It gave me limits, and now I have no limits.

With these paintbrushes, I could use any sound that exists in the universe. l could sample your voice. It’s hard to choose when you’re dwelling in this world of endless possibilities. If you can do anything, how do you choose? There is some value in restriction. It forces you to work hard and figure things out.

What advice do you have for someone who would like to try what you do?

Be humble and curious. Expect mistakes and be willing to make mistakes.

Surround yourself with positive creative people. Surround yourself with innovative people. People who are going against the grain, doing something weird.

Have strong boundaries for negative people and naysayers, but also find people in your life that will give you honest feedback. And not just tell you everything is great.

I had a choir teacher who told me the worst thing you can do is go to your grave with the song of your heart still in you.

One of my dreams is to create an artist residency, where instead of focusing on your art, you focus on your creative self. It’s so important because a lot of people think, I don’t know how to paint, I’m not a musician. I say, I don’t know how to paint! I don’t know what I’m doing, because it’s new to me.

All creative energy is a way to travel and transcend time and space—you can project yourself to the future and connect yourself to the past. You don’t have to know what you’re doing! You can make it all up.

Thank you, Camry!

Camry has several events coming up in the Kansas City area, including a post-show educational event at the Lyric Opera in April following their children’s opera Listen, Wilhelmina! and an interactive Coloratura workshop at the Johnson County Central Resource Branch in July. For more info, go to coloratura-art.com.

This Week’s Input

Learned that humans experience 34,000 unique emotions! (Seems off. I’ve studied my husband a long time, and I can only discern three: happy, neutral, and “Aaron Rodgers just threw an interception.”)
Finished this tough-love bestseller for creatives. (On the danger of procrastination: “We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.”)
Watched this year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature and am still thinking about that ending.
Couldn’t goat enough of this writer’s paradise.
Had the best t-shirt-spotting week ever: first, a guy at a coffee shop wearing this, and then a 12 y.o. girl at a restaurant wearing this! (12! I had to chat with her—don’t worry, her parents were there—and we agreed that every single person needs her shirt.)
Decided I will no longer be watching stand-up performed by humans.